Reading this in Donegal, you’d be forgiven for assuming you might not instantly connect with Hazel Chu, the Green Party politician and Dublin City councillor.

But her recent account of being diagnosed with breast cancer is one that reaches far beyond politics or geography. Chu wrote of noticing a lump in her breast and, like so many people do, convincing herself it was nothing. What followed was a series of appointments, tests, and finally surgery.

Yet the part of her account that struck me most was the waiting, an – at times – terrifying space in between the initial discovery and the diagnosis. She described the days between test and result as the hardest of all, a truth anyone who has faced illness will recognise.

It’s those hours when life continues around you, perhaps there are children to collect, or work to be done, but in your head time has slowed to a crawl. You find yourself rehearsing futures, one where everything is fine and one where nothing will ever be the same.

As Chu discovered, even with love and support around you, the waiting is solitary. Nobody else can inhabit your thoughts, or quieten the fear of the unknown and Chu captured that loneliness in words so vivid that even if you’ve never experienced it, you can imagine the weight of it.

This is her story and yet it also belongs to the many people across Donegal who are living through that same suspended state this very week.

Within the walls of GP surgeries throughout the county and in corridors and waiting rooms in Letterkenny University Hospital, lives are paused. Each scan or referral carries with it a person wondering what comes next. Of course, there’s always waiting when illness enters the picture.

It’s expected and some of it can’t be avoided. But too often the waiting is longer than it should be because of a shortage of scanning machines, or consultants, or a delayed letter. For a health service under pressure these are inevitable failures of the system, but for the patient they are long nights lying awake and days when nothing feels certain. From the outside, it’s easy to treat these delays as routine or predictable.

Hospitals are busy places, after all; staffing is stretched and results take time. But for the person in the middle of it, each hour is heavy with questions. Will I see my children grow up? Will I recover enough to return to work? Will life ever feel normal again? These questions are not written on any medical chart, but they define the lived reality of being sick. This is the part of illness we speak of least.

We talk about surgery, recovery and treatment plans. We talk about survival and cure. But the waiting, the not knowing and the fear shape the experience as much as any operation or scan result. Living through this uncertainty leaves a mark long after the diagnosis is given.

Chu has done something valuable in writing about it because she has reminded us that illness is deeply human. Each hospital test we speak of in passing is tethered to a life and to someone counting down the hours until a phone call or appointment tells them what lies ahead.

For those who work in health care, it’s a reminder that communication is not just about efficiency but about dignity. Chu’s personal account is not about politics or policy, although she has committed to raising with the Department of Health the lack of equipment and resources in breast clinics, and the need for earlier and more thorough screening for women with dense breast tissue.

Her most urgent appeal is simple: for women to regularly check their breasts and to go straight to a doctor if they notice anything unusual, no matter how small. But what also resonated with me is the picture she painted of the toll that waiting takes.

The uncertainty can rob people of peace of mind and sometimes even of hope. And it is worth remembering as we go about our daily lives that among the many people we meet some will be carrying that weight quietly. Even with support by family and friends, illness can still feel like the loneliest place in the world.

This article is written by Sabrina Sweeney. Her Fresh Take column features every Thursday in the Donegal News.