Ciara Mageean has opened up about her ongoing battle with stage four bowel cancer, sharing that she is unlikely to see her 40th birthday.

The 34-year-old athlete admitted that she delved into reading about the illness right after she was diagnosed, but only found herself feeling angry.

Ciara detailed how she was incredibly unlucky to receive the diagnosis, with less than 5% of bowel cancer patients being under 50 and only around 1% being under 35.

As a top sportswoman, she has also led an incredibly healthy lifestyle in terms of diet and physical activity, along with rarely drinking alcohol, never smoking and having no family history of the illness.

Ciara and her fiancé, Thomas Moran, decided that she needed a trip to the doctor’s office in what they thought might have been irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

After being referred to St Vincent’s Hospital, a doctor informed Ciara of the heartbreaking diagnosis and an MRI later confirmed it was stage four.

She told the Irish Times: ‘I called my mummy in from the waiting room, and he told me there and then that he’d found cancer…

‘Tommy’s not a big crier. But we just cried for a week. He took a week off work, and we just cried every day.’

Ciara explained that she was prescribed an initial dose of chemotherapy, which involved 12 rounds with two weeks between each one.

Afterwards, she was told that surgery wasn’t an option, and neither was radiotherapy, as it would put her in early menopause.

Ciara went on to admit that it was ‘f**king rough’ when she found out on Christmas Eve that her realistic timeline was around two to three years.

While she felt like ‘the Grim Reaper was on my shoulder’, Ciara said that she tries to have a positive mental attitude as ‘stressing and worrying about it isn’t going to change it’.

She and Thomas are now looking at wedding venues, with a rush suddenly put on their plans.

Ciara added: ‘I don’t want to be that girl who looks like a skeleton on her wedding day, or having to be in a hospital bed with Tommy beside me, and me in a wedding dress in the hospital bed. I want it to be a normal day.’

While she is heartbroken that she ‘probably’ won’t make it to her 40th birthday, Ciara said that she is left thinking about how ‘poor’ Thomas is ‘going to be left a widower in his 30s’.

She admitted: ‘I say to him, “Here, you can’t move on from me too fast…” People probably are like, “I can’t believe you’re saying that.” But I need to make light of it. It helps cope with the genuine worry that I’m going to leave him on his own.

‘We’ve been together for 13 years, and you think that you’re going to have your whole life together.’