At 49 I was a mum, a wife, a runner and constantly tired. Then one day I collapsed at work

I call my brain tumour Boris. Giving it a name makes it feel slightly less like an incurable cancer and more like an unwanted house guest.Boris arrived, uninvited, last November, just before my 50th birthday, and has long outstayed his welcome. Now he has a little brother. Baby Boris is due for eviction from my frontal lobe on October 21st, three days before International Brain Tumour Awareness Week begins. But brain cancer pays little attention to timing, fairness or good manners. Until last November, my life was busy in a way that now feels wonderfully ordinary. I was 49, a mum to two beautiful children and director of marketing, communications and public affairs at the University of Limerick. I loved my job and loved to run, often with the dawn. I was the person who planned, organised and got things done. I joke that it took Boris arriving for my husband to join the class WhatsApp group.I was proactive about my health: an early mammogram, regular check-ups and blood tests. When fatigue, anxiety and brain fog appeared towards the end of October 2025, I blamed hormones, contacted my GP and carried on.READ MORETwo days before that appointment, I collapsed at a work conference in Birmingham and woke after a seizure with a dislocated shoulder. A scan had found a large mass in my brain. I was in another country, away from my husband and children. That night, as we all tend to do now with any illness, I googled brain tumours and prayed mine wasn’t a glioblastoma.Laura Ryan celebrating the completion of six weeks of radiotherapy in February 2026, with her radiotherapy mask and a well-earned Guinness 0.0 I was flown to Cork, where my neurosurgeon at Cork University Hospital (CUH), the wonderful Chris Lim, told me the tumour was operable. In the days before surgery, I bought my children’s Christmas presents and a 2026 calendar, marking our important family dates. I didn’t know what condition I would be in when I woke up, or whether I would still be fully myself. Buying their gifts was one small thing I could be sure of.On November 19th, Lim removed as much of Boris as was safely possible. Tests confirmed glioblastoma: an incurable grade 4 brain cancer. My worst fears realised. Laura after completing the Great Limerick Run (6 Mile) in May 2026, six months after surgery I turned 50 on the day of The Late Late Toy Show. We sat around the television that night in matching pyjamas. Instead of looking forward to the year ahead, I wondered whether I would see another Christmas. I lost my own mother young; the thought of my children knowing that same pain was, and is, unbearable.[ Cancer rates rising more quickly among younger people, international study findsOpens in new window ]Once the initial shock subsides, you look for hope. I was shocked to discover that the treatment offered to me would have been broadly the same 20 years ago. I completed it all: surgery, six weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, followed by six monthly cycles of chemo. Standard treatment has given me 11 months in which to live remarkably well.I wanted that life to still feel like mine. Movement has always been my medicine, so I kept running. I flew to Spain with my family this summer and have laughed and cried with extraordinary friends.Because I’m not allowed to drive, my running girls co-ordinate lifts with military precision. And I threw myself into organising a 50th-birthday festival in west Kerry for my best friend Niamh. Given the choice, the planning part of my brain would much rather obsess over disco balls and personalised face tattoos than bloody Boris.But last month, I learned the cancer had returned. My MRI suggests Baby Boris is a mix of tumour and treatment damage, again in my right frontal lobe. I’m frightened, but grateful that surgery is possible.Laura outside the MRI Unit at Cork University Hospital in September 2026, where she underwent further imaging What comes afterwards is much less clear. There is no single agreed standard treatment when glioblastoma returns. Clinical trials offer hope, but even where hospitals are recruiting, patients can be excluded by a molecular feature, an eligibility rule or simply timing.[ Your Family Treating oesophageal cancer: ‘The service delivered here is on par with the best in the world’Opens in new window ]Brain cancer affects fewer people than many other cancers. But small patient numbers should not mean small ambition.Last month, I took the train to Dublin to address the board of Cancer Trials Ireland as a member of its Patient Consultants Committee. Speaking for myself and others unable to make that journey, I called for brain cancer not to be overlooked in national advocacy, earlier patient involvement in research and a clearer route from tumour testing to clinical trials, including options abroad.I was told it could take another 10 to 15 years for comprehensive molecular testing, which helps doctors match patients to targeted treatments and clinical trials, to become standard practice across all cancer types.Living with glioblastoma, I find that timescale difficult to hear.I’m lucky to have clinical teams in University Hospital Limerick and CUH working with me to explore what comes next. I have the experience and wherewithal to ask questions, chase answers and look beyond Ireland.Even so, it’s exhausting, and I can’t assume I will always have the capacity to do it. No patient should have to navigate this alone.Laura with her husband Fergal after completing the Mini Marathon in Limerick on October 4th, 2026 I want to be involved in decisions about my care, but I don’t want cancer to take up every inch of my life. One minute I’m googling how to dress an 11-year-old as a giant squishy for Halloween; the next, whether a personalised vaccine in Germany might help keep me alive.In between, there are dinners to organise, gumshields to find, lifts to arrange and all the everyday chaos of family life.I’m not asking for false hope. I know an experimental treatment may not work. I’m asking for a fair chance to be considered, and for the system to move with the urgency of the disease.[ Camille O’Sullivan on her cancer: ‘You have to go further than a smear test’Opens in new window ]By the time International Brain Tumour Awareness Week begins, I hope to be recovering in a bed in CUH, Baby Boris evicted and beginning the work of getting back on my feet.I will still be Laura: mum, wife, friend, runner, reluctant brain-cancer advocate and organiser of things that probably don’t need organising.Laura (left) with friends at the Cook Medical Mini Marathon in Limerick on October 4th, 2026 What I want after surgery is simple: to know every appropriate option has been explored for me. More importantly, I want that to be the case for the next person who wakes after a craniotomy and hears the word glioblastoma.In brain cancer, possibility is all about time: another birthday, another Christmas, another school run, another wonderfully ordinary rainy Irish day with the people I love.