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Clare woman details her family's experience with the Irish Cancer Society ahead of Relay for Life 2025 – ‘They were always there for us'
The disease is vicious, yet it unites humanity in a strange way. Cancer knows no difference in age, race, gender, religious beliefs, and doesn't care if you've done good or bad in your life. It also unifies us in a fight for a cure – and the only ways you can help, if you're not a medical professional, are through fundraising, donating, or supporting.
One such way communities support the fight for a cure is through Relay for Life. An annual fundraising event organised by the Irish Cancer Society, Relay for Life has been ongoing in Ennis, County Clare, since 2018 – with 2025 marking the sixth event in the Banner County.
The Irish Cancer Society describes Relay for like as a 'community fundraising event' to 'raise money for cancer research and support services'. According to the charity, it is a '24-hour event where teams walk or run around a track, symbolising the ongoing fight against cancer, with at least one team member on the track at all times'. The event also includes celebrations for cancer survivors, memorials for those lost to cancer, and opportunities for community members to connect and support each other.
Pamela O'Malley and her family got involved with Relay for Life after her husband's experience with cancer and the help they received from the Irish Cancer Society. Tony O'Malley was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2014, a type of cancer which is normally found in children.
'At the time, Tony was 36 and I was 34 with three young kids,' Pamela said. 'So yeah, talk about pulling the rug from underneath us.'
After his GP suspected his diagnosis on a Friday afternoon, Pamela said the process of official diagnosis and starting treatment moved quickly.
'On the Friday evening, Tony was admitted to University Hospital Limerick's haematology oncology unit for bone marrow and blood testing,' she said. 'Saturday morning, a consultant came around to see us and confirmed it was as our GP had expected, it was leukaemia. On Saturday afternoon then he was discharged from UHL to be sent straight to St James' Hospital in Dublin. So, it happened fast, all in the space of one weekend. It was a rough enough couple of weeks with him starting his treatment, chemo, drug therapy, and radiation.'
'Tony was basically in Dublin from February until the end of November, between having the chemo, drug therapy, radiation, and he then needed a bone marrow transplant,' Pamela continued. 'Luckily his sister was a match, so he had that on July 31. The first 100 days after the bone marrow transplant are critical, basically, anything that will go wrong will go wrong in those 100 days. So, he was in hospital then until the end of September and then we were moved to an apartment that is… I'm not sure, I think it's kind of owned by the bone marrow trust and used for patients who are not living near the hospital, if that makes sense. So, we lived there for a couple of months.'
'He was then back into the hospital on daily visits to get everything checked, and was admitted if he had a high temperature or any side effects or any illness or bugs or anything presented,' Pamela said. 'When we were in the apartment, even though we were of walking distance to the hospital, after the bone marrow transplant with Tony's immune system being so low and everything, he couldn't really walk anywhere. We did have the availability of a transport system from the Irish Cancer Society, where we could be collected from the apartment and dropped to the hospital and vice versa, which was fantastic. It's a fantastic facility to be offered.'
Tony was thankfully on the road to recovery by the end of November 2014 and his hospital visits started getting pushed out from weekly to every two weeks - and now he only has to visit once a month.
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'Currently, he's doing great,' Pamela said. 'He still visits St James' Hospital once a month. The team are absolutely fantastic up there. We were very much involved with the Irish Cancer Society's Daffodil Centre in James's hospital, and their support was phenomenal. It was like, I suppose, a safety net. From the minute we met Tony's medical team in the hospital, the social workers, the Daffodil nurses, and support team were just unbelievable to us. They were always there for us, for questions to be answered, for supports to be put in place for us, they were fantastic. And really, I suppose you never know what's there, or the services that are there for you through these organisations, until you actually need them.'
'Another thing to mention, with the kids being so young and our world turned upside down, we were put in touch with play therapy and counselling services for both the kids, ourselves, and as a whole family unit,' Pamela added. 'It was another fantastic resource that at the time, when you're in the throes of it, you don't think that you'll need - but I suppose it's the aftermath and the children's thinking around it you need to think about. We were put in touch with the play therapy services through the Irish Cancer Society, and we attended our own counselling, myself and Tony, through the Cancer Support Services Centre at UHL.'
Pamela and her family started attending the Relay for Life events in Ennis from the first year and this year she joined the committee.
'We attended the event in 2018, and we were absolutely blown away by it, by the sense of community, relating to others who have gone through similar journeys, experiences, you know, meeting other families and kids and the whole lot,' she said. 'It was just unbelievable, to be honest. So, we were very much drawn towards it and looking forward to the next year's event. We would have attended a lot of the meetings over the years, the cheque presentations, the coffee mornings, the mini fundraisers, and community events in preparation for the relay itself. We just got to know the committee members really well, and they asked us if we like to get on board, myself and my sister, who's another cancer survivor, and the two of us said yes.'
'It's amazing to see the community spirit around the relay,' Pamela continued. 'There's an amazing community there, the number of volunteers that step into these roles, that have been and have had and still have family members affected by cancer, that want to give back in some small way possible. Even our kids, like our eldest daughter, she's just home from holidays this weekend, she's coming straight into the relay – she'll throw on her t-shirt and she's ready to pull the sleeves up and work. The kids absolutely love it.'
'Even the rest of the committee in Ennis, they're so facilitating and so thoughtful to every survivor that comes in the gate of Tim Smythe Park at the weekend,' she said. 'You know, until you're there and until you have experienced it, it's very difficult to put into words, but it's just amazing.'
Pamela said one of her Relay for Life highlights is sitting in the 'survivors' tent' and having conversations with people who have been on similar journeys to her family.
'I sat there last year and the year before with my husband, and to have a conversation with somebody who has been on a similar journey, who found the chemotherapies gruelling, who found the different treatment plans, just to see that 10 or 15 years later, they're still alive and kicking, and they're flying it, it most certainly does give you hope,' she said. 'Another chapter that we have ahead of us now is that my husband, unfortunately, got graft-versus-host disease in his lungs during his recovery period after the cancer. So, he's now on a the transplant list in the National Hospital since February this year. But even through the Relay for Life, we have met family members and friends of people who have had lung transplants.'
'It's simple conversations that have opened doorways and pathways to know enough people who have come on similar journeys and similar paths, and to know that there is the treatment out there, the research, the work that's being done is Trojan in comparison to years ago,' Pamela continued. 'We've come a long way, I think.'
The O'Malley family would like to give a special word of thanks to the Irish Cancer Society, and to all of Tony's medical teams, from his GP to the medical teams in St James', UHL and the Mater Hospital, for their continued care.
The Relay for Life Ennis takes place in Tim Smythe Park (Fairgreen) on Saturday, June 21 into Sunday, June 22. This year's line-up of entertainment and activity includes the likes of yoga, face-painting, dance, DJs, choirs, a ukulele group, and more.
