Sharon Greeves greeted confirmation that the Health Service Executive had approved the new breast cancer treatment drug abemaciclib as "the best news".
Ms Greeves was diagnosed with oestrogen-driven breast cancer in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
According to oncologists, this is the most common type of breast cancer, accounting for around 70% of cases.
However, Ms Greeves learned that she was among a smaller sub-group, as her cancer was at a high risk of returning.
As a result, after multiple surgeries and now cancer-free, Ms Greeves is two-and-a-half years into a ten-year hormone therapy treatment plan, taking a drug called anastrozole.
"The treatment that I am on, people are normally on it for five years, but because I am a high-risk patient I have to take it for ten years," Ms Greeves said.
"High risk, high chances of cancer returning, they are in my head all the time," she said.
"I have to try and be grateful and present to the fact that I am receiving treatment, and I am able, with the help of the Irish Cancer Society, to get work arounds [to manage the side effects of the anti-hormone therapy] for that. But yeah it has its effects."
Aware that abemaciclib, which is made by pharmaceutical company Lilly Global Manufacturing, was available in UK last year, Ms Greeves was watching and waiting to see if it might become available in Ireland.
It is taken in combination with endocrine or hormone therapies such as anastrozole, tamoxifen and Femera, increasing their effectiveness, and according to a large international trial, this reduced the risk of long-term recurrence of cancer by 32%.
Now that it has been approved by the HSE, abemaciclib will be available on prescription to people in Ireland with high-risk oestrogen-driven breast cancer.
"This is just fantastic news, if I am a candidate, and hopefully I am. But even if I'm not, it is fantastic news in terms of reducing the risk, like by 30%. Its huge," Ms Greeves said.
In the case of her own diagnosis, Ms Greeves said: "20 years ago it would have been blanket chemo, so the hormone treatment was available to me which was a game changer at the time, but now there's even more hope.
"When you receive a cancer diagnosis the big thing you hang on to is hope," she said, "and with this new drug it gives an even better chance."
