Texas Rose's health battle with cancer aged just 18

TEXAS Rose Sara Costa has opened up about overcoming thyroid cancer at just 18 as she hopes to be crowned this year’s Rose of Tralee.

- BY SANDRA MALLON Showbiz Editor

The 21-year-old, whose Irish roots hail from Collooney, Co Sligo, has travelled from Austin to Kerry for this year's festival.

Sara explained: “I was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer in 2022. I was 18 years old.

“All my friends were going off to university, and I had a big surgery. So I had a radical modified neck dissection here, took out my thyroid and 76 lymph nodes, so I have no lymph nodes in the left side of my neck anymore.