‘I didn’t think I’d see Christmas:’ Vicky Phelan on her decision to end cancer treatment
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Vicky Phelan opened up about the difficult decision to cease chemotherapy and begin palliative care treatment in a powerful interview on the Late Late Show on Friday.
The campaigner, who shared the news that she had come to the difficult decision to stop chemotherapy in an Instagram post last week, told host Ryan Tubridy that following her first dose of chemotherapy on October 18 she “could not get out of the bed” for nearly two weeks.
“That’s how bad it was,” she said, in a frank conversation in which she discussed details of her illness and her own funeral.
“A lot of people don’t talk about this - the horrors of the treatment is often worse than the disease itself.” Vicky, who has two children, Darragh, 10, and Amelia, 16, said they were a major factor in her decision to cease treatment.
“Darragh wouldn’t even come into the room,” she said, “that’s what really killed me.”
“I was green, I was vomiting... I couldn’t even have a conversation with the kids.
“And I just thought, I can’t do this to them.
"I'd rather be well, I'd rather have a shorter time frame than be like that."
“Four weeks ago I didn’t think I’d see Christmas, that’s how real this is for me at this stage,” she said.
Vicky said she discussed her options with her oncologist before making the decision to end the treatment.
“I think he was hoping I'd have a few more sessions [of chemotherapy] and I just said no.
"I'm not doing this to my kids. I'm not doing this to myself.
"I've been fighting this terminal part of the disease since 2018. This is my fourth line of treatment. Most people don't get to four lines of treatment.. when you get to four lines of treatment.. there's nothing more they can do for you."
Vicky said she is now just taking cancer drug Pembro and she is hopeful it will “keep her going” to Christmas.
“But who knows?” she said, “At the moment, I feel well. I had Pembro last Monday and look at me.
“I've known for nearly four years now that there was going to be a point where I'd have to make really hard decisions. I've always known the cancer is incurable. You're always hoping that you're going to find some drug that will keep you alive.
“But I've always been very realistic about it. I've always known that whatever drugs I would get on would just keep me alive for a certain point, but nothing was going to cure it... unless some miracle drug came out which can happen.
"That's what you're always hoping for."
Vicky, who recently returned home from the United States where she was trying a new experimental drug, said she knew that she was “taking a risk” by trying the new drug but she had been hopeful it might grant her some more time with her children.
It was a “big disappointment,” that the drug had not worked for her.
“I really thought I'd get another couple of years on that drug but it just didn't work for me. And I was having terrible side effects with it.
“I'd invested so much in it. I'd taken such a risk going away on my own. And in my situation... time is limited.
“I was really missing my kids... I would never have gone to America in January if I had known nobody would be able to come to visit.
“All I could think was I've wasted nine months that I could have been at home with my kids.
“But then I had to kind of bring myself back and say well I might not have had these nine months if I stayed here, because all I was going to be offered here was the palliative chemotherapy.” When she left the States in September, she did so in a wheelchair.
“It was hard to admit I had to get the wheelchair,” she said.
“I had to face reality at that point.”
When she returned to Ireland, Vicky said she had exhausted “all options.”
The Kilkenny native, who lives in Limerick with her children, said talking to her children about her current state of illness has been “tough".
“I don’t want to die, I am a young woman, I have children.
“I always said if I got Darragh to double digits... But you always want more.
“Amelia is in transition year now, the chances of me getting to her Leaving Cert are slim.. When I start thinking about things like that I get upset.” But she shared that her children, particularly Amelia, have handled it with grace and strength, much like their mother.
“Amelia said to me, when I had the conversation about where this was going... I said y’know I don’t know how long I have... I am going to die.”
Vicky, who appeared on the show without a wig or headscarf, said she had been questioning whether or not to wear a headscarf for the show.
"I'm not going to curse on TV, but I said F it, I'm just gonna go bald," she said with a laugh.
The tireless campaigner also spoke about her funeral, joking that she was a “control freak” and nobody would be planning anything without her say-so.
“I want a humanist ceremony and I want it to be a celebration, I don’t want people wearing black, I want colour.
“I don’t want doom and gloom, I want music.”
The Stunning, a band Vicky is a massive fan of, performed on the Late Late Show during the interview and the campaigner used the opportunity to ask them would they perform at her funeral.
The tireless campaigner revealed she had also been in touch with Niall Breslin of The Blizzards who promised he would also play at her funeral.
Concluding the interview, Ryan Tubridy said the nation both admired and appreciated her and he hopes to have her back on the show in future.
“Hopefully,” Vicky said with a smile.