26–year-old Laura Brennan describes herself as "incredibly lucky". She has fantastic family and friends, she achieved her goal of being an Area Sales Manager with a pharmacy at 23 and her overwhelming feelings in life are contentment and joy.
With such an upbeat personality and attitude, it might surprise you to hear that Laura has been given between 1 and 4 years to live due to terminal cervical cancer. She previously joined Ryan on The Late Late Show and caught up with him again when he was live from Limerick on Radio 1.
If you happen to be near a radio in the morning. I’ll be joining @RyanTubridyShow on @RTERadio1 at some stage between 9am-10am. Giving a health update,what I’ve been up to and not forgetting the HPV vaccine
— Laura Brennan (@laura_jbrennan) October 21, 2018
Laura told him about the wealth of amazing responses she received after her appearance.
"It was really humbling to hear that my story had helped people and it gave them a different outlook… I remember getting a message from a young gay man who was finally able to come out to his parents because he said that when he saw my interview, he felt like he could start living and he had to live his life to the full."
Ryan described Laura as "a whirling dervish of positivity", and she has been able to use her experience of cancer to help people in her professional life.
"The thing about cancer, it totally changes how you look," she explained, telling Ryan how she lost her hair, her face became extremely swollen and she put on 2 stone in the space of a month. Working in the beauty industry, Laura understood the needs of her customers who were affected by the disease themselves.
"The power of makeup can make somebody feel like themselves and they can forget that they have cancer because when they look in for mirror they don’t see cancer and that’s what you want. You want to feel like a disease cannot take who you are away from you and that’s what’s so impactful about the beauty industry."
Laura has gone through extensive treatment including chemotherapy and radiation but unfortunately, her cancer spread and is beyond the curative powers of current medical intervention. She has found new hope however in immunotherapy.
ICYMI, you can listen back to @laura_jbrennan talking about life with cancer and the HPV vaccine on @RyanTubridyShow this morning here: https://t.co/GMhxbN77lW … #ProtectOurFuture pic.twitter.com/LCUf8QvfXV
— HSE Ireland (@HSELive) October 22, 2018
This treatment is in trial stages so she must fund it herself and at around €6,000 an infusion every three weeks, it certainly doesn’t come cheap. Laura is in the fortunate position of her family being able to afford the treatment, but she made an appeal on behalf of another 26-year-old woman she met throughout her work who also has terminal cancer but isn’t able to pay the hefty price tag.
"At 26, with terminal cancer, we just want the best chance at life and it could just be simply giving up your cup of coffee today or not buying yourself a bar of chocolate and then going on and donating to that and that could give somebody a better quality of life… which is just the most amazing gift you could give someone."
"When we think about cancer, we’re thinking about the hard cancer treatment. We’re not thinking about also the financial hardship that it can cause people," Laura reminded Ryan.
Of course, she pointed out, all the heartbreak could have been avoided if she had had the HPV vaccine and she is now a powerful advocate for the intervention.
"This type of cancer could be stopped in the majority of cases if parents got their children vaccinated and this vaccine is the safest vaccine that was ever on the market because it’s the most tested… If it was out 2 years earlier, me and Alice wouldn’t be in this position looking for all this money!"
Click on the video above to listen to Laura’s interview in full and you can click here to find out more about Alice Taylor’s story and to donate.
