I’ve been going for smears as and when advised really from probably the age of 25 I’d say. Maybe a bit before because I was 25 when I was first diagnosed. I think, looking back, I had had a few occasions where smears had come back with inadequate cells and I’d gone for repeat smears, but had never been concerned about that because they’d always come back as normal the second time.

So when I’d gone for my smear, I think I’d got a letter saying there was inadequate cells again. So I thought, Okay, it’s a bit inconvenient but it’s just the same as before, obviously they haven’t got enough. So I went for a repeat smear. I was on nights, working as a nurse at the time when I got the letter. So I didn’t actually open it until I’d got up, which was in the evening when I would be going to work.

And I looked at it, and scanned through it and it was saying that it was abnormal, bits were in bold text. And I skimmed to those bits that were saying severe dyskaryosis and CIN stage 3, and I didn’t really understand anything at the time. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew I had to get to work, so just folded it up and put it in my bag, and thought, ‘Well I’ll deal with that later. I’ve got to get to work.

I settled all the children on the night shift and read them their stories. When the ward was quiet, that’s when I got the letter out again and had a look through it, and read it slowly and was wondering what did it mean and what was going to happen, and what would happen next? And.

Because this letter was just after a routine?

Just a routine smear, yes. And normally you get a letter back that says everything’s okay, and I’d file it and you get on with your life.

And sometimes you’d had letters saying that there was an abnormal result, or not enough cells to?

Yes that’s right.

And this one was different?

This one was different. It was saying that an abnormality had been picked up and that obviously I needed to do something about it.

And at that time it was your GP that phoned you at home?

Yes and that’s the thing that I remember thinking, Gps don’t ring very often And I think then that yeah, I didn’t want to sort of think, it’s hard to explain. Like you sort of say, Oh I know that I have to go and do this and deal with this but why are they calling me? Is it more serious, is i

So you’re not really knowing how serious it is, and just as in all the dramas on anything, you think Oh the phones ringing, you know, this is going to be just the worst news ever But in fact I think, if I’d have understood that was procedural, and of course the quicker you go and deal with things obviously the better, you know. But I think all this sort of stuff and dramas and TV documentaries, Aah, the phones ringing, yeah It sort of immediately puts you into panic mode really, but obviously, you know.

And the phone call would make the process quicker, would a letter, would you have preferred a letter?

Do you know what, I’m thinking probably I might have put a letter in the drawer. I think I might, even though, like I say and going back on the time, I knew instinctively that something wasn’t right, I just knew something wasn’t right because I don’t, like I can’t explain why, and as I say the only sign I had was the one tail end of blood at the end of a monthly cycle. And so I think in a way it was, the phone call was good. The phone call did make me think, No, you really have to go and go to where we say, you know, and don’t ignore the next procedure

I don’t like the term erosion because it implies that there is an abnormality. I prefer the term ectropium. Ectopic tissue is tissue that appears somewhere outside the site of its normal origin. And what an ectropium is, it’s the presence of these glandular cells that I mentioned earlier, on the outside of the cervix. it’s part of normal growth.

When you reach puberty the cervix grows and it grows slightly unevenly so that the inside grows more than the outside. And the effect is that it opens up like a flower so that these cells are visible on the outside. The other condition where it’s more apparent is during pregnancy or women on the combined oral conceptive pill because of the effect of hormones.

it’s completely harmless. it’s a part of normal growth and it’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

I started having symptoms last August. I had some abnormal bleeding between periods. I wasn’t too concerned about it, it was very light. But I decided to go and see my GP as I’d never had a smear before. So after going to see my GP he did an internal examination and he said that he wasn’t too concerned. He thought it was cervical erosion, but he’d do a smear anyway. Which was sent away for testing.

We subsequently went on holiday in early September. And I got a letter back from the GP just before I went saying that I did have an infection. So I went off on holiday thinking kind of that was the end of it, and that had been the cause of it.

But while I was on holiday I got a call from the GP saying that they’d actually picked up cancer on my smear or something that was indicative of cancer.

So I flew home and then went back to the GP to discuss my results. The GP did think at that point, as it was quite an unusual result, it wasn’t just CIN3, that they would find an area of cancer. When they did further testing, they were obviously just concerned at that point where the cells had come from.

Basically my husband left me in August ’05 after 16 years. Obviously again it wasn’t priority for me to go to the hospital and get that done [cervical screening]. Then I met someone, and within ten months of being with him I found out he’d cheated on me. So I decided to go to the doctors to get just checked out, and to make sure I hadn’t caught anything because he didn’t give me the opportunity to tell me that he’d, before we you know slept together again.

So I went and had my smear, and it came back and said I was CIN1. So, asked me, I think I had it repeated six months later. And it was CIN2. So then they said to me, okay, well they need to, you know re-do this. I had a biopsy.

Well it was quite an incredible story actually because it was somebody I knew whod taught English at the school I was at, and he was a psychic, he was a spiritualist. And I didn’t know him very well, but I did respect him as an academic. And at the time I didn’t know anything about spiritualism. In fact I did actually equate it with people who aren’t very intelligent. I thought it was a load of rubbish. I was surprised when I found out he was one. But he kept insisting, he insisted that I saw a friend of his.

And I went to see this guy who was psychic, and he asked me if anyone had cancer of the throat in my family. And of course I didn’t connect the two. And he said he had a woman who was telling me that I should, you know, watch my throat. And it wasn’t until weeks later I thought, oh, neck of the womb, neck of the cervix, oh, my mother. And it was quite remarkable, and I went racing along.

And when the nurse looked at my cervix, she said it looked very healthy. And I thought, oh yes it’s a load of rubbish. And then I felt quite, you know, complacent again. And then the letter popped on the mat and it said, you know, there had been severe changes, or changes in your cervical cells. And I went for a colposcopy at the colposcopy clinic.