How Vicky Phelan harnessed her anger and became the people’s warrior
Vicky Phelan leaving the High Court in Dublin in 2018. Picture: CourtPix
Society doesn’t look too kindly on angry women. ‘Good’ girls don’t lose their cool, they don’t rock the boat, or the system — they are polite, pleasing, co-operative. When Vicky Phelan stood outside the High Court in April 2018 and called for an investigation into the CervicalCheck screening programme, she was angry and she didn’t care who knew it.
The impact that her impassioned speech and all that followed had on women throughout Ireland can never be underestimated.
Vicky took her anger, and the power that came from it, and harnessed it with grace and grit, becoming a talisman for the countless women who had been ignored, dismissed, and condescended to by a flawed system. From the day she heard she was not the only woman to have been left in the dark by CervicalCheck, she was determined to lead the charge, so others did not have to do the same.
Dealing with a diagnosis of terminal illness is a lonely path, truly understood only by those who go through it, but no one would have expected anything else from Vicky other than for her to retreat after a settlement was reached and concentrate on herself and her family. Instead, she chose to put her head above the parapet at a time of huge personal torment and turmoil to fight and campaign for others.
Her drive and determination were forged long before she took up the fight for women affected by the CervicalCheck scandal. It could be seen as a child, when she pestered her mother to bring her to see the local headmaster, pulling a book from her satchel and reading from it, to prove to him that she was ready for school even though she was not yet four years of age. She started the following week.
It was evidenced in the way she picked up the pieces after what she described as one of the defining moments of her life — when she ended up in a coma after a car crash in France that claimed three lives, including those of her boyfriend and her friend, and paralysed another of her friends. It was her first experience of challenging the medical establishment — she spoke about how, on her return to Ireland, she had stood up to a surgeon who had written in her report that she had an “attitude problem”.
And how thankful we were for that attitude.
What also made Vicky so remarkable was that she found the strength, energy, and the time, to fight for others during the toughest fight of all. It is a natural instinct to turn inwards while dealing with any illness — to focus on whatever it takes to keep going, for yourself, and others who are close to you.
However, she turned outwards, shining her light on those who needed it, serving as a support to other women in a similar position, while also turning to the heartbreaking task of making memories with her family and children — whether that was the joy of attending a gig by one of her favourite bands, The Stunning, or meeting Ed Sheeran with her daughter Amelia at his concert in Cork.
She seized new opportunities, including a role as guest editor on the Irish Examiner supplement Feelgood, in which, despite her own experience, she urged women to continue to get their smear tests.
It also took a lot of bravery and effort to share her story in her beautifully-written memoir Overcoming, which is a fitting testament to an ordinary, turned remarkable, life. Anyone who has ever been affected by cancer, which is most of us, will have recognised the nerve-shredding experiences she described, as she captured the pain of it all with honesty and a distinct lack of bitterness.
She gave a voice to the hundreds of thousands of Irish people affected by cancer and was the embodiment of showing strength in vulnerability, sacrificing her privacy to lay bare the harrowing details of her treatment and its side effects, giving an insight into the brutal ravages of cervical cancer.
She also lent her voice to other health issues affecting women — greatly aiding the movement towards open discussion of topics such as menstruation, miscarriage, birth trauma, and menopause.
For a generation inculcated with an automatic respect for authority figures, her fearlessness in tackling those in powerful positions was another reason for admiration. She took on those who criticised her, including the head of CervicalCheck, over her stance on natural health treatments.
Vicky was always aware of her integrity, writing in her book of how she considered refusing an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick because of her unease about a possible encounter with the university’s then chancellor, former health minister Mary Harney, who had presided over the original outsourcing of smear testing in Ireland.
Ms Harney later wrote to her saying she would be unable to attend the conferring as she had to attend meetings in Brussels, putting Vicky’s concerns to rest. Ms Harney added that she could not remember a time in the recent past when the entire population had felt more empowered by the actions and voice of one woman.
Vicky had an impressive intellect, and the enviable skill of being able to distill complicated scientific and medical information for the layperson, something I experienced first hand when she generously took the time to chat to me for an article about Pembro — the drug that she credited with prolonging her life — shortly after she had been hospitalised with an infection.
As she sat down with a cup of tea on the other end of the line, she patiently talked me through the treatment and its effects. She didn’t sugarcoat the impact of her campaigning either.
When I asked her how she kept going, she said she felt compelled to help those who did not have the wherewithal to take on what she had. “People are contacting me the whole time so I know there are a huge number of people out there who couldn’t do this, they don’t know where to start, they don’t know what to do,” she said. “Reading people’s stories and knowing that they are relying on you to help them, it’s hard.”
But still she didn’t turn away. She faced her own fears, while taking on the worries of others. She was the warrior the women of Ireland needed to stand up and fight for them, the formidable, fierce, and defiant leader who taught us to embrace our anger and who so eloquently voiced our hurt, pain, and frustration.
For that, she will be forever loved and never forgotten.
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