Susan McGahern’s breast cancer

Susan McGahern’s breast cancer became a family crisis not only because of its uncertain medical prospects, but because illness exposed how much the household depended on her. Hospitalization separated her from her children, while secrecy left them unable to understand her absence. Her treatment and the decisions made around it reshaped where the family lived, how care was provided, and how those closest to her faced the possibility of loss.

Diagnosis and Separation

During the family’s first long stay in the barracks, Sean McGahern was seven. His childhood world had been overturned: the children did not know where their mother was or what had happened to her, and their father, Francis (Frank) McGahern, had direct authority over them for the first time. When they asked about her, they were told not to ask and instead to pray. The narrator describes secrecy as characteristic of their father, but Susan was unhappy with the concealment. In a letter from the Mater Hospital in Dublin, she noted that Sean was beginning to understand more and was less easily distracted than the other children; she expected to return home soon and took comfort in anticipating reunion with the family.

Susan had been diagnosed with breast cancer and remained in hospital for several weeks for tests and treatment. Her brief return to the barracks coincided with the birth of her daughter Dympna. Sean remembered little of that stay beyond a vague happiness, but retained a clear account of the journey to bring mother and baby home. He travelled with his father in Packie McCabe’s car to a nursing home in Boyle. Because wartime restrictions had taken private cars off the roads, the family’s small Ford was kept on blocks in a barrack shed. Susan carried Dympna in a white shawl on the return journey. The baby and Packie McCabe both had red hair, prompting laughter that the child could not understand; Packie, then unmarried, blushed more deeply than his hair.

Medical Outlook and Family Decisions

The uncertainty was addressed through correspondence with Susan’s doctor. Francis (Frank) McGahern asked for advice about the medical outlook, saying that he wanted to understand the implications for the family. He had already received a detailed report early in the illness; the narrator later connects that background with the defensive, somewhat bullying tone of the subsequent exchange. The doctor’s reply distinguished between Susan’s ability to keep teaching and the grave risk posed by the disease. He would not advise her to stop work while she remained in good health, and considered that she might be happier continuing than giving it up.

The medical assessment was stark. Susan had a highly malignant growth, and without treatment the doctor believed she would not survive beyond a year from the time he first saw her. She had undergone radical surgery followed by deep X-ray treatment. These measures offered the greatest available hope of recovery, but the doctor estimated her chance of complete recovery at 30 percent. He cautioned Francis (Frank) McGahern against taking on financial liabilities on the assumption that she would recover. The account preserves both the limits of medical certainty and the practical consequences of prognosis: treatment had been pursued, hope remained, but the family could not safely plan on a cure.

The illness also accelerated a change in Susan’s work and home circumstances. While she was still in hospital, Maggie and Pat McManus sought a school nearer to town so they could help her. Her previous locations, including Beaghmore, the bog of Cloone, and Carrigallen, were too far away. The seriousness of her illness overcame the siblings’ usual reluctance to press their needs. Their efforts secured Susan a permanent position at Aughawillan, a two-teacher school on a hill three miles from Ballinamore. A house and farm were for sale at Corramahon Farm, a ten-minute walk from the school. The job and nearby home offered a more workable setting for her family and support network; the account presents their arrangement as a response to illness as well as a practical reordering of everyday life.

Faith, Work, and Suffering

Susan’s practical manner and quiet cheerfulness coexisted with deep religious belief. She understood her earlier good health as a gift and, after illness took it away, trusted that the change had a purpose beyond her understanding. The narrator describes faith as the place she turned when life became difficult, a source of inward reliance that even Francis (Frank) McGahern could not reach or displace. Her belief did not make the medical facts less severe, nor did it remove the human costs of illness; it gave her a framework in which to endure them.

Her letters also register suffering directly. At one point, after several days in bed, she reported returning to school while still unwell and hoped that improved weather and sunshine might help. The brief account joins work, physical difficulty, and faith without treating any one of them as a simple resolution. The doctor had advised against giving up teaching while she remained in good health, but Susan’s later return to school took place amid continuing symptoms. The contrast marks the distance between a conditional medical recommendation and the uncertain, day-by-day experience of illness.

The narrator’s later reflection on dying broadens Susan’s illness beyond diagnosis and treatment. Once death becomes an immediate prospect, ordinary work and public life—activities that had seemed unremarkable—appear as forms of happiness from which the dying person is separated. In this account, that altered perspective gives medical prognosis an intimate meaning: the threat is not only a prediction about survival, but the prospect of losing ordinary participation in the world. The narrator also says Susan’s faith was used against her when her husband accused her of losing it. He insists that her belief had been strong, while acknowledging that faith could not relieve the pain of being separated from the people she loved and who depended on her.

Care and the Illness’s Aftermath

The illness’s effects extended into the household’s arrangements for care. Katie McManus, who kept house and helped bring up the baby, partly assumed Susan’s former role of shielding the children from their father’s anger. She redirected his attention, comforted the children, and made her disapproval visible, but lacked the position Susan had held. Her efforts were therefore both practical and constrained: the children received protection, though not on the same terms as when their mother was present.

Katie’s position became harder as she went into the village most nights and spent time with Peter McLoughlin, both of which increased Francis (Frank) McGahern’s resentment. He refused to let her return even while he was hiring a succession of unsatisfactory maids. Eventually the household became chaotic enough that he had to turn to Maggie, who arranged Katie’s return in a way that allowed him to save face. This later episode shows the continuing consequences of Susan’s absence: care had to be supplied by others, but the authority to accept or reject the caregiver remained with the father.

The account also recalls the longer bonds behind the family’s efforts. Susan had taken a scholarship to board at the Marist Convent in Carrick-on-Shannon, though her family struggled to meet the extra costs it did not cover. Later, when she began teaching, she helped Pat McManus and Maggie establish themselves in Ballinamore; the three lived together for years above the shop on High Street by the railway station. Francis (Frank) McGahern suspected that Susan was still giving them money at the time of Aughawillan, but the narrator says that suspicion was unfounded. These earlier acts of mutual support help explain why her siblings intervened when her illness made the distance between school, home, and assistance urgent. Breast cancer thus appears not as an isolated medical episode, but as the force that tested—and made visible—the network of work, kinship, belief, and care surrounding Susan.