![Cancer patient Katie Foley: 'The minute you get the diagnosis, everything is affected. I’m away from my daughter a lot, which is very difficult. Any kind of financial support [the next government] can provide would be helpful.' Photograph: Domnick Walsh/Eye Focus](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BRCSRTTU4UQO2ZDDD3LVR4UMKI.jpg?auth=9eaa85dfe71bcc14ddadea6a9d15192cee259de3b44163f6a92d46d5eb4ba240&smart=true&width=1024&height=683)
Six months ago, Katie Foley had a new, thriving coffee business in Co Kerry called Inch Coffee, which she opened last year. She was preparing her daughter Grace, who is 4½, to start school, and was excited about the future. But during the summer that all changed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I had to close the business at the end of August, when it all started kicking off. But it was a fairly new business for me, so I wasn’t expecting to not be working ... to not have money coming in the door,” she said.
The 29-year-old single mother said she had symptoms for about two years: itchiness, redness, lumps and severe pain and had attended a GP on two occasions, but was reassured by medics she should not worry.
When her symptoms worsened, she visited a doctor again, where she was referred for a mammogram and further testing. In September, she was told she had stage four cancer and it was in the lymph nodes. She had “basically written myself off”, but when she was told it hadn’t spread and was treatable, “it was such a weight off my shoulders”.
She is undergoing chemotherapy and will have a mastectomy and lymph node removal surgery afterwards. But Ms Foley said people only think about the diagnosis, but “it’s not just a cancer battle, it’s a financial battle, it’s a mental battle, it’s a battle against the system”.
“Age 29 is prime earning time, it is when your career is really going. But I was just completely stopped in my tracks. And the business was just taking off. I’ve no other income coming in the door and that’s so frightening,” she said.
She is renting a house from her parents, but is aware she is one of the lucky people.
“I had savings to support myself, so I’m lucky, but I also really know that there are people out there who have huge financial burdens on them, you know like mortgages or having to raise three or four children, and then they can’t work, or worry they can’t support their family.”
Every time she goes into the pharmacy it’s another €80, she said, because of the Drug Payments Scheme. “That takes a huge load off compared to what it would’ve been. But it’s still €80.”
She has applied for a medical card, but this has been a “very arduous process and very invasive”, and she still has not been granted one.
“You’re a single mam, you need energy to fight the cancer, to look after your child, to clean and look after the house. You don’t have the energy to fight for things like getting a medical card,” she said.
“You almost feel like you’re a criminal. It’s so tough because you constantly have letters coming back in the post saying you need to do this, you need to do that, you have to reapply again. You’re trying to convince people you’re sick and need help.”
Ms Foley, who believes cancer patients should automatically be entitled to a medical card upon diagnosis, was speaking as part of a campaign by the Irish Cancer Society around raising awareness of the financial implications of being diagnosed with cancer.
“The minute you get the diagnosis, everything is affected. I’m away from my daughter a lot, which is very difficult. Any kind of financial support they can provide would be helpful,” Ms Foley added.
The charity is calling on the next government to reduce the cost of cancer by abolishing hospital car parking charges, providing an automatic entitlement to medical cards and providing vital financial support to patients with a life-limiting cancer diagnosis.
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