Cervical Check campaigner Vicky Phelan shared a Christmas message yesterday urging people to “live in the now”.
The brave mum-of-two, whose family enjoy unconventional Christmas dinners of trout and lamb in place of the usual turkey and ham, said that despite her grim prognosis, their festive plans were not changing.
She said: “Every day I can get up without too much pain is a good day.
“The plan for Christmas is the same as it always is, my kids are 16 and 10 so we still have Santa coming to the house so that’s great.
“We record the kids opening presents on an old iPad every year and it’s lovely to have all the videos on the same device.
“It’s nice to do it and the kids love looking back at it too
“Once the presents are open, it’s a matter of cleaning up the mess and we put on the breakfast.
“It’s a lovely Christmas morning.”
Vicky’s diagnosis worsened earlier this year when doctors took the decision to move her to palliative care.
But the 46-year-old isn’t letting it keep her down and is focusing on living in the present.
She added: “I think you can’t help but have a different view of life and how precious it is when you’re in the situation that I’m in.
“Everybody thinks they have all this time and they keep pushing for more but really when the illness hit me and it came back terminal, it made me appreciate the present moment.
“A lot of us don’t, we’re living in the future or we’re looking back to the past.
“Now is the time we have and what I’ve learned is you have to live in the now and as soon as I started doing that, happiness came easily.
“I’m happy with the little things, if I can get out for a walk without doubling over in pain, it’s a good day.
“It really makes you appreciate absolutely everything.”
And speaking about their Christmas dinner, Vicky told Anton Savage on Newstalk: “Jim does most of the cooking, he’s better at the traditional meals.
“We’ve never done a turkey but we always do a ham and we do either roast lamb or roast chicken, we kind of vary it every year depending on what we want. Sometimes we even do fish.
“If I get too tired during the day I can just go back to bed if I need to, I sleep a lot more than normal now.
“Sometimes I’m up at 11am or even 12 if I’m still tired.
“If I get up too early, I end up feeling sick so I try not to.
“I just give into it and that’s what you have to do, you need to listen to your own body.
“We’ll watch a movie and eat a load of crap like everyone else, that’s all I want to do.”
