Vicky Phelan has told how her last wish is for women to be in “safe hands” if they ever fall ill.
The campaigner, who has terminal cervical cancer, is releasing her memoirs today.
In the new book, Overcoming, mum-of-two Vicky wrote: “My dying wish will be for the women of Ireland – that because of what has happened in this past year, maybe my last year on earth, they will be able to trust that their lives are in safe hands, that they will be minded and cared for at their most vulnerable, and that everything will be done to give them the lives they deserve.
"There will be others who will continue this fight when I’m gone.
“Because we are all in this together, at the end of the day. We all come from that same place – from a mother’s womb. This is everybody’s story.”
The book is being launched in Clontarf Castle, where Ms Phelan, a founding member of the 221+ CervicalCheck Patient Support Group, will be in conversation with Mary Kennedy.
Vicky, 44, appeared on the Late Late Show on Friday and thousands took to social media to thank her for her tireless campiagning.
In the book, Vicky, who was the first in her family to attend university, also reveals her cancer diagnosis was not her first brush with death. In 1994, during her time at the University of Limerick, Vicky travelled to Peronne, France, on an Erasmus programme.
But while there she suffered horrendous injuries in a crash that killed her French boyfriend and friend from home Lisa.
Vicky had to learn how to walk again and rebuild her life
Vicky, originally from Kilkenny but living in Limerick, later met and married her husband, Jim, with whom she has two children, Amelia and Darragh.
She became a household name in April last year after being awarded €2.5million in her case against a US testing lab over the alleged misreading of her smear tests in what what would become known as the CervicalCheck scandal.
