A brave dad-of-five who lost his cancer battle last November is to tell his story from beyond the grave as his family finishes his memoir.
Paddy Quinn features in a powerful new TV series Inside the Hospice which follows families and staff at Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross, South Dublin. He took the courageous decision to take part in the Virgin Media documentary, which includes footage of his final hours with his family by his bedside.
Now his daughter Tracey plans to finish a book he had started writing about his experience called Cancer Saved My Life.
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Paddy’s son Alan told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “Dad was asked to do the show and he was all for it, he was all for getting the word out, telling how good the hospice was. My da loved being in there, he used to say it’s like being on a holiday going in there.
“The people there are amazing. They just helped us to feel comfortable, kept us calm.”
Paddy, who was 59 when he died, tells how he was diagnosed with cancer on December 23, 2015, and was given four months to live.
He said: “I went numb first. They had me booked in for operations and everything, and I decided against it, I didn’t want anything invasive.
“I went through all the chemo, I did an awful lot of it. It’s been nearly seven years, I have it nearly everywhere now.
“But I manage it, it doesn’t define me. I’m Paddy, that’s cancer, and that is the way I look upon it.”
Paddy was referred to Harold’s Cross by the palliative care clinic at Tallaght Hospital in July 2022. In the documentary he tells how he was “treated like a king” and is grateful for the years he has had with his partner Dee, his five kids and four grandchildren.
He added: “I’ve been told more times I’m going to die than I have I’m going to live, I don’t know how many. I’m actually in a very happy place that I know a lot of people would find hard to understand.
“Relationships have changed me with everybody...it’s so much improved to a degree that I wouldn’t have thought possible. I always quote the Shawshank Redemption, ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’, and I’m getting busy living.”
Tracey, 33, who will finish her dad’s book with notes he gave her, describes the hospice as a “sacred space” where the family “honoured him” before he passed away. She said: “There was almost a sense the funeral was for everybody else and the real goodbye was in that room for us.”
Alan added: “Right after he died we walked outside and there was a double rainbow, we were all speechless. We just knew it was him.”
- Paddy's story features on Inside the Hospice this Tuesday on Virgin Media One at 9pm.
- To help support your local hospice go to www.sunflowerdays.ie.
Read next:
- Ex-RTE newsreader Eileen Dunne to raise funds for hospice in VHI Women's Mini Marathon
- Brave mum-of-four who beat cancer set to skydive to raise money for charity
- Dubliner to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to 'honour spirit' of late fiancée who died of cervical cancer
- Tributes paid to brave young mum who died weeks after wedding
- Family of young Dubliner who died of cancer vow to complete bucket list in his memory
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