A New Life: Cancer support worker Christine Collins tells Theresa Judge how she offers benefits of experience
When it comes to job satisfaction, cancer support worker Christine Collins says there's no comparing her new job with her old one as a boutique owner.
"At the end of the day then, what were you counting - pounds, shillings and pence - it was just money, but here at the end of the day you're counting the number of people you've helped," she says.
She still looks the boutique owner, with a pristine white trouser suit and co-ordinated red and white top and stylish sling-back shoes. She always loved clothes and in her late 20s realised her dream of opening her own boutique in Castlebar, a business she ran successfully for 15 years. She got breast cancer when she was 39. At the time, she had two boys aged under four and her daughter was 14.
After surgery, chemotherapy and recovery, she says she decided she "wanted to give something back to people" and trained with the Irish Cancer Society to work as a volunteer on its Reach to Recovery programme where women who've had breast cancer go into hospitals to talk to newly diagnosed patients.
She is a founder member of Mayo Cancer Support Association, which, within the past two years, has opened Rock Rose House, a centre in Castlebar offering a range of services to people affected by cancer.
In talking about her own experience, she stresses that everybody has a different way of dealing with a cancer diagnosis, and there is no right way. "There's a lot of talk out there about positive thinking - but it's very hard to be positive when you're not feeling well. Whatever way people cope is their way, and that's right for them," she says.
Her way was to get down for a few hours and then tell herself that she'd just have to deal with it. On the morning after the diagnosis she recalls talking to a friend on the phone, tears falling into her cup of tea. "I remember washing the cup at the sink, looking out the window and saying to myself, 'if I knocked all the houses that I can see right now, I will not change the way things are for me, so I'll face up to them and I'll deal with this', and that was my turning point."
Collins says she's always been an optimist. Initially, she never thought the lump would be malignant. On the morning of the biopsy, she was happily ordering clothes for the shop on the phone beside her hospital bed, assuming she'd be back at work the following day.
She emphasises the importance of the way bad news is broken to patients. She's grateful for the words her surgeon used: "We've a small problem here all right," was what he said. She believes this made a difference because in the months that followed, these were the words that were going around in her head.
"If he'd said 'you've a large tumour', which is what he did find, I wouldn't have been thinking about 'a small problem'," she says.
It would be harder to find somebody with a more positive attitude to cancer. "A lot of people survive cancer and go on to live full lives, better lives than they had even before they had cancer because now they realise that life is short and you've been given a chance to think. And I would certainly say at this point in time - 14 years down the road - that cancer was a very positive thing that happened in my life, it made me think about life, it made me appreciate every day. I really live life now and I enjoy life, and if there's an opportunity to do something, I do it because I do realise that life is short."
Yet she doesn't try to play down the difficulty of coping with a cancer diagnosis. She was eventually forced to close the shop after a few years of struggling - with much reduced energy levels - to run the business and look after young children.
She says "a pitfall time" for many people is when their treatment is over and they return from hospital. The support from the hospital is suddenly gone and family and friends often expect that life should return to normal. But having gone into overdrive just to get through surgery and treatment, the person is physically and emotionally drained and unable to cope with normal demands. She stresses that this is when people are most in need of services like Rock Rose House.
"This is a place where people can be themselves - they don't even have to talk if they don't want, they can just go and sit in the garden and read the papers."
People choose what services to avail of. Five staff members, all trained by the Irish Cancer Society, are available to talk to people and to provide practical help.
The centre also offers stress management courses, complementary therapies such as reflexology and massage, and a psychotherapist, provided by the Irish Cancer Society, works in the house one day a week.
Collins says it's wonderful to see just how much relief people get by talking about their experiences and hearing that the way they are feeling is normal. She stresses that opening the house was only possible because of the generosity of Mayo people.
Planning permission has now been granted for a new extension, necessary, she says, because of the growing demand for its services. A calmness pervades the bright, cheerfully painted rooms of the house.
Collins had a recurrence of cancer in 2002, 11 years after her first diagnosis. She stresses that it was very small and adds: "I'm fine now." Her approach is that if it happens, she'll deal with it.
"Obviously I would hate to die, everybody wants to live, but I wouldn't have any great fear of dying. I wouldn't like it obviously but you could be living in fear every day of your life. The message is hope, people live with cancer. I would encourage women to check their breasts and not to be afraid. There's support out there for people - don't feel alone."