Dec Pierce: Why I Refused to Let Two Life-Threatening Illnesses Break Me

A Brain Haemorrhage. Then Breast Cancer. Same Man. Two Years Apart. Dec Pierce Gets Completely Honest.

Most people know Dec Pierce as the voice of Block Rockin' Beats — the man who brought thousands together through music, through lockdown, through the nights they'll never forget. But behind the energy and the stage presence, the last three years of Dec's life have been extraordinary in the worst possible way.

In 2023, Dec suffered a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage mid-run in Ringsend. In 2025, he was diagnosed with breast cancer — a condition so rare in men it accounts for just 1% of all cases. Two life-threatening illnesses in two years, in a man who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, exercises, eats well and does everything right.

Ryan sits down with Dec for one of the most important men's health conversations Made in Chaos has ever had.

What we get into:

• Growing up as a quiet, bullied kid and how music became his alter ego
• Recording his own pretend radio shows at 8 years old from a ghetto blaster
• Dutch courage, a garden shed in Ballybrack and how pirate radio changed his life
• Why dance music and nostalgia connect with people on a deeper level than almost anything else
• Starting Block Rockin' Beats at his lowest professional point — and doing it for free for six months
• How the birth of his daughter Ava removed every roadblock and fear of failure overnight
• The bomb that went off in his head mid-run — and the sliding doors moment that saved his life
• What a subarachnoid haemorrhage actually does to the body, and the long road back
• The lump he found in New York in the shower — and almost let sit there
• The phone call he got on the first day of his holiday in Spain
• Why men don't check themselves — and why that silence costs lives
• The youngest male diagnosis his specialist had ever made — and the earliest detection
• Telling his 9-year-old daughter about the mastectomy scar
• The nights when catastrophic thinking takes over — and how he got through them
• What two life-threatening illnesses gave him that nothing else could

Ryan Curtis is a former Irish MMA fighter who was paralysed from the neck down and told he would never walk again. Made in Chaos exists to platform guests who have turned adversity into something worth sharing.

Follow: @madeinchaospod | @chaoscurtis

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