STEWART O’CALLAGHAN
A helping hand
Live Through This, founded by Stewart O’Callaghan, expressly supports LGBTQ+ people with cancer
Words Kanune Morrissey
Photography Markus Bidaux
It was late 2016, over the Christmas period when I was diagnosed,” remembers Stewart O’Callaghan, founder and director of cancer support and advocacy charity Live Through This (LTT), of when they were told they have chronic myeloid leukaemia. “I was living in Germany at the time. I was a tattoo artist. It was a very different life.”
O’Callaghan was just 29 at the time. “I have an incurable type of cancer; quite a rare cancer to get this young,” they explain of the disease, which is more common in adults aged 60-65. O’Callaghan came back to England for treatment, “naively hoping that I would get the support I was looking for”. They didn’t immediately find it.
“Queer culture is my culture — I wanted to be able to be a queer person at the same time as being a person with cancer,” says O’Callaghan. “But I very quickly realised there wasn’t really any space, information, or resource to do that.” This made O’Callaghan’s already challenging situation even harder. “I withdrew from support for quite a few years and suffered alone, I suppose, until I decided: ‘I can’t escape my health.’” This realisation sparked a vital decision. They thought, ‘Rather than trying to run away from the issue, maybe let’s run towards it and see if I can make any difference.’