Heather looking for volunteers

Heather Smith’s home outside Gort, basking in early spring sunshine, is a testament to her love of nature and her love of life. She enjoys gardening, cultivating tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, chillies and herbs as the seasons permit. Vegetables are infinitely preferable to shrubs, she believes.

Fossils are another of Heather’s passions. They adorn the entrance to the bungalow, symbols of life from another era.
From the kitchen she points out a line of beech trees planted a decade ago while her husband was still alive, a copper wall steeling itself for the years ahead.
Rust-chested robins are abundant in Heather’s garden. She feeds the birds at numerous stands around the house. It is early March and as she sits in her kitchen, a hare prances across the garden. She is momentarily distracted.
Heather and her late husband, Stephen, came to Galway in 1974, 10 years after they married. She was from Kilkenny, he from Laois. Like Heather, Stephen too was a keen gardener. “I cheat,” Heather reveals, “I buy plants now, my husband always grew them from seed.”
Back when the house was being built in 1995, Heather didn’t expect she would one day find herself gardening alone. On a Friday night in July, she made a frightening discovery.
“I was doing weekend cover with children with special needs. It hadn’t been an easy day. I was there for a long weekend and on the Friday evening, I was sitting on a low stool in front of the mirror and I remembered that I hadn’t been doing my exercises. I had been doing keep fit classes but I had hurt my back not long before so I wasn’t doing as much as I should. So I put my arm up and there was a dimple. I thought ‘what is that?’ I put my hand back down and touched it and there was a lump there,” she describes.
“Kilbeacanty ICA, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them. My family didn’t get cancer. The ICA used to have group meetings in Peterswell and a woman came to give a talk on cancer at one point. She said something that 20 years later saved my life. She said all the usual things about looking for lumps on your breasts and any colour changes to your nipples. I knew that but I remember she said, ‘a dimple where a dimple shouldn’t be, beware’,” Heather recalls.
While she was instantly alarmed, it was a Friday night and Heather had committed to being a house parent to the children for the weekend.
“At first I did nothing. I kept quiet. I came back home on the Monday and I didn’t tell anyone. We were keeping an eye on some elderly neighbours so I called into them and discovered that one of them was going to hospital. I helped them pack their bags and get ready and then I left. When I arrived home I discovered a crisis and men can only cope with one crisis at a time. There was something wrong with the car and it was off the road and it was not the time to announce I had found a lump,” Heather asserts.
Sharing her news wasn’t an easy task for the mother of four.
“The car had come back from the garage the night before I told him. He nearly had a fit. I went to the doctor on Thursday. I was in the clinic on Monday and had the operation on the Friday. I really don’t know how they managed it but I got an appointment so fast, it was amazing,” she remembers.
“The surgery was nothing really. I still have nerve-ending damage. It stings in the cold. I still don’t like supermarkets, the freezer area is a bit uncomfortable,” she continues.
Heather has been supporting the Irish Cancer Society on Daffodil Day since the first one 23 years ago.
“I have every reason to sell daffodils. People say cancer affects one in three people but I believe cancer hits every door. It happens when you least expect it. I would encourage people to learn and educate themselves about cancer and to support the Irish Cancer Society. If I hadn’t gone to that meeting, I wouldn’t have noticed anything. You don’t know what you take in until something rings a bell down the road.
“We really need more people to come out and volunteer, it is just one day and you don’t have to do all of it, any amount to time would be a help. In previous years, I’ve had lots of great help but some people have passed on, others are not as young as they used to be and we need some new blood,” Heather outlines.
Heather’s sitting room is taken over with daffodil merchandise. Silk flowers, collar pins, posters and cardboard collection boxes.
“I started on the very first daffodil day through Kilbeacanty ICA. Then, after a few years, it didn’t seem like anyone was going to do anything. I had cancer so I decided that as long as I was well enough, I was going to do it. As long as I have my health, I’ll do it,” she affirms.
Daffodil Day takes place on Friday, March 26. Anyone wishing to donate fresh daffodils or willing to sell daffodils can contact Heather Smith on 091 631998.