Big week for Saoirse as she captures the hearts of the nation – again

The nine-year-old girl from Kiltullagh who stole the hearts of the nation after appearing on last year’s Late Late Toy Show is has once again shown bravery in the face of a fight no child should have to face.

Saoírse Ruane appeared again on the RTÉ show last Friday, just a couple of weeks after she and her parents were told her cancer had returned, as was confirmed by her mother Roseanna last weekend.

In a post on social media, Roseanna said the family were back in University Hospital Galway at the end of April – the same hospital in which they’d been given the devastating news in December 2019 that Saoírse had osteosarcoma – a rare life-threatening cancer that affects about three children in Ireland every year.

In the months that followed, Saoírse underwent chemotherapy in Crumlin, before having a below-the-right-knee amputation.

Since then, she has been fitted with a prosthesis and has become a personification of bravery in the face of adversity, appearing on the Toy Show to launch its annual fundraiser which raised over €6 million for children’s charities across the country.

Following Saoírse’s appearance on the show on Friday last with her parents, Ollie and Roseanna, her mum told well-wishers that a tumour had been found on her daughter’s lung, for which she was due to undergo surgery on Tuesday.

“What we share with you, we share openly as you all have been and continue to be such a huge support to us,” she wrote.

Read the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie