Cervical Check Cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan has said she has returned home from the United States and will receive palliative chemotherapy, after a scan showed her to have a number of new tumours.
Ms Phelan had been in Maryland since the beginning of this year where she was participating in an immunotherapy drug trial.“I have two new tumours in my neck but the worrying one is a new tumour on my bowel,” Ms Phela shared in a social media post. This means that I am no longer eligible for proton beam therapy since my tumours are far too extensive.
The medical team at Georgetown University Hospital in Maryland recommended that Ms Phelan return home to receive palliative chemotherapy.Ms Phelan returned to Ireland last week and stated that she will take time to reconnect with her children and to absorb this news before starting chemotherapy.
Ms Phelan said: “The ‘good’ news is that I can still have treatment and that this treatment will keep me alive until Christmas at least. The bad news is that the treatment I am about to start on is extremely toxic and will take its toll on my body and my mind.”
She thanked people who had expressed their support and had wished her well. In 2018, Ms Phelan was awarded a €2.5m settlement by the High Court in a case taken against the US laboratory that carried out her cervical smear test. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer after a false negative cervical smear test carried out as part of CervicalCheck.
