I was diagnosed with terminal cancer weeks after giving birth and now, while I still can, I'm embarking on a gruelling journey that most people wouldn't even attempt

Published: 23:45, 27 May 2026 | Updated: 23:45, 27 May 2026 Muireann McColgan is a mother, a wife and works as a chef. She’s about to take on a huge charity cycle going from Malin Head to Mizen Head to raise funds for Breast Cancer Ireland. And what is more extraordinary about Muireann is that she does all this with a stage four terminal cancer diagnosis. ‘It’s hard to imagine because I don’t particularly feel sick,’ she explains. ‘I think I probably haven’t fully accepted it yet and it’s the same with my husband and my friends because I don’t appear like a sick person. ‘I was stage four from diagnosis, I haven’t had chemotherapy, I haven’t had surgery, I didn’t lose my hair. My treatment is just tablets. I take tablets and I get injections. So I don’t really have any of the physical appearances of somebody with cancer. So I think it’s it’s very easy for people to forget and for people to not accept it. I think people don’t really understand when I tell them it’s stage four and it’s incurable and eventually cancer will kill me.’ Muireann McColgan, a keen cyclist and an inspirational - Breast Cancer Ireland Patient Supporter living with metastatic breast cancer. Pix: Jason Clarke Muireann was 37 and 31 weeks pregnant with her daughter Aobh when she found a lump in her breast. ‘I was diagnosed two weeks after she was born when I was 38,’ she explains. ‘I found a lump and my GP told me it was mastitis but luckily my midwife felt it herself on a routine visit and questioned that and sent me on for further diagnostics. I was diagnosed with stage four terminal breast cancer two weeks after I had Aobh. ‘It was extremely surreal, especially being told the cancer was not curable. That was probably the hardest thing, you’re holding your new baby and you have multiple oncologists telling you that you have a terminal illness. It was horrific and I honestly don’t know how I got through it but that time feels like a huge blur.’ Muireann decided ten months later to do her first cycle for charity from Dublin to Galway but now she has embarked on an even more strenuous challenge along with 60 other people as part of the Kilmacud Crokes Cycling Club’s 026 Nissan Mizen to Malin Cycle Challenge, raising vital funds for Breast Cancer Ireland — and honouring the deeply personal story that helped inspire the event from the very beginning. Taking place from tomorrow until Sunday, the gruelling 670km journey from Ireland’s most southerly point in West Cork to Malin Head in Donegal will once again see cyclists push themselves to the limit in support of Breast Cancer Ireland and the Kilmacud Crokes Development Fund. ‘I love cycling and this is something I have always wanted to do,’ says Muireann. ‘A terminal diagnosis makes you realise that it’s now or never with some things and that is why I did the first one and why I want to do this now too. ‘And initially you have the diagnosis and you’re dealing with that, and then you have to battle all the other stuff. And I think that was probably the hardest bit, but it also took me away from sitting with the idea of not being around to see Aobh grow up. It gave me something else to do.’ Muireann also wants to raise awareness of people who are in her situation. ‘I do feel like it’s just extremely misunderstood,’ she says. ‘And I think I’m finding myself in a really weird position now because I’m in treatment for this disease, but I am working and doing things like this cycle. ‘It’s a weird purgatory place where you’re not inclined to plan for the future because you don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you’re trying to secure a future as well. It’s strange and I have found going back to work that there’s nothing in legislation set up to protect people like me. So I’ve exhausted all my sick pay when I was out after maternity leave, after the diagnosis, and now that I’m back, I don’t have any sick days left. But obviously I’m on treatment and being on treatment means that your immune system is weaker and you get sick that happens and it is unavoidable. And I explained all this to work before I went back. There are just going to be times where I can’t come in. Obviously, my daughter is two and a half now and she’s in creche. So she brings back all the bugs and I get them worse than her. So because I don’t have any sick days left, if I am out sick I just don’t get paid. ‘My wages are docked. There doesn’t really seem to be anything in place for people who are living longer with illnesses that are terminal, for lack of a better word.’ Since her diagnosis Muireann has been challenging herself to almost celebrate the fact that she is still able to do things like the cycle. ‘A lot of people who have the same thing that I have aren’t able to do these things and maybe didn’t have such luck with treatment,’ she says. ‘I’m two and a half years into my diagnosis and still doing quite well on my treatment. So, for me, it’s just a celebration of being able to do it and it’s a good thing to focus on other than cancer. ‘And it means I am able to fundraise for Breast Cancer Ireland, challenge the perception of what stage four can be and show what happens when medicine works. Aobh and her husband Tomasz will be cheering her on. ‘I honestly don’t know if I’ll be here in two years when the next cycle happens — that is the nature of the disease. So, if I want to do something, I just have to do it now. So, when I saw this come up, I asked if I could do it and they said yes.’ Muireann is currently on ribociclib, one of the newer cancer treatments. ‘It’s a CDK46 inhibitor, which is, so it’s a targeted therapy,’ she explains. ‘So it’s not like chemotherapy where you take it and it attacks your whole body, it’s targeted to the cancer cells. So, it attacks the cancer without attacking your body so much. ‘It’s not intravenous, so I can just take it at home which is great. Since my diagnosis is so new and it’s such a huge blow, the one thing that I that I can kind of grasp onto is not feeling really like a patient and the fact that I can manage this at home a lot myself. ‘I have to go into the hospital once every three months for a blood test and then once every six months for my scans and that’s me done with the hospital. ‘I haven’t spent one night in hospital because of my cancer diagnosis, even though I’ve had terminal cancer for two and a half years, which is quite amazing. I mean, it’s a feat of medicine. I’m extremely happy to be doing very well on these drugs and I tolerate them quite well. ‘And it’s completely killed the cancer in my body as of now. So, I have what they call NEAD, no evidence of active disease in my body, which means the cancer is asleep. ‘But because I’m stage 4, it will come back and they don’t know when.’ And this is why funding research is all the more important to Muireann. ‘My cancer could wake up at any moment, which means it will have mutated against the treatment and then you move on to the next treatment and that’s basically how it works. ‘There’s a finite amount of lines of treatment and after that, there’s nothing more they can do for you. So, this is why research is so important to me. The more treatment lines I have, the longer I get to be here with my daughter.’ Muireann says she is nervous about the cycle but adds: ‘I have to give it a shot. This gives you a level of determination that I definitely didn’t have before. It’s outside of my comfort zone, but why the hell not? It’s fun. I enjoy cycling, and I’m looking forward to it.’ The 2026 Nissan Mizen to Malin Cycle Challenge, is a gruelling 670km journey from Ireland’s most southerly point in West Cork to Malin Head in Donegal set up by event co-founder Paul Gallagher, who lost his wife Marie to breast cancer, leaving him to raise their three young daughters alone. A longstanding board member of Breast Cancer Ireland, Paul has helped to grow the Mizen to Malin challenge into one of the charity’s most successful community fundraising initiatives, with more than €780,000 raised to date across previous cycles.  Paul Gallagher, his daughters and granddaughters Pix: Jason Clarke Paul’s wife Marie found a lump on her breast while in the shower on New Year’s Eve 2001. ‘She had the scans done, and she had two lumps either side of her nipple of her left breast,’ he says. Marie was booked in for a mastectomy with Professor Arnie Hill and then underwent chemo. ‘We have three girls and they were very young — our youngest was only six and then we had one who was 10 and one who was 13. Marie went into remission but about a year and half later the cancer came back.’ Marie passed away about four years later in 2007 and Paul was left to raise their girls on his own. But he also wanted to do something to remember Marie by and also help other families while getting his one fitness back as he had piled on weight. ‘Around 12 of us did the Snowdonia Challenge — we did that two years in a row. ‘Then we decided to do the cycle and I had been involved in quite a few functions with raising money for breast cancer, in the years that Marie was sick. So we got Nissan on board as a sponsor and off we went on our merry way, very naive, not knowing what was lay ahead of us for the Mizen to Malin cycle.’ They’ve now raised a substantial amount of money and hope to raise even more this year. Paul’s girls are now very proud young women with girls of their own who will be cheering on their grandad from Wednesday. ‘And we’ve another girl on the way,’ he says, laughing. ‘We’re hoping to get over a million euro. We need to get €220,000 to make the million over the six Mizen to Malin that we’ve done so far so if we make that, it will be a great contribution.’ *To sponsor Muireann go to https://fundraising.breastcancerireland.com/fundraiser/MM17337060 Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.