Dearbhla Mescal, the mother of actor Paul and singer Nell, has opened up about her battle with cancer, saying that she found it particularly hard to tell her children the news d her diagnosis.
The retired garda was told she had multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in 2022. She had a stem cell transplant in 2023 and is now in remission from the disease.
The 57-year-old Wicklow native, who is also mother to middle-child Donnacha (28), has now published her first book, Finding Joy: Capturing the Beauty of Ordinary Life in 28 Days, which chronicles her online journal encouraging people to share sparks of happiness.
Speaking on Friday's Late Late Show, with Nell (23), her husband Paul, and Donnacha in the audience, Dearbhla told host Patrick Kielty about her diagnosis.
"I was watching a tennis match on centre court [at Wimbledon in 2022] and literally seven days later I was going to the sixth floor of the Beacon hospital, which is oncology," she said.
"I was now a person with cancer and I had to figure out how I was going to tell my kids . . . One in two are going to be affected by cancer so it’s not a unique story but when you’re trying to tell you kids . . . and Donnacha had just gone to New York, Nell was in London and Paul was filming All of Us Strangers . . . "
Dearbhla, wearing a daffodil ahead of the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day on 20 March, added, "Cancer is one of those things that just happens to us and I was incredibly, incredibly lucky. I happened to end up in a hospital which was the centre of excellence for my cancer. I have multiple myeloma, I’m in remission so life is good."
She began her treatment in 2023 just as Paul found out her had been nominated for an Oscar for Aftersun.
"We got the news on the family WhatsApp of Pual’s wonderful news and my doctor, Patrick Hadyen, was so wonderful. I said Paul has asked me to be his plus one at the Oscars, can I go? And he said, you will go to the ball!
"Doctors want you to live the fullest life you can have even if you are sick. So they want you to have all the life experiences. He allowed me to live and enjoy through a very dark, awful time."
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