Vicky wins fight to get new cancer drug that could buy her time
‘The worse part is I was given no hope’
VICKY PHELAN, the young mother with terminal cancer following a smear test blunder, became the first Irish patient to get breakthrough immunotherapy this week.
Mother-of-two Ms Phelan, 43, who is taking a High Court action over the incorrect test results, has single-handedly fought to get the drug, which she hopes will prolong her life.
Before her court appearance this week, she had her first dose of pembrolizumab – among a new wave of drugs hailed as the biggest breakthrough in cancer treatment since the discovery of chemotherapy.
She said: ‘After 10 weeks of campaigning and fighting and lots of blood, sweat and tears shed along the way, I am having my first infusion of pembrolizumab, a drug that is not yet licensed for my cancer.
‘Thanks to all the donations from my fundraising campaign, I have enough funds to pay for this drug which is going to cost me €8,500 every three weeks.
‘I am the first cervical cancer patient in Ireland to get access to this drug.’
The Limerick mother raised nearly €200,000 online through her GoFundMe page for the expensive drug which is only licensed to treat for a small number of cancers in Ireland.
She said she couldn’t simply accept the shocking prognosis in January that she has 12 months to live with standard chemotherapy treatment and six months without treatment.
‘The worst part of all this was I was given absolutely no hope. I’m a young woman. I’m 43 and, literally, I was more or less told to go home and sort out my affairs.
‘I’ve two young children, they’re 12 and 7… I was shocked I was sent home to die.’
A second opinion from an oncologist in St Vincent’s Hospital gave her reason to hope as she was told that the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, had a chance of working on her advanced cancer.
‘I have had to do all this on my own,’ she said. ‘I’m lucky that I work in higher education and I do research but there are people who can’t. It’s my life. I’m doing everything I can to survive.
‘I am fighting with everything that I have in my power to live.’
She is now also hoping to get a place on a trial in the US which also uses other experimental treatments alongside pembrolizumab.
She said: ‘There are clinical trials all over the world which do give people options but they just don’t know about them. I’m very happy to help anyone. But what does that say about the system?
‘There is just no information… that’s what’s very much lacking in this country for terminally ill cancer patients.’
Ms Phelan had a routine smear test in 2011 and was given the all clear. After another test in 2014 she was told she had cervical cancer and started treatment. A review of her 2011 test showed ‘plentiful abnormal cells’.
Yet it was only last September that Ms Phelan learned of the error before being told in January her cancer was terminal.
Her case against the HSE and the US lab contracted to analyse the Cervical Check smear tests is ongoing in the High Court.