'It's been a shit few days.' Vicky Phelan shares update from her latest round of treatment 

Vicky Phelan gave an update on an extremely difficult few days. Picture: Instagram

Vicky Phelan has had an extraordinarily difficult number of days. It started on Monday when she woke up with an 'unmerciful headache' and nausea she would usually associate with the days after treatment. The trouble was, she hadn't begun her ninth round of what she affectionately calls Pembro 2.0 just yet. 

"I was making my calls home to the kids when I had to cut the call short because I knew I was going to be sick. 

I vomited from about 11 o'clock in the morning on to 4.30, I think I called the doctor because I knew there was no sign of loading up, and I was thinking of treatment the next day."

The hospital brought Phelan in for fluids, but it was 8pm that night by the time they got her hooked up to the iv. "I was actually just at the end of my tether at that stage, with the headache and vomiting," Phelan says. 

The visit took a different turn as Vicky was dealt with as a potential Covid patient, due to her symptoms. 

"So they brought me in, like, through this really ridiculous underground kind of tunnel onto the building into an isolation ward where there were nurses all gowned up and eventually they took my Covid test."

By this stage, Phelan says she was "like a demon."

"I thought they keep me for the night because by the time I finished it was like half past one in the morning.  I really wanted to be kept because I was so tired and so, you know, had to be back up at half six the following morning, to get a taxi back in for treatment, so it made no sense to send me home they should have just kept me but they didn't."

The following morning, after four hour's sleep and nothing to eat, Phelan's taxi failed to show up to bring her to the hospital. Fed up and exhausted, she eventually got to the hospital for treatment and proceeded in her usual fashion, assuming that her Covid test from the night before was negative. 

"So my nurse rang me and kind of had a go at me for not answering the questions [at the hospital door] correctly because I had had nausea and vomiting within the past 48 hours."

The nurse explained to Phelan that she had not had a rapid Covid test and as they were still waiting for the result, she would have to go to an isolation ward to wait. Riddled with sleeplessness, she lay on the bed on the ward and slept for two hours until she was called with a negative result. 

"You think they're efficient over here. I'm telling you they're not."

A tearful and worn out Phelan was less chipper than we have become used to seeing on her weekly updates, and tonight's message gives a stark reminder that she is in America undergoing extreme treatment to fight for her life. 

She misses her family and friends desperately, and the distance is weighing heavily on the activist. 

'I'm tired and homesick I suppose. It's times like this that you want see people that you love, isn't it, you know, it's just hard when you're going through it on your own."