Author Sarah Bowie on health struggles: ‘It felt like a second chance, the green light to live again’

After a second scan I was called in for the results – this was November. I was in great form – by then the pain was gone so I was feeling completely unconcerned.

I thought I might have a bit of degeneration. But it was bad news – I had cancer. The tumour was inside the sacrum. 

It wasn’t known if it was very aggressive or mid-range but I’d need to have the lower part of my spine removed, it was going to be life-altering.

I walked out of the surgery in a daze. I was circling around, not able to see… It was the most horrific experience, telling my dad. 

Then driving home to Wexford and having to tell my mother the diagnosis and prognosis. That was more horrific than hearing it myself, just seeing her face.

Within three weeks I went in for the surgery. Psychologically, I was feeling battered – but also resilient. I had myself primed it was better to live with disability than to die. 

I was thinking ‘I’ll get physio, I’ll get mobile again’. But when I was admitted, the plan had changed. Medics felt surgery could cause the cancer to metastasize and spread. 

So I was to be biopsied instead. I spent a week in a ward with other patients, who were also waiting for biopsy, every day fasting, waiting to be called and each day not being called.

That week did such a number on me, psychologically – each day I didn’t get called I felt the cancer was getting worse, time was running out. 

All of us on that ward were in this very intense situation. We knew everybody was doing the best they could but it was the height of covid – staff were really over-stretched.

I had the biopsy and waited a week for the result – but it was inconclusive. I had to go in again. 

I did another week, every day fasting, every day not getting brought down – it was close to Christmas when I was biopsied. 

So I had the result hanging over me for Christmas, waiting for it.

But where it was life-changing: in all those weeks I’d go to St Mullins, an ancient monastic site alongside the river Barrow. 

It was a forested area. It was the one place I felt completely at peace. I felt a complete surrender there, and that death was part of a bigger experience.

I had this feeling of the trees in particular being so comforting – that if I died and was buried among them I would feel a continuation, that I would stay part of a continuum.

The river, the trees, the old monastic settlement gave me a feeling of infinity, of being outside of time. It’s what kept me grounded. 

St Mullins, nature, is where I came to terms, as much as I could, with not knowing what the future was going to be, or if I had one.

At the time of being told I had cancer, I was working for a large multi-national company, very stressful, intense, all-consuming work. 

Covid made it more so. St Mullins was where I felt the whole daily grind of that job, all so I could get a mortgage, fall away. 

I felt so clearly: if I was going to have a future I would step away from the hamster wheel, honour whatever intrinsic talent I had, because that was my contribution to being here.

It was a beautiful place to feel that and to be able to connect with my deepest self. 

In late January, I found out the tumour was so unusual they’d sent to experts abroad about it. 

And it wasn’t cancer, it was totally benign. I couldn’t believe I was being given back life! I was euphoric. 

It felt like redemption, a second chance. I’d gotten the green light to live again.

Since then I’m scanned every six months. The tumour hasn’t grown. It’s likely I’ve had it all my life.

It was a lot to process. I took time out of work. I went to St Mullins, now with the knowledge ‘I’m alive’, letting that wash over me. I felt a real urgency not to be passive, but to make the most of life.

Life changed slowly, and yet not slowly. I made the scary decision to quit my job. I was giving up the possibility of owning a house, opening myself to financial instability. It was a risk I was willing to take.

I love writing and illustrating. I wanted to make comics and books, initially for adults but also children. 

In 2022, I wrote a rough draft with the character Nina Peanut. I found an agent who pitched it to several publishers – the publisher I’d always wished to work with, Scholastic, took it. 

Since then I’ve been working fulltime on the Nina Peanut books – they’ve been published in lots of different languages.

And I wouldn’t be where I am but for that fateful November day in 2020.

• Winners of the An Post Irish Book Awards 2024 will be announced on November 27. 
• Sarah Bowie’s Nina Peanut Is Amazing, published by Scholastic, is shortlisted for the Specsavers Children’s Book of the Year (senior category).