“I don’t want my children’s memories to be of me dying.”
Vicky Phelan has discussed her support of the Dying with Dignity Bill in a new powerful interview.
The CervicalCheck campaigner spoke to Ciara Doherty on Virgin Media’s The Big Interview on Monday night, stating that people with terminal illnesses should have the choice to die by assisted suicide.
The mother-of-two, who is living with terminal cancer, said that she wouldn’t want her children to see her dying. Nor would she want to travel abroad to have the right to die on her own terms.
“I want to die at home in my own country,” she said. “I don’t want to have to go somewhere else and have my poor family travel over and travel back with a coffin.
“People should have the choice. I know from having witnessed other people who have gone before me with this disease, it’s not a nice way to go.”
THANK YOU to everyone who watched my interview on @VirginMedia_One with the lovely @ciarathedoc
A massive THANK YOU to ALL you lovely ppl for your supportive tweets
I must admit that I couldn't watch it 🙈
I will watch it back tomorrow when my kids are at school…
— Vicky Phelan (@PhelanVicky) August 31, 2020
Vicky added that if she was in her 80s, it would be “different,” but that she doesn’t want “my children’s memories to be of me dying.”
After being diagnosed with cancer following the CervicalCheck controversy which saw at least 221 women given false negative results, Vicky was told to get her affairs in her order.
She later did some research and discovered a drug that would allow her to live with cancer for a longer period of time.
“I know definitely if I’d have gone for the palliative chemotherapy at the time I would have been dead in twelve months,” she said.
“The fact I’m still here two and a half years later is testament to me doing the research pushing to get on this drug, even though there was no real evidence that this was going to work.”
Vicky will be supporting Gino Kelly TD, who is bringing the Dying with Dignity Bill to the Dáil.
“I have huge invested interest in this,” she said. “I think people should have a choice.”
