CERVICAL check campaigner, Vicky Phelan will be back in Limerick next week to see her children after spending six months in the US on a clinical trial.
Ms Phelan is receiving experimental treatment for cancer in US in an attempt to prolong her life after the Pembro drugs she was on stopped working.
She travelled to Maryland last January to take part in the clinical trial and says she is “emotional” to be coming home for a month on Wednesday and to be reunited with her children, Amelia and Darragh.
“I really didn’t think when I came out here in January that it would be six months before I’d see my children. I honestly thought that they would be able to come out.
“If I had known back in January that none of my family would have been able to travel out at all I don’t know would I have come out,” she told RTE Radio 1 Sunday with Miriam.
Earlier this month, she experienced an adverse reaction to the clinical trial drugs and spent three nights in hospital. One of the symptoms she experienced was inflammation in the face due to Bell’s Palsy.
However, she said she is “lucky not have any of the big side effects that would force the trail to end”.
She is hopeful things won’t be as bad upon her return to treatment in August.
“If the scan results are good, it’ll give me a boost to know things are working.”
Ms Phelan said she has also been buoyed by the “amazing” support she has been receiving from Irish people living in and near Washington and the support she has received from home has helped her to keep going.
“I’ve never had enough contact from people as I have had in the last six months,” she said.
Speaking about the loneliness of going through the clinical trial on her own in the US, she said, “I think I found this experience probably the toughest of my cancer journey over the last eight years.
“There’s always the worry – like what if something gets me over here and I don’t get to see my kids or my family again – coming home in a coffin, and that is a very real reality for me over here”, she said.
