{"id":497905,"date":"2026-06-13T14:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T14:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497905\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T14:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T14:51:12","slug":"i-probably-wont-make-my-40th-birthday-thats-fking-rough-says-ciara-mageean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497905\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I probably won\u2019t make my 40th birthday, that\u2019s f**king rough,’ says Ciara Mageean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ciara Mageean has spoken candidly about her battle with stage four bowel cancer, announcing she ‘probably won’t make my 40th birthday’.<\/p>\n

The sportswoman is just 34 years old, and upon receiving her diagnosis, found herself reading through the risk factors, which only angered her.<\/p>\n

Less than five per cent of bowel cancer patients are under 50, and around one per cent are under 35. She’s led an incredibly healthy lifestyle in terms of diet and physical activity, she rarely drinks alcohol, she’s never smoked, and there’s no family history of the disease.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:Ciara Mageean. Pic: Sam Barnes\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n

It was when she couldn’t last too long in between bathroom trips that she and her fianc\u00e9, Thomas Moran<\/a>, decided a trip to the doctor’s office was necessary.<\/p>\n

No one was too concerned. At worst, it could be irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), so they thought. But she was referred to St Vincent’s Hospital.<\/p>\n

After a doctor came to see her with a nurse in tow with what looked to be bad news, ‘I called my mummy in from the waiting room, and he told me there and then that he\u2019d found cancer.’<\/p>\n

\"CiaraCiara Mageean with her partner Thomas Moran during the RT\u00c9 Sports Awards 2024. Pic: Sportsfile<\/p>\n

An MRI later told them it was stage four. ‘Tommy\u2019s not a big crier. But we just cried for a week. He took a week off work, and we just cried every day,’ Ciara told the Irish Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She was prescribed an initial dose of chemotherapy, 12 rounds, a fortnight between each. Thereafter, Ciara and her family were told surgery wasn’t an option, and neither was radiotherapy, as it would put her in early menopause, the negative effect of which would outweigh the positive.<\/p>\n

The sportswoman said it was ‘f**king rough’ when she found out on Christmas Eve that her realistic timeline was around two to three years.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:Ciara Mageean. Pic: Ciara Mageean\/Instagram<\/p>\n

Ciara has as positive a mental attitude as she can muster, saying that ‘stressing and worrying about it isn’t going to change it’. However, she admitted that it felt like ‘the Grim Reaper was on my shoulder’ when she got the diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old and her fianc\u00e9, Thomas, are now looking at wedding venues, whereas before, there was no big rush on wedding plans.<\/p>\n

‘I don\u2019t want to be that girl who looks like a skeleton on her wedding day, or having to be in a hospital bed with Tommy beside me, and me in a wedding dress in the hospital bed. I want it to be a normal day.’<\/p>\n

\"Pic:Pic: Ciara Mageean\/Instagram<\/p>\n

Ciara shared that it’s ‘f**king rough’ that she ‘probably’ won’t make it to her 40th birthday, and she also finds herself thinking about how ‘poor’ Thomas is ‘going to be left a widower in his 30s’.<\/p>\n

‘I say to him, “Here, you can\u2019t move on from me too fast…” People probably are like, “I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re saying that.” But I need to make light of it. It helps cope with the genuine worry that I\u2019m going to leave him on his own.<\/p>\n

‘We\u2019ve been together for 13 years, and you think that you\u2019re going to have your whole life together.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ciara Mageean has spoken candidly about her battle with stage four bowel cancer, announcing she ‘probably won’t make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-497905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}