Born: 25 September 1972, Ireland
Died: 3 March 2018
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Niav Gallagher. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Hannigan, Emma Denise (1972–2018), author and cancer awareness advocate, was born on 25 September 1972 in Bray, Co. Wicklow, the younger of two children (she had an older brother, Timmy) of Philip Hannigan, a businessman, and his wife Denise (née O’Callaghan), a Montessori teacher. Hannigan grew up surrounded by family – her mother was one of nine children (eight girls and one boy) who all lived within ten kilometres of the family home. Her father’s business, Hard Metal Machine Tools Ltd, was based in Bray, and at one time her mother ran a small Montessori school in the family home. Following the death from cancer of her maternal aunt Helen in 1994, Hannigan’s cousin Robyn came to live with them. Robyn’s sister Steffy, who was away studying to be a nurse, was also considered part of the immediate family while a brother, Caleb, went to live with another aunt close by.
Hannigan attended St Gerard’s primary and secondary school in Bray. She later described herself as a ‘nightmare’ teenager; her father said she was able to ‘talk her way out of anything’ (Irish Independent, 11 July 2016). Having finished her leaving certificate in 1990, she undertook a three-month cookery course at Ballymaloe Cookery School under the guidance of Darina and Myrtle Allen. For the next two years she worked in the kitchen of Ballymaloe House until a neck injury from a car accident forced her to change careers. She took a three-month general business course in Dublin before pivoting in 1997 to an evening course in beauty therapy while working at her father’s business during the day. On 22 February 1997 she met Cian McGrath in The Pod nightclub in Dublin; they married the following year on 4 June. (Although he had been two years behind her in St Gerard’s and his mother had taught Hannigan ballet for twelve years, they had not met before.) They built a home on a site next door to Hannigan’s parents and had two children, Sacha and Kim.
While the children were young, Hannigan continued to work part-time for her father’s business. Hannigan’s plans to change career were derailed in March 2005, when her mother’s family was contacted by the National Centre for Medical Genetics at the Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, asking if a member of her mother’s generation was willing to be tested for a cancer-carrying gene. The O’Callaghan family had been selected for testing because of the high incidence of cancer in the family – apart from her aunt Helen, Hannigan’s grand-aunt Anneliese died of ovarian cancer in 1985, while two other aunts were diagnosed with breast cancer but recovered following surgery and treatment. Hannigan’s mother agreed to be tested for the BRCA1 gene alteration (Breast Cancer gene 1), which is associated with an eighty-five per cent chance of developing breast cancer and a fifty per cent chance of developing ovarian cancer. Hannigan’s maternal grandmother was of Austrian Jewish heritage, and the test results showed that she was positive for the BRCA1 Ashkenazi Jewish mutation. As her mother was a carrier of the BRCA1 gene alteration, Hannigan had a fifty per cent chance of being a carrier; she was tested on 5 July 2005 and received a positive result six weeks later. Given her youth, Hannigan opted for radical surgery – a bilateral mastectomy (both breasts removed) and bilateral oophorectomy (both ovaries removed) – to reduce her risk of getting cancer to just five per cent. Given her youth (at the time she was the youngest woman in Ireland to choose the preventative surgery), doctors were reluctant to proceed and insisted she consult a psychologist to understand the full ramifications. Determined to take as much control of the process as possible, Hannigan had mastectomy surgery in February 2006 and, when she was fully recovered, had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in July.
In September 2006 Hannigan was informed that pre-cancer cells (ductal carcinoma in situ) had been found in tissue that had been removed during her surgery, with the pathology suggesting that the cells could have been forming for more than five years. Hannigan took the finding as vindication of her decision to have the surgery but in January 2007 began experiencing symptoms – a rash, weight gain and joint pain – which could not all be explained by the early menopause her surgery had caused. By May 2007 she was almost bedridden with inflammation, swelling and pain, and two small nodules appeared on her neck. Though initially diagnosed with dermatomyositis, a rare autoimmune disease, in early June she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, of which dermatomyositis was a symptom, and further tests revealed more cancerous nodes.
By the time her chemotherapy treatment finished in November 2007 she had spent eight weeks in hospital, had been readmitted several times with recurring infections, had lost her hair and endured a gruelling treatment regime. Hannigan’s reaction to her diagnosis was characterised by selflessness. She later recalled that she never felt ‘why me or poor me. Millions of people get cancer so why shouldn’t I? I am just grateful that it is me who is ill, and not my kids’ (Irish Independent, 15 Apr. 2009).
Early in 2008 Hannigan underwent further treatment for a tumour under her arm, beginning a pattern of cancer remission and recurrence. In total, she was successfully treated for cancer nine times in eleven years. From the outset, Hannigan sought to control those aspects of the disease that she could, including further preventative surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments, and painful efforts to prevent hair loss. Partly to distract herself from the tedium of being ill, she resumed writing by logging her treatments from the time she was diagnosed with the BRCA1 gene. She had begun writing a book when pregnant with her first child, only to set it aside due to the pressures of motherhood, and found the process of documenting her illness boring. Switching to a fictionalised version, however, allowed her to imagine lives and scenarios outside the confines of a hospital room. Energised by this new approach, Hannigan would often write for six or more hours without stopping and, once home from her first lengthy hospital stay in late 2007, she wrote when the children were in bed, or in the early morning on the couch, and she brought her laptop to the oncology day unit when receiving treatment. She regarded writing as ‘the missing link I was searching for when I trained as a chef, then studied to be a beauty therapist and finally ended up working in the family engineering firm. Now I can get lost in the world and the characters I’m creating’ (Daily Mail, 29 Mar. 2014).
Following advice from her best friend, the novelist Cathy Kelly, Hannigan submitted the manuscript to several publishers and shortly afterwards signed a three-book contract with Poolbeg Press. Designer genes – which drew upon her experiences with cancer – was published in January 2010. The book sold well in Ireland and was followed later that year by Miss conceived, which reached the bestseller list in Ireland. The following year, Hannigan’s memoir, Talk to the headscarf, featured on the non-fiction bestseller list.
Writing provided an escape from the difficulty of illness and treatment. During a series of especially traumatic radiation treatments in 2013, Hannigan planned chapters for The heart of winter (2015) while immobilised by a rigid moulded mask, covering her head and neck, that kept her pinned to the radiation table in excruciating pain. Hannigan also used her writing and her experience to raise cancer awareness and to offer practical help to others suffering from the disease. Talk to the headscarf (and the updated 2017 edition, All to live for) offered a detailed account of her symptoms and treatment, along with tips on skincare products, suitable foods while undergoing radiation or chemotherapy, and how to manage thinning hair; what the introduction to her blog called ‘the woman to woman tips’ that oncologists might not have time to talk about. Convinced that a lack of open dialogue on the disease led to fear and unnecessary deaths, Hannigan became a committed advocate for raising cancer awareness. In 2009 she spoke at the launch of a government information pamphlet on breast cancer, and frequently addressed medical, corporate and community events. Following the release of Miss conceived in 2010, she made several television appearances, including RTÉ One’s The late late show and TV3’s Ireland AM, and in 2011 she became a regular panellist on Midday, the all-woman lunchtime show on TV3. In late November 2011 she was asked to become an ambassador for her hometown of Bray, and she became a vocal supporter of Breast Cancer Ireland, taking part in their ‘Strictly against breast cancer’ fundraiser in Dublin in December 2013. She was also named as Breast Cancer Ireland’s first patient ambassador.
In addition to her advocacy work, Hannigan was recognised for her contribution to Irish fiction. She published fourteen books in total, including The pink ladies club (2011), which was shortlisted in the Irish popular fiction book of the year category at the 2011 Irish Book Awards. She won the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year award in the literature category in 2013. In 2014 Heart of winter was nominated for an Irish Book award, and The secrets we share won the RoNA (Romantic Novelists’ Association) epic romantic novel award in 2016. In 2017 she released an updated edition of her memoir, All to live for: fighting cancer, finding hope.
On 16 February 2018 Hannigan announced that her cancer was terminal. Her final blog post on 18 February stated her continuing commitment to advocacy by urging readers to donate to Breast Cancer Ireland. She signed off with her traditional ‘Love and light, Emma’. Within days the campaign had raised €70,000. Hannigan died on 3 March in the Blackrock Clinic, Co. Dublin, and was buried in Shanganagh cemetery, Co. Dublin, after funeral mass in Our Lady of Perpetual Succour church in Foxrock, Dublin. In the aftermath of her death, friends and colleagues started a social media campaign to promote her final novel, Letters to my daughters, published posthumously in 2018. It subsequently reached number one on the bestseller list. Dubray bookshop announced all profits from its sale would go to Breast Cancer Ireland. In April 2018, Breast Cancer Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland established a cancer research fellowship named after Hannigan, and in November 2018 her family was presented with a special award at the Irish Book Awards.