‘I lied to my family that I’d be home in months’

VICKY Phelan has revealed she ‘lied’ to family and friends about her treatment to fight cancer in the US – saying it would take six months but knowing it would be a year.

The campaigner has been in Maryland since January, where she is undergoing treatment for cervical cancer as part of an ongoing clinical trial.

She has been active on social media outlining the ups and downs of the treatment, including the illnesses she experienced early on.

The mother-of-two has been doing well since her treatment dose was cut in half, but the goal is to be back on a full dose as soon as her body can tolerate it.

Speaking on Monday evening, Ms Phelan revealed that the treatment course is much longer than anyone in her life had anticipated.

She said the decision to leave Ireland for the States was difficult enough, without telling her friends and family that she was going for a year, so she decided to say the treatment would take half that time.

Speaking on Virgin Media’s The Tonight Show, she explained while laughing: ‘Well, I lied to everybody when I told them about how long I was coming for. I told everybody it was six months, but it was a year.

‘I just thought, I couldn’t tell my family and my friends that I was leaving for 12 months. It was hard enough saying goodbye when they thought I was coming for six.’

US treatment: Vicky Phelan

Revealing her treatment plan, Ms Phelan continued: ‘Realistically, it’s 12 months. I have a schedule right up until the end of January next year, but at the same time my oncologist is a lovely man.

‘He’s young enough. He knows that I’m over here on my own. He has promised me that if we get to a point where I am on a full dose, because at the moment I’m still only of half the dose, and I’m tolerating it well – I have to get to a stage where I’m not vomiting or having some reaction and that tumours are shrinking – he would look at extending the spaces in between my treatment schedule.

‘He has a number of patients who are very stable who only come in for treatment every three months.

‘So that would great. That would mean that I would come home and come back every three months, but I’d say I’m another six months out of that yet, to be quite honest.’

Ms Phelan later tweeted: ‘Apologies to any of my friends on Twitter who I “lied to” about how long I was coming over here for treatment.’

‘It’s hard enough saying goodbye’