Victoria Mary Clarke

Sean Henry interview

Sean Henry interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2002-06-18

“There’s hardly a family in Ireland who hasn’t lost somebody to Cancer.” So says Sean Henry, who was himself diagnosed with a tumour the size of a brandy bottle in his lung, three years ago. A tumour which had almost stopped him breathing and which was considered inoperable. Having survived, he has organised the release of a CD of Irish traditional music, to benefit the Friends of St Lukes hospital, where he was treated.   Several of the musicians featured have lost partners and relatives to Cancer.
“A lot of the musicians have been touched by Cancer. Seam Maguire was in St Lukes, twenty years ago. Jimmy Mc Greevy lost two brothers and a sister, all young. Martin Connolly lost his wife and she was my age.
Sean’s wife Jodie’s own father died of Cancer.
‘For me it was a case of going through it all over again,” she says. “But I always knew Sean wasn’t going to die. I’m not psychic, but I had a feeling.”
          Sean and Jodie met in America, where he had been driving trucks. Sean comes from Galway and wanted to go home to Ireland, to live. They decided that because of their shared passion for traditional Irish music, they would buy a traditional music pub, in Portumna, upon their move.
“And we had traditional music four nights a week and a lot of the top people used to come and play. Which was wonderful. But three or four months into it, I started coughing and it was getting worse. My doctor sent me for x-rays and nothing was showing up. It got to the stage that I was so short of breath, I couldn’t lift anything.”
Did he smoke?.
‘I did smoke and I quit. But there was a time when I was smoking that it used to help me breathe. The tumour was getting so big that when I took a few drags of the cigarette, it used to open up the airwaves. So you think they are doing you good, when that happens!”
“A week before they finally diagnosed him, I cornered the doctor and said “Could it be Cancer?’” Jodie says. ‘And he said it was one of the possibilities. And then I knew.
The day before he was diagnosed, I had to put him in a wheelchair, to take him to the bathroom, he couldn’t even lie down on the bed, his breathing was so bad. Then they gave him massive doses of steroids.”
Sean approves of steroids.
“Those steroids were powerful, they really were! You would go through the wall, on them.”
They started the chemo that evening.
“And then they told me what it was. The night they told me, two musicians, Joe Burke and his wife Anne came to see me, and Joe went into a bit of shock and he said to the doctor that he thought we all needed a drink. And the doctor said it would be all right, so Joe went out and got a bottle of whiskey and some beer and we all felt better!”
            I look at Jodie, a little shocked, myself.
“At that point, they really didn’t think he was going to make it, “ she says, by way of explanation.   Jodie looked up small cell Cancer on the internet, which was not the thing to do, she says.
“I really wouldn’t recommend it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And then I asked the doctor how long Sean had to live, because I wanted to know whether to get his family in. And the doctor said they would do five or six rounds of chemo, which would take five or six months, and see how well the tumour responded. So I stopped panicking.”
Sean found the chemo enormously draining.
“ You would sleep twenty hours a day, most days, on it, you would never know tiredness like this. I drove trucks coast to coast in the USA for years. You could do seven or eight hundred miles a day and you wouldn’t be as tired as you would be after a round of chemo and that would last for weeks and weeks.”
Partly to cheer him up, Jodie and her friend, musician Anne Conroy-Burke came up with the idea of releasing a CD of Irish traditional music, to raise money for St Lukes. The money is going to Oakland Lodge, which is a residential centre for the patients, where they can bring their partner, if they have to travel long distances for treatment.
‘There are thirty apartments now and they are building an extension for thirty more”, Jodie says.
Does it make a big difference to have somewhere to stay, other than the hospital?
‘Oh, definitely. You have your own place with your own kitchen and you are not in a hospital atmosphere, so it’s not so depressing. You can just watch telly and they can come and get you for your treatment and bring you back, afterwards.”
There is an extremely impressive range of musicians on the CD, which is called “Cairde”, the Irish word for friends. Including Frankie Gavin, from De Danaan, Noel Hill and Tommy Linnane, Matt Molloy and Tommy Peoples, amongst others. Joe must be a popular man, I say. He laughs, modestly.
“I knew them for a long time. I used to go to sessions every night. That’s why it took me until I was forty four to get married! “
“We met in a traditional Irish pub in St Louis, Missouri, “ Jodie smiles. “I love traditional music too.”
Sean’s face lights up when he talks about music. Has he ever been tempted to play an instrument?
‘Oh God, no! My father played the fiddle and he died young, from Cancer.”
Why would he not play it? He looks at his hands.
“It would be impossible, I haven’t ever had lessons. I decided that I would be a listener.’
Is that why he bought the bar?
‘Yes, but as I was recovering, the doctor said I should think about getting rid of the pub. So we sold it.”
And what’s happened to the tumour?
“The tumour dissolved, there’s nothing there, only scar tissue.”
“After six months, there was nothing left of it, to the point where the doctor was bringing in other doctors, to look at the x-rays,” Jodie laughs.
But Sean wasn’t always feeling optimistic.
“After the fourth chemo, when the tumour hadn’t moved at all, I met a friend of mine and we went to the pub and I bought twenty cigarettes and I lit up and they were lovely, every one of them!”