'A place you'd never want to be' - Ex-Derry captain Mark Lynch on cancer diagnosis

In January 2020, as Mark Lynch walked through the halls of Altnagelvin Hospital with his wife Bernie and their newborn daughter Niamh, he passed the walls of the cancer unit he helped build.

Two months later he was there again. This time not with work or family, but as a patient receiving the news that no-one wants to hear.

He first became aware of a potential problem in London as Covid-19 swept through a country just days away from lockdown.

• Listen to the full GAA Social podcast with former Derry captain Mark Lynch

It was 19 March when the site Lynch had been working on was closed down, and so he found a flight that would take him home earlier than expected.

Before flying home, he showered in his rented accommodation and conducted a routine check for lumps - he had no reason to expect to find what he did, yet there it was: a lump on his right testicle.

"Your mind runs at the stage," Lynch recalls on this week's GAA Social podcast.

"Dr Google is out, you're checking what is this and what can it be?

"I was going to put it away for a bit and go back to work. Maybe it's nothing, you start to tell yourself it's nothing."

With lockdown announced going back to work was not an option, and so back in Derry he made an appointment at Altnagelvin where he was then referred for an ultrasound. All the while, trying to keep himself and those around him calm by playing down fears of a worst case scenario.

A call to come in for the ultrasound came quickly, with some areas of the hospital far quieter than they had been only a few weeks previously.

"He was checking the left testicle, he was talking Covid, how he was planning to go on holidays but the holidays had been cancelled," says Lynch.

"Then he moved to the next one, and he stopped talking. The second he stopped talking I knew.

"He turned the screen round and says 'you've tumour there, I'm 99% sure that's cancer'."

You think 'I'm the person with cancer'

A worst fear confirmed, and not a reality that was easy to recognise as his own.

Assurances that the cancer had been caught at an early stage provided immediate hope that quick treatment could prove effective were welcome, and provided the 34-year-old with a positive spin with which to break the news to his loved ones.

"At that time I thought 'Jesus, I have cancer'. It's like a stereotype, you don't want to be that thing. You think 'I'm the person with cancer'," he said.

"I think I was always trying to put a positive spin on it. As the man who did the ultrasound had said to me, there are very god recovery rates on this, even better with mine as I caught it early.

"It was a massive shock, but I always for some mad reason was aware. I always think 'that person's got that problem, or there's an accident that has happened with that family. Why is there nothing happening to my family or me'. When it hit me, I thought 'this is part of the road I have to take'.

"A massive shock, and a few sleepless nights absolutely, but because of the diagnosis they were telling me how good the recovery can be I tried to look on the bright side of it as best I could."

A rare positive by-product of a pandemic wreaking havoc right across Europe was the speed with which Lynch was able to access surgery after the initial diagnosis.

It was just 10 days after the ultrasound that the inter-county footballer of 15 years was back at the hospital to have the tumour removed.

"The bit between me finding out and the tumour being taken out in the operation was the toughest. 'It's still in me, is it currently spreading throughout the body?'

"The big thing for me at that stage, a day later I found out before he took me to the operation table he said the scan was clear."

The cancer had not spread, and the operation had proved a success. Lynch was informed that were he to choose to leave the treatment there it was a 50/50 chance of the cancer returning, or he could take one cycle of chemotherapy to reduce those chances to less than 3%.

There was no doubt in his mind as to what needed done, and on 26 May Lynch started three weeks of chemotherapy.

Throughout the ordeal humour had been leant upon by the entire family as they looked for comfort amid a wretched situation, and so when Lynch began losing his fair towards the end of his chemo treatment, they did the same again.

Capitalising on the trend of lockdown-enforced home hairstyling, the Banagher man entrusted Slaughtneil manager Paul Bradley - husband to Lynch's sister-in-law, with the electric razor as he embraced a shaved head.

Ever since, Lynch has continued to receive good news on the progress of his recovery and everything is trending in the right direction. Even still, he is not yet prepared to declare the ordeal completely over just yet.

"When you get the phone call for blood results your mind races a wee bit, you think 'what if it does come back'," he admits.

"To be honest I haven't got to that stage. I'll consider it after five years whenever I'm fully out of it."

Listen to the full GAA Social with former Derry captain Mark Lynch on BBC Sounds from Tuesday evening.