‘You just have to take the battles that are in front of you and do your best’

On a December morning in 2023, the day started out like any other for Jamie Timoney. The Letterkenny man walked into his classroom to teach English at Coláiste Bhaile Chláir in Claregalway, Co Galway, as he did every day.

At some point, Jamie had a class of sixth year students, no doubt preparing for their mock Leaving Cert exams coming up after the Christmas break. As the class wrapped up and students headed out the door, one boy made a comment to Jamie that would change his life in that moment.

“He said, ‘Sir, no offence but you look terrible’,” says Jamie. The comment wasn't intended to be cheeky - rather, the student was genuinely concerned for Jamie’s health.

Thinking this was an odd comment, Jamie relayed it back to the other teachers in the staffroom jokingly. However, Jamie knew from the silence in the room that it was no laughing matter.

“They all looked at each other and said, ‘We were actually a bit worried about you because you look very weak and very faint and pale’. It triggered me to get a blood test to see was I ok, which showed my iron levels being so low.”

The evening of December 14, Jamie got a last-minute appointment for a scope to see what was going on. The next day, Jamie received a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer.

“I never really got back into the classroom,” he says. “Everything changed fairly instantly in that regard.”

In the six months leading up to the diagnosis, Jamie had been seeing the doctor regularly with various symptoms, including heartburn.

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“It was only happening at night,” he explains. “So I'd wake up with this awful heartburn, and it went on for about a week before I went to my GP. And the GP said something that I heard an awful lot over the next six months - ‘You're too young for it to be anything sinister’. I was 34 at the time.

“But in hindsight, it was one of those things where I was getting a little bit of pain in my sternum whenever I was eating, but if I ate a little bit slower, there was no pain. So you can easily overlook some of those. With the heartburn, I was put on a PPI, which is a proton pump inhibitor. It’s an anti-acid tablet that a lot of people take.”

Jamie had also begun to notice other signs that things weren’t quite right.

“Looking back, stools were getting quite dark as time went on as well, which was an indication of bleeding happening somewhere,” he says. “But it was just a gradual and slow thing that you could easily overlook, or you could blame it on something you ate or you drank or stress or something like that. So there's a lot of symptoms that, for something so significant in your food pipe, it can be missed if you're not paying attention.”

Initially, Jamie was in shock to receive the diagnosis. Although his grandmother had received the same diagnosis many years previous, oesophageal cancer had not been mentioned at any stage to Jamie. He was informed that he had an 8-10cm growth in his oesophagus.

Symptoms of oesophageal cancer

“It sobered me up completely out of any sedation I was under or coming out of,” says Jamie. “In that moment everything changed. I remember walking out the door of the hospital and I looked at my phone, and the podcast I had been listening to before going in was still there on pause. It kind of felt like forever ago. Everything felt completely different.”

Jamie was told he would begin treatment in the new year, and he spent that Christmas at home with family before embarking on the difficult journey ahead.

In January 2024, Jamie began chemotherapy and radiotherapy in University Hospital Galway. The treatment aimed to shrink the growth as much as possible before surgery to remove his oesophagus completely. He learned that the cancer was Stage 3A, meaning it was about to spread to other areas.

Jamie chose to receive his treatment in Galway, as it helped him to retain a “sense of normality” to be near his work. It was a challenging time for Jamie’s family, as his dad Leonard was also undergoing treatment for bowel cancer. Leonard sadly passed away in November 2024.

“He was the best role model I could have had at that time,” says Jamie. “It absolutely broke my heart that I had to go through that with him and I couldn’t focus just on him, and he said the same thing himself.

“I understood what he was going through and he understood what I was going through. He’s given me a realistic view on everything. You just have to take the battles that are in front of you and do your best with it.”

The surgery to remove Jamie’s oesophagus took place in May 2024. He spent four days in ICU afterwards, and was then moved to a High Dependency Unit and a general ward before getting out in a week.

There were some complications as the site of the surgery healed over, and Jamie still receives dilation treatment between Letterkenny and Galway to remove swallowing difficulties.

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He has received huge support from the Oesophageal Cancer Fund (OCF), and he says they “completely changed the recovery process” by offering advice and guidance.

These days, Jamie says his prognosis is positive, and he is cautiously optimistic about the future.

“You don’t want to count your chickens before they hatch,” says Jamie. “But in my last scan I had no evidence of disease, so it’s something I’m being positive about.”

Although Jamie thinks about the future in six month blocks, as that’s the timeframe between scans, he is now planning further ahead to November for his wedding to his fiancée Jo, in Glasson, Co Westmeath.

“It’s happy stress now that’s coming along,” says Jamie.

For more information on the Oesophageal Cancer Fund, visit OCF.ie 

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