A young woman has opened up about her battle with cancer at the age of 11 and how she is now helping children with serious illnesses.
Madeleine Chivers from Dublin told RSVP Live that she was diagnosed with a brain tumour in August 2011.
The following summer, she attended a family camp at Barretstown with her parents.
“Really Barretstown is so important for the emotional healing side because when a child is diagnosed with a serious illness, everyone focuses on the physical side and making sure they get physically better.
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This is important, but just as important is the mental side and the mental trauma we go through.”
Madeleine said the experience at the camp “helped me open up and accept what had happened to me cos I hadn’t cried since being diagnosed.”
“As soon as I went to Barretstown , I just let out a bunch of tears because I was just healing and I’d accepted it. I could face it then and be like, you know it’s okay if this happens to me and it’ll just make me stronger,”
The 19-year-old says she is in currently in good health and continues to have regular checkups.
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“I’m very well at the moment, thank god. I have regular yearly checkups to ensure that nothing has grown back and everything is well.”
Madeleine Chivers is a first year Business and Spanish student at Trinity College Dublin.
“It’s going well. I was lucky that having a serious illness really didn’t affect my schooling in any way.”
“I can continue having a normal life and do what I wanted to do from the age of 7.”
In 2018, Madeleine Chivers returned to Barretstown as a volunteer. This summer, she will work as a member of staff at the camps.
“It was something that I’d never want to leave. I continued all the way up from 12 until now. I volunteered for the first time there last summer and this summer I’m going to working there from May until August so it’s definitely something that I love and I feel really passionately about. I think that anyone who can avail of it should."
She went on:
“When I first went to Barretstown, I left saying I want to be a cara (volunteer) and it’s amazing now that I can be a cara.
“I can go back and I can give back to it, I can do for children what Barretstown did for me.”
Madeleine was speaking at the launch of a new fundraising event; The Domino’s Amazing Race for Barretstown.
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