CERVICALCHECK CAMPAIGNER VICKEY Phelan is to return to Ireland next week following six months in the United States where she was undergoing a trial cancer treatment.
Last November, Ms Phelan disclosed that she has developed a new tumour for the first time in over two years. A scan revealed a new 3mm tumour in her lung, in addition to growth in three separate tumours.
Ms Phelan was given a terminal cancer diagnosis after a previous smear test did not identify the disease
In January, she told The Late Late Show that she was travelling to Maryland for up to six months, hoping that a pioneering immunotherapy treatment will give her more time with her family.
Speaking today on the Sunday with Miriam programme, she said travel restrictions for people entering the US has meant that she hasn’t seen any of her family including her two children Darragh and Amelia in six months.
“I really didn’t think when I came out here in January that it would be six months before I’d see my children. I honestly thought that they’d be able to come out,” she said.
I think now looking back if I had known back in January that none of my family would have been able to travel out at all, I don’t know would I have come out really to be quite honest.
Ms Phelan added that she will have to return to the US again for more treatment and that she is worried that travel restrictions still won’t be lifted.
“It’s going to be hard to come back because know I’m coming back here on my own again for God knows how long, so it’s tough but it just makes it much more emotional really knowing that I am going to see them,” she said.
Phelan also told the programme that she had a very difficult period two weeks ago when side-effects from the treatment were “relentless” but that she has now “come out the other side of it”
I ended up in hospital for three nights not knowing what was wrong with me. They were we’re doing all these head and CT scans, talking about lumbar punctures and I really thought ‘God has this gone to my brain’, because that’s what it looked like. But luckily enough it was my sinuses thank God, it was something very normal, my face is really after getting a battering with this drug.
Phelan added that she doesn’t have “an alternative option” but to try the treatment.
“I remember laying in that bed in hospital on my own kind of feeling very sorry for myself because I was on my own and there was nobody allowed to visit me. I really was kind of thinking ‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this’. But at the same time I knew well that if I don’t keep doing this there’s really not much else I can do.”
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