Guy O’Leary is back on his feet after more than a year of cancer treatment — and to prove it he’s challenged himself to swim a mile each day during the month of May.
Beginning this Wednesday 1 May, each day of the MileADayInMay! swimming challenge will see Guy joined by “someone who helped me through the rough times” to raise funds for Cancer Research UK.
And Guy’s final swim of the month will start outside Dun Laoghaire Harbour, finishing at the Royal Irish Yacht Club slipway.
Guy — son of Dun Laoghaire Marina developer and local sailing stalwart Michael O’Leary — was diagnosed with cancer after a routine check-up in November 2017 at the age of 34.
“My incredible surgeon performed a bowel resection straight away but a subsequent PET scan revealed the disease had spread to my liver,” he says.
“Another major operation, 11 cycles of chemo and many hard days later, I was back on my feet with clear scans and a future I thought I mightn’t have.”
Now Guy wants to give back to the “brilliant” charity and the doctors and scientists it supports “who developed the diagnostics, surgical robots and chemo treatments that saved my life”.
He explains: “It is because of the skill of two amazing surgeons, an unbelievable oncologist, my amazing team of nurses, a relentlessly inquisitive wife and the work of Cancer Research that I am still alive today.
“The progress Cancer Research has made over the last three decades means that I was given a chance at survival. This was a chance my grandmother didn’t have when she fell ill with the disease in the mid-1980s.
“Having been through the horrors of cancer, I want to do everything I can to help the research effort.”
Guy has set up a website for his challenge at MileADayInMay.org which links to his fundraising site, and you can also follow his progress on Instagram.
