‘I am upset, but mostly I am angry,’ says Vicky
HEALTH campaigner Vicky Phelan yesterday told of her anger and pain at seeing the deterioration of terminally ill cancer patients she knows.
While attending a regular infusion appointment for her anti-cancer drug, she tweeted about finding out about how one friend had died and another has just weeks to live.
She recently stepped back from public life and campaigning on the CervicalCheck controversy to concentrate on fighting cancer – but felt moved to issue the tweets yesterday.
Mrs Phelan, who is terminally ill and whose legal battle exposed the cancer-screening shambles, last took to Twitter earlier this month to say some commentators would be ‘glad to know’ of her decision to step back.
But she made a welcome return this week, after time spent away in the US with her family. Yesterday, she arrived back in St Vincent’s University Hospital, in Dublin, the hospital she attends on a regular basis to receive cancer care. She is currently being treated with the drug Pembrolizumab, also known as Pembro.
Although it recently became licensed for cancer treatment in the US, it could be another two years – if ever – before it becomes available in Ireland.
‘Waiting for my life-saving infusion
‘Today has been very difficult’
to arrive’, she tweeted. ‘So very grateful that it is working for me. Today has been very difficult. I found out that a young woman, also terminally ill w/cervical cancer, died on Tues.’
Mrs Phelan added that when she arrived for her regular treatment yesterday, she met the husband of another woman who is also terminally ill. ‘She has been Plans: Vicky Phelan is campaigning again on women’s health given weeks to live,’ she said in doing the same. She tweeted: ‘I another tweet. She spoke of her am upset, but mostly I am angry. anger at the lack of options being Angry that women are not being offered to women who receive a informed of the options they terminal diagnosis. She also reiterated have other than palliative her promise in June to chemotherapy.’ fund the salary of someone to A spokesman for the HSE said: assist terminally ill patients to ‘The prescribing of drug therapies investigate alternative options. is a decision between the
Mrs Phelan said then she plans treating physician and the to fund the cancer-care worker patient concerned.’ to ‘shame’ the Government into neil.michael@dailymail.ie