'A beautiful sisterhood': Marilyn swim to raise funds for cancer

RTÉ News​

25-04-2025

When Mary Golden first started chemotherapy treatments in the Mater, she would dress up a little.
"I used to be like, Oh, what am I wearing to the chemo ward today? And maybe put on makeup, maybe put on my wig for that day", tells me. "I'd say to my husband like, I think I might be a bit weird doing that. But I feel better. And it makes me feel a little bit braver."
With this in mind, the Marilyn Mater Paddle, a Marilyn Monroe-themed swim fundraising event, will be giving cancer patients and their loved ones a chance to embrace glamour and positivity in aid of cancer supports. Now in its second year, the fabulous event will take place on 25 May in Donabate, Dublin.
After welcoming around 100 Marilyns last year and raising a whopping €25,000 for cancer supports, the team is hoping to triple its results this year, aiming for 300 Marilyns and €75,000 in fundraising. Those who sign up to take part are kitted out with almost everything needed to channel the Old Hollywood icon: a blonde wig, retro sunglasses and a beach ball. All you need is some red lippy and a dazzling outfit.
The event is run by the Mater Foundation, a body that is "100 per cent funded by the generosity, the loyalty, and the dedication of our wonderful donors and supporters and corporate organisations all around the country", says Roisin Duffy, Director of Development for the foundation.
"There's a saying that charity begins where government ends and that's what the Mater Foundation does."
The foundation focuses on four key areas: life saving equipment, hospital redevelopment, research and innovation, and patient and family support. This can mean providing everything from "smaller things like IV drips, say, for cancer patients or Dyson fans for cancer patients, to the more advanced use state-of-the-art mammogram machines".
For those going through cancer treatment, one recent upgrade by the foundation will be immediately noticed and deeply appreciated: brand new plush armchairs in the chemotherapy ward. It's a little bit of luxury that Mary deeply appreciated on her cancer journey.
"You would think the least you should expect if you have to sit around doing IV chemo for hours is that you get a comfy chair. But unfortunately, the health service doesn't I have the money to do that and the Mater Foundation plugs the gaps in it.
"For people like me, the hospital becomes a way of life. And if you can give small little comforts along the way, it just makes the nurses and doctors that are working extremely hard, it makes their job a little bit easier. It makes patients like me a little bit more comfortable going in. And it makes what you want is the hospital to be a second home, somewhere that you feel safe."
The Mayo woman was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2022, when she was in her early 30s, which then developed into secondary cancer of the thymus gland. An aggressive form of cancer, it spread quickly despite the swift actions of the oncology team.
"From getting the CT scan up to starting chemotherapy, it took seven weeks between getting referred to the triple assessment unit", she says, adding that the tumour - squeezed in at her chest wall - had "grown from 3. 5 centimetres up to 10 centimetres" at the last reading.
Mary underwent eight cycles of IV chemotherapy, a single mastectomy and full axillary lymph node clearance, and 21 sessions of radiotherapy. After she wasas diagnosed with secondary cancer her doctors determined that she had incurable stage four cancer.
"The first thing that goes through your head is you plan your funeral and you get everything in order. And you think this is if you get a couple of years, you'll be doing very well."
She underwent 28 cycles of Capecitabine, an oral chemotherapy drug. At Christmas, she and her family got the wonderful news that there was no evidence of disease in her latest scans. Treatments, she says, will be ongoing for the rest of her life, but she is currently enjoying a short break from treatment to let her body recover.
"I'm just very thankful that the treatment and everything has done so well that I'm actually getting to live a relatively normal life at the moment, which is lovely."
In these moments of hardship, it would be impossible to weather the storm on your own. For Mary, she had her family, now-husbands and friends to support her, but she also had the Psycho-oncology Department, which is also supported by the Mater Foundation. This made a huge difference to Mary's outlook and way of thinking in the months after being diagnosed as secondary.
"I was like, I'm fine as it is. But when you get diagnosed as secondary, you're a little bit afraid to live sometimes.
"One of the things I used to be really afraid of is that I would make these plans that I'd nearly taunting it into it going wrong. I didn't want to get married because I had one life dream was to get married. But you feel like, is that the right thing to do? What if I pass in the meantime? But they taught me that it's okay to live when you're a secondary."
As an original Marilyn at last year's Mater swim event, Mary has been a vocal advocate for the work the team does, as well as depicting what life with incurable cancer can be like on her Instagram page. It's no surprise then that she'll be waddling away with more Marilyn's at this year's event.
Last year's Marilyn swim was an "empowering day for women", Mary says. "Women of all ages were there and in big groups and everything else. It was just a beautiful sisterhood where we're all at supporting each other."
The event, Mary says, is a welcome chance to "channel that little bit of Marilyn Monroe for themselves and that little bit of glamour, because quite frankly, cancer patients, as you well know, have been through the mill. We've gotten the treatments that have made us sick. We've gotten zapped with the radiotherapy. We've had bits and bobs chopped off. And it doesn't mean that we're any less glamourous. It doesn't mean that our body is not any less special".
Having a reason to embrace your body as a cancer patient is a powerful thing, too, as Mary notes: "One of the things that hit me when I got diagnosed first, I was really angry at my body. I felt like I was betrayed in a way.
"I got cancer in my 30s and my body changed hugely. People always get that image of a cancer patient that's really skinny, has no hair, is consistently getting sick. And to be honest, I was the exact same. I've lost a breast going through this. And I'm very unlikely that I'll ever get a chance to get reconstruction."
Now, after countless rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and multiple surgeries, Mary can see how resilient her body has been.
"I think my body is absolutely amazing that it managed to go through all this and still come out the other end, and we should celebrate them.