What Matters Now

Gareth O'Callaghan is one of Irish radio's most popular and familiar voices. In 2018, after receiving a life-changing diagnosis, he retired from fulltime work and gave up the career in radio that he had loved for decades. Here, in this deeply personal memoir, he tells his story of love and hope. From the moments after his doctor uttered the words Multiple System Atrophy -- a neurological disease that is both progressive and incurable, and ultimately carries a fatal prognosis -- to how, drawing on inner reserves and determination, he pulled himself from the darkness to come to terms with a new way of living. With his trademark empathy, insight and honesty, he looks at how, no matter what the circumstances, we can choose how we live and that every life must be lived to the fullest. "For me, this is not a choice. It's all I want, namely a full and loving life that I strive to choose every day over everything else - considering that maybe the big odds are heavily stacked against that. But I don't care what the odds might be; I'll keep defying them for as long as I can keep fighting and living.