Vicky spoke about the importance of getting any symptoms checked out.

Irish cervical cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan has been documenting her experience with cancer since her diagnosis. Recently, Phelan spoke about how important it is for women to get checked regularly. During an Instagram live video with SocialMindIreland, Vicky explained how she noticed spotting in between her periods before she was diagnosed. "I was very lucky that I had regular periods," she said. "So by the time I started bleeding in-between my periods, I knew that something was wrong." Vicky added that as well as the spotting, she noticed that the colour of the blood was different. "Menstrual blood is dark blood," she explained. "I knew something was amiss because there was blood that I was seeing, kind of spotting on my knickers, wasn't dark blood. It was pink, kind of pinkish red." https://www.instagram.com/p/CRPkJ5NjPNc/ Vicky went on to explain that she bled "profusely" after having sex with her husband. It transpired that the sex had cause a tumour to shed. "I bled profusely after sex with my husband, and it was bright red. It was like a murder scene, there's no other way to describe it. "It frightened the living daylights out of the two of us but I just thought, at that stage, 'Oh Jesus, this is serious. There's something wrong here. You're like, 'This is not normal.'" Vicky then urged women to get themselves a smear, and not to delay in getting any symptoms checked out. "Is that worth risking getting cancer like this?" she asked. "No, it isn't. If you're bleeding at that stage, that's usually a symptom of advanced cancer  - it was with me." After months away from her family on a cancer trial in the United States, Vicky is back home in Ireland for the summer. For information on scheduling a cervical screening, head to Cervcial Check's website right here.