Sinead Moodie
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My name is Sinead. I am 40 years old, married with two young children aged 5 and 2.
I have never smoked, never done drugs, I barely drink, I have never broken the law nor even got so much as a parking ticket.
I am The Moodie Davitt Report’s Chief Operating Officer. And I have lung cancer.
There is a reason why the phrase ‘f*ck cancer’ has become such a mantra for those battling, surviving or seeing loved ones go through cancer.
Cancer can hit anyone at any time, young or old, healthy or frail. You can do everything right in life, but cancer does not believe in karma.
This is where I find myself today. It is not fair, it is not right, but I am determined to not let it drag me down and beat me. I will find the silver linings; I will bring some good out of this. I will not lose my faith nor my sense of humour.
I will fight and give it my all. And I will do everything I can to help others in the process. Be it raising awareness of lung cancer amongst non-smokers (who make up a surprisingly large percentage of lung cancer patients*) or raising money for cancer charities. Cancer may not believe in karma, but I am determined to make my own.
When I first became unwell in March 2025 it never crossed my mind I could have cancer, never mind lung cancer.
I presented with COVID-like symptoms, followed by classic signs of a pneumonia-like illness. After my cough didn’t clear up after six weeks I went to the doctor who ordered an X-ray. That came back showing I had consolidation on the lung and I was given a diagnosis of pneumonia.
I hadn’t lost any weight and had no night sweats, no sign of anything sinister at all. When I still didn’t recover, another X-ray was ordered, followed by a CT scan. That scan finally caught that something much more serious than pneumonia was at play here.
I will always remember the day I phoned my GP asking if my CT results were back. He said yes, but he’d rather not tell me over the phone. He asked if there was anyone I could bring with me. He said it is more serious than pneumonia.
My heart dropped. It was the first hint I had that something serious was wrong with me. I called my husband and we both sat in the waiting room with dread in our hearts, my husband pacing and unable to sit still.
Did I have a heart issue? Did I have cancer throughout my body? Did I have a blood clot? Was I dying? Lung cancer still didn’t occur to me. I’ve never smoked, surely I couldn’t have lung cancer. With my family history (see the reference to my Dad below) I feared stomach cancer or skin cancer, not lung cancer!
The following days are a blur. But every day we sat with doctors and were told worse and worse news, I sat there and took the information in.
I didn’t show emotion, I felt numb. I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t allow myself to think. I didn’t want to think about my husband and kids and what their future would be. I couldn’t let my mind go there.
What followed next was weeks of tests, biopsies, a very risky bronchoscopy under general anaesthetic which I was told I may not wake up from, and having a drain placed in my pleural space around my lung to stop fluid accumulating in an attempt to reinflate my left lung.
I was told there was a large growth blocking my airways. It was assumed I would have a lung cancer called adenocarcinoma, famously the diagnosis Walter White received in Breaking Bad where he had to turn to selling meth in order to fund his cancer treatment (thankfully being in the UK I won’t have to go down this route!).
So imagine our shock when the biopsy came back saying I had squamous non-small cell lung cancer, exceedingly rare in non-smokers of my age. My doctors were stumped so they ordered additional biopsy tests.
Unfortunately these showed I have an even rarer type of cancer called NUT Carcinoma, a particularly aggressive variant with little in the way of research or treatment plans.
The general prognosis of NUT Carcinoma is very bad, but I never asked nor was told my own prognosis or stage of cancer. I don’t want to know. I want to believe I can fight this, so such information would not assist me in any way.
The diagnostic doctor from the pleural team near Ystradgynlais where we live sat my husband and me down and said, “We won’t be able to cure this, I’m sorry.”
He shook and then dropped his head in sadness, which we both took to mean I had no hope, that I would have weeks or months at best.
He barely expanded on that and we left the office feeling bleak and hopeless. Would my children even remember me? I can’t leave them now; they are only 5 and 2. How would my husband cope without me? This would break him. I wasn’t worried about myself; I was worried about those I would leave behind.
Thankfully when we saw an oncologist two days later he was much more positive. He provided me with a two-year plan of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. A two-year plan – he thinks I might have at least two years!! We left that office feeling much more positive. We would fight this!
They would be throwing the kitchen sink at me. I am young and otherwise healthy. I would be given 4-6 rounds of chemo + immunotherapy followed by two years of immunotherapy.
Cancer treatment has come a long way in the last few years and I am so lucky that immunotherapy is now an option. It gives my body the chance to fight back against this horrible disease itself rather than constantly poisoning my body with chemotherapy.
I received my first treatment on 16 July and learned they would be every three weeks from there.
I am extremely lucky that my employers, the amazing Moodie Davitt Report, now part of the equally supportive Mark Allen Group, provides us with health insurance with full cancer cover through Vitality.
Vitality have been amazing and opened so many options for me – they couldn’t help me enough and have been so kind. As has been discussed previously on this Blog, my father Martin Moodie received treatment for his Stage 3 stomach cancer at The Royal Marsden hospital in London. They looked after him so well and helped him beat his cancer (he is 15 years cancer-free this year) so we were determined I would be treated in the same place and thankfully I was accepted into the care of renowned lung cancer specialist Professor Sanjay Popat.
It was wonderful to meet him; he was open about how difficult a journey this would be and what a ‘beast’ my cancer is, but he also gave us hope that there are treatment options and we can fight back against this.
I was surprised how much has changed since my father’s chemo treatments in 2010 and 2011. I was offered cold cap therapy to reduce/prevent hair loss (though as he always joked, that was not an issue in his case anyway). It felt like having ice cubes aggressively pushed into my scalp but after ten minutes or so I could barely notice I was wearing it.
I just hope if I lose all my hair I can rock the bald look as well as my namesake Sinead O’Connor! I was also given a schedule of multiple anti-sickness drugs which worked like a charm. Apart from a lot of exhaustion I got through my first chemo treatment much easier than I expected. I have just had my second.
My treatments are long, around 6.5 hours a time. But the Royal Marsden provided me with such caring service – my nurse Uma is the loveliest person you can ever meet – that those hours have flown by and I have felt so well looked after.
I am so proud of The Moodie Davitt Report and my internal and external industry colleagues who have raised so much money for this amazing hospital down the years. I cannot praise them enough.
For example, The Moodie Davitt Report launched and wholly funded the EGB Cancer Research Fellowship in 2017, a five-year, £175,000 (US$250,000) commitment to drive cancer research projects through the Royal Marsden (its initials were in honour of loved ones of The Moodie Davitt team who had lost their lives to cancer).
Dr Katharina von Loga, the recipient of an EGB research bursary, headed a team within the Centre for Molecular Pathology to investigate how immunotherapy drugs work at a cellular level.
The EGB Cancer Research Fellowship followed four years after The Moodie Report Foundation (supported amazingly by the travel retail community) donated US$202,000 to fund a vital Royal Marsden research study into genetic sequencing.
Now I have had two treatments, I feel so much more positive. I am not just sitting here whilst the cancer spreads, I am actively fighting back against this beast.
I do not know if I will win this fight, but I will give it my best shot. I want to use this time to do some good, to give something back, to make some good from the bad.
This is why I am writing this Blog today and why I, my father and The Moodie Davitt Report want to raise awareness of cancer and drive further research funding.
In coming weeks we will be announcing the ‘comeback’ of the Moodie Multi-National Marathon, a reprise of an incredible event we held in 2011 and 2012 involving the travel retail and aviation sectors worldwide that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. As my Dad likes to say, watch this space.
If my talking about my illness can result in even one person having their cancer detected earlier or one person being saved or we can raise money for new treatment options for people in my position, then at least something good will come from all this bad.
Cancer may not believe in karma, but I will make my own. ✈
*Footnote: According to a recent BBC article, lung cancer is the most common variant worldwide and the leading cause of cancer death.
In 2022, about 2.5 million people were diagnosed with the disease and more than 1.8 million died. Although tobacco-related lung cancers still account for the majority of diagnoses worldwide, smoking rates have been declining for several decades, the report observes.
Yet as smoker numbers continue to fall in many countries around the world, the proportion of lung cancer occurring in people who have never smoked is on the rise. Between 10 and 20% of lung cancer diagnoses are now made in individuals who have never smoked, the article notes.