04/09/2026
My name is Vanessa Mooney, a breast cancer survivor and the founder of Someone Like Me, a free Irish app that connects people affected by cancer privately, one to one, with someone who has been there. It's for all cancer types, men and women, and you choose who you connect with by age, location and stage.
It's there for every stage, not just treatment. Whether somebody has just been diagnosed, is in the middle of treatment, has finished and is living with the fear of it coming back, or is living with secondary cancer, there is someone on there who understands. Family members and loved ones have their own separate space too, because nobody ever thinks to ask the rock how they're getting on.
The idea came to me at three o'clock in the morning, wide awake and sick from chemotherapy, wanting to talk to somebody who had been through it. There was nobody, and that's where the name came from. We sadly lost both my mam Phyllis and my sister Veronica, who was diagnosed with lung cancer two months before I was, and the two of us went through chemotherapy together. I was diagnosed at 40 and I'm six years clear now.
I also host the Someone Like Me, Your Cancer Community podcast, which has over 20,000 downloads, talking to people at every stage of a cancer journey and to the loved ones supporting or grieving somebody.
The app is live on iOS and Android, with over 200 users and a pilot running at St Vincent's Private Hospital. Have a look here: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.someonelikeme.ie/download-mobile-app&source=gmail&ust=1788357311194000&sa=E
Cavan is a scattered county and a lot of your people are travelling a long way for treatment. For anyone who can't get in to Knappogue House, or who is at home in the middle of the night, this is a way of reaching somebody who understands without leaving the kitchen table.
