Lorraine Walsh, another victim of the mishandled smear tests who worked with Ms. Phelan in 221+, said her friend “was very detailed, very focused. She liked to get right into the nitty-gritty. She was very well read, very intelligent, and always well prepared. On the flip side, she was very fun to be around. She was great craic — but don’t cross her,” using a local phrase for great fun.
Averil Power, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, called Ms. Phelan’s death heartbreaking.
“She beat the odds so many times, getting new treatments, we hoped she’d do it again,” Ms. Power said. “It was not unexpected, and she spoke so freely and openly about planning for her death, but it was still shocking to lose her. She did everything she could to get more time with her children, Amelia and Darragh, and her husband, Jim. They are missing their mother now, and that’s the saddest part.”
A statement released by Ms. Phelan’s husband and two children said that “her passing will leave a void in all our lives, that at this point seems impossible to fill.”
Ms. Phelan’s case dates back to 2011, when her routine Pap smear, taken under the auspices of Ireland’s state-funded CervicalCheck screening program, was sent to a Texas subcontractor, Medical Pathologies Laboratories Inc., for examination, and came back negative. In 2014, she was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. Three years later, she learned that a 2014 audit of hundreds of Irish negative smear tests that had been followed by cancers had found that at least 200 of the tests, including hers, had in fact showed evidence of the disease.
“If I was diagnosed [in 2011] I probably would have had to have a procedure and at worst a hysterectomy,” she said in evidence in court. “If I was told sooner, I would not be in a position of a terminal cancer diagnosis.”
