A lump, a choice, and a promise to keep living. That’s where our conversation with the Roach sisters takes off: three women who built a buzzing salon in Swords while facing down Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the second time—and found a life-saving donor match within their own family.

We go back to the early days in Oldtown, the mischief and the loyalty, and how losing their dad pulled them even closer. Christine leaves school to master hair, Katie pivots from the airport to beauty and operations, and their mam, Gina, quietly becomes mission control for everyone. When Carla’s relapse arrives after eight golden years—and just as the lease gets signed—the decision is brutal: six months to live or a stem cell transplant. The sisters fly to Spain to break the news, cry on a Ryanair flight, and then do what this family always does: make a plan.

You’ll hear how an ultra-rare 100% sibling match turns up in Katie, what stem cell harvesting actually feels like, and why transplant day can be both underwhelming and terrifying. Carla crashes into graft-versus-host disease, spends seven and a half weeks in isolation, and then crawls back through routine, top-ups, and the sacred 100‑day scan. In the midst of it all, the family stages a tiny wedding between treatments—nurses cheering, fairy lights on the ward, a borrowed bouquet, and Mam’s ring. We don’t dodge the hard bits either: the letter that says “ovarian failure,” the fear of Covid when immunity is paper-thin, and grieving a grandad across the Irish Sea in lockdown.

This is a story about Irish family, small business resilience, and medical courage. It’s about a salon that chooses intimacy over scale, clients who become a support network, and a mam who can fix anything from oncologist calls to missing emails. If you’re searching for real talk on stem cell transplants, GVHD, relapse, fertility decisions, and how to keep a business alive under pressure, you’ll find it here—wrapped in warmth, humour, and the kind of love that refuses to break.

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