The One Year Itch

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We’ve been trying to convince Michael Woods O’Rourke to sit down and talk to us for well over six months now.

Being the kind of guy that he is though, Michael just didn’t think his story warranted an interview.

Not even with a low-rent, cheap-ass town website like The Greystones Guide.

For Michael, having almost two years of his life taken away from him as he battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma was really no big deal. Even when the chemo meant that he didn’t recognise the guy on his new medical card. He beat it, comfortably, just as the doctors had predicted shortly after they finally, happily, mercifully got the diagnosis right. 

What’s important to note here though is, Michael – son of happy snapper Anna O’Rourke, incidentally – suffered an entire year with the disease before Hodgin’s lymphoma was named and shamed, and the main symptom he was suffering from for those 12 months of searching was being incredibly itchy.

All. The. Time.

At a friend’s wedding, Michael spent more than half the reception in the restroom, stripped of his suit, clothes only adding to that itch. At night, the TV had to be on, as a hopeful distraction away from the constant pain, the constant need to scratch, and itch. Most mornings, Michael awoke looking like a Siamese cat who’d wondered down the wrong strays’ alley.

Alienation became a very necessary part of the process.

Then, of course, there was small detail of one of the possible side effects of Hodgkin’s lymphoma being death.

Quick to point out that there are far, far darker forms of cancer out there, and that he is definitely one of the lucky ones, Michael finally agreed to meet us at his former workplace, The Happy Pear, to talk about how he got from here to there, and back again. And, hey, ain’t nothing wrong with a happy ending...

Big shout-out to Eoghan Murray of F1 Camera Repair for the two groovy shots of Michael here. You can find out more about Hodgkin’s lymphoma here, and find out more about local cancer survivors of all scares and sizes here.