Fiona's a trend setter
With 6,500 online followers, Nenagh native Fiona Morgan Coleman has become a big hit as a social media influencer in the world of fashion. The 41-year-old’s love of clothes and cosmetics has captured the imagination of her many fashion conscious followers on Instagram and Facebook. Women, especially, are rushing to sign up as followers of Fiona’s online postings. She is now a well-known social media influencer even though she only started sharing her life on the world wide web in May of this year.
“My friends were urging me to start blogging my style and to put up videos online,” says Fiona, whose parents are Kathleen and the former Nenagh Town councillor Tommy Morgan of Hamilton Drive, Nenagh.
Take a look on Instagram at the elegance of the six foot tall blonde beauty and you realise why she is an online style inspiration. And yet, just as she begins to enjoy her new found and almost instant online success, life has given her the greatest kick she ever got. She had no sooner began blogging when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, a cruel blow for any woman, let alone Fiona who is a mother of two little boys.
After discovering a lump she went to her doctor. At first medics thought it was just a cyst. This prognosis seemed to be borne out when a mammogram in University Hospital Limerick last May proved to be all clear. However, a biopsy was taken and just a little over a fortnight later the results came back. Fiona had breast cancer which would necessitate the removal of one of her breasts.
“I didn’t tell my online followers because I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me,” Fiona tells The Guardian.
But then one week before her surgery on July 17th she posted online the news of her devastating illness to all her followers. Not alone did she have to undergo a mastectomy, surgeons removed 22 lymph nodes, 17 of which subsequently proved to be cancerous. But ever positive, Fiona - a member of An Garda Síochana stationed in Shannon and living with her husband, David, and two young sons in Shrule, Co Mayo - has remained upbeat despite her illness.
“Twelve days after my surgery I attended the Galway races,” she reveals. “While I was there I met one of the surgeons who carried out the operation. He was pure amazed to see me there.”
She is also facing several rounds of radiation treatment and a prolonged period of other medication as doctors attempt to prevent any further outbreak of her cancer. But Fiona, who worked in the Sportsman’s Dream shop in Nenagh for 11 years and later in the Hibernian Inn, is extremely positive. A fitness and sports enthusiast all her life, she says that heractive way of life is now standing to her as she goes through what is likely to be one of the biggest physical and mental challenges of her life.
A Science graduate from the University of Galway, and a garda since 2007, Fiona loves her job and takes the commute to and from her work in Shannon to her home in Mayo in her stride. On August 21st last she was back in her home town of Nenagh to be Master of Ceremonies at a sellout cosmetics event in Slattery’s Pharmacy in Friar Street. Such is her online success that the cosmetics company, Carter Beauty, has since signed her up as a brand ambassador.
Let’s hope life for Fiona will all be on the up from here on.