In July 2016 I was diagnosed with stage 1B cervical cancer.
Sadly, gynaecological cancers have run in my family and I have lost most of the women on my mother’s side to them, including my mum when she was just 41 years old. Smears used to start at 20 so I dutifully gritted my teeth and attended them due to this strong family history. I was always very self-conscious about going and often a bit stroppy about them as they were never easy. My cervix is (or was) tricky to get to and it always took 2 or 3 tests to get a proper sample and I was often getting abnormal results. At this early stage they just kept an eye on me with 3 monthly, 6 monthly and annual smears as abnormal results at that age are really common. In 2013 I got a borderline result and had LLETZ treatment (a procedure to remove all the abnormal cells from the cervix). The follow-up showed everything to be fine and I thought that was it for my brush with cancer. Not that I used the C word, it was all very deliberately “abnormal cells” and “borderline changes” at that point.
Fast-forward 2 years and I am seeing my GP for antibiotics and we get chatting about how I had been trying to get pregnant for a long while. She jumped right on it and referred me for fertility investigations. These investigations didn’t show any reason why I hadn’t become pregnant but did show abnormal cells. Here we go again! But this time, as I had already had one round of LLETZ I was thrown in to what became 8 months of very regular biopsies and 2 more LLETZ treatments. They just couldn’t get to the bottom of these now “pre-cancerous” cells and I was booked in for a trachelectomy. The plan was to remove my cervix then hand me back to the fertility clinic so they could help me get pregnant and support me through to a safe birth.
However, the surgeon wasn’t happy about a smudge on my MRI so wanted to do a few more biopsies first to be sure. Everyone expected it to be scar tissue so it wasn’t until the surgeons’ secretary called me in for an urgent appointment that I really panicked. I now had stage 1B cervical cancer and because of how close it was to my womb I was going to need a radical hysterectomy that would include my ovaries and lymph nodes. Once the hysterectomy was done and the tissue tested, it was found to have spread to the surrounding blood vessels so I then went on to have chemotherapy and both internal and external radiotherapy.
My cancer was a nasty and aggressive adenocarcinoma and I was totally shocked by how fast it had grown. I hadn’t had any symptoms at all, I didn’t feel ill and I live a healthy lifestyle yet this killer was hiding inside my body. I was very lucky it had been discovered at an early and treatable stage. I used to huff and puff about attending smears and even with my family history I never thought it would happen to me, but now that I know what the reality of a cancer diagnosis is like, I honestly believe a few minutes discomfort every 3 years is a very small trade-off for something that might save your life. I really urge every woman to attend screenings, and to talk openly to their doctors about any symptoms. Doctors have seen many vaginas before so there is no need to be shy and the sooner any problems are picked up the easier they are to treat.