Vicky’s joy as cancer shrinks
Campaigner tells of delight after scan results
SMEAR test blunder victim Vicky Phelan revealed yesterday her tumours have shrunk since starting a new drug treatment.
The terminally-ill mum, 43, said she got the positive news after a CT scan earlier this week.
Vicky told Ray D’arcy on RTE Radio One she had received a call from her oncologist David Fennelly to say there had been significant shrinkage.
She said: “The news I got yesterday was just fantastic and I wanted to keep it until last night to tell everyone.
“I obviously told my parents and Jim my husband and best friends. I had a CT scan on Tuesday but to be honest I wasn’t expecting to get a result until today or tomorrow.
“When I saw his number coming up on the phone I just said, ‘Oh Jesus, do I really want to answer this?’.
“I told him, ‘If this is bad news I don’t want to hear it, Dr Fennelly, I really don’t want to know’.
“He cut across me and said, ‘Absolutely not Vicky, this is just fantastic news, you’re not going to believe this but there’s been significant shrinkage in your tumours’.
“We were crying. It couldn’t have come at a better time to tell me.” Vicky said Dr Fennelly told her having only had three doses of [Pembrolizumab] since April, “It is amazing news, you don’t realise how big this is for cancer and for cancer patients”.
She added: “My stomach has gone down, I’m not in pain anymore.”
On Wednesday night Vicky threw a party in Mullinavat, Co Kilkenny, with 120 friends and surprise guests The Stunning, who performed. Despite the party being planned for some time she said she had good reason to celebrate now. She added: “I had a big night last night and it actually killed me to keep it quiet for so long. “I’m not very good at doing that. The Stunning are my favourite band of all time, they are a bunch of guys that have been going for a long time now. I have been following them since 1990. When I was doing my fundraising for the clinical trial I was trying to get on over in Maryland, one of my neighbours contacted The Stunning because she knew they were my favourite band.
“They got back to me and said they would do a gig for me.”
Meanwhile, Government agencies were accused in the Dail yesterday of “foot-dragging” over the probe into the cervical cancer screening scandal.
Labour TD Alan Kelly warned “the lifetime of this government” would end soon if progress was not made.
He was speaking after it emerged documents provided to inquiry chairman Dr Gabriel Scally were “unreadable”.