‘You have to talk to your children’ – Kilkenny campaigner Vicky reveals candid conversations with kids about her terminal diagnosis

Kilkenny mother and cervical cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan has revealed how she has openly discussed her terminal diagnosis with her children,

In a moving interview in today’s Irish Times, Vicky also candidly reveals that she didn’t expect parenthood to be “as hard as it is”, adding: “I’ll never forget the pain of giving birth. You can never really prepare someone for it and I think parenthood is the same.”

The Mooncoin woman is mother to two children, Amelia (15) and Darragh (9). She has lived her life in the glare of the media spotlight since she helped to lift the lid on the cervical cancer screening scandal in 2018 and also hasn’t shied away from speaking about her life expectancy with her kids.

Vicky says: “I remember saying to someone recently about talking to Amelia about my death and about throwing my ashes out at the beach in Doonbeg and asking her did she want to get a necklace she could keep ashes in. I remember saying this to somebody and they were horrified and they said, ‘How can you talk to your daughter about that?’ and I said ‘Because we can’. What am I going to do, wait until it happens?”

The former Kilkenny Person of the Year said it is best to be upfront and honest with children.

She adds: “You have to talk to your children and give them information. I think what they imagine is worse than what is actually happening. I’ve always told them along the way, what’s going on. They’ve never been left to wonder or to imagine with my cancer, what’s going on. My husband and myself have separated. We’re still together, but not together. The kids know that that’s the situation, we’ve been up-front about that with them as well.”

Vicky recalled how Darragh became worried about her after a comment was made from a child at school: “I hadn’t told him that there was a chance I was going to die from it. But one of the boys in the schoolyard got to him first. Now it wasn’t nasty, obviously parents talking at home, and he said: ‘Is your mammy going to die?’ I explained to him about the new drug and how it worked and we sat down and talked about it. He was much better then.

“They’re not worried. I don’t look like I’m sick. I don’t look like I’m dying. It’s only at times I get sick, or last year I was in hospital for a week, I was quite sick then and we were all really worried.”