Yes, obviously in the beginning when the doctor are talking to you they ask you if you’ve had any cancer in your family which, there wasn’t anything. They’d asked me if I’d had lots of sexual partners, which I hadn’t. They’d asked me if I’d started having sexual intercourse early, which I didn’t. They’d asked me about my diet, which I thought was quite normal. They’d asked if I’d had anything stressful things in my life which I couldn’t actually pinpoint anything. So for me I didn’t feel there was a real, there was a real cause, I’m just a statistic I’m afraid. I don’t know why I really don’t and if I could have said one of those things, there wasn’t anything really.

One of the things they talk about as well, perhaps more recently, is smoking, have you heard about that?

I haven’t no, I’ve never smoked, never.

And I don’t deny if somebody says, if they ask questions about cancer, I don’t tell them it was some other cancer. I don’t feel unable to say it. And in fact I feel quite the other way round, I want to tell people that it can happen to quite normal people. I think Edwina Currie had sort of , linked it to that perhaps if people didn’t smoke, didn’t sleep around then they wouldn’t sort of get these things. And I wanted to almost counteract that by saying I’ve been in a monogamous relationship since the age of 19, I’m still with the guy, we have a very normal sexual life and it can happen to anybody, if you have one partner it can happen to you.

Well yeah, I mean I went through all this again from the information that I read at the beginning and my consultant. And the most common I’ve been told is the HP virus, the wart virus and being told, well I’ve asked, I said ‘Do you know what caused my cancer? Now you know you’ve seen it and now I’ve been operated on, can you tell the cause?’ And I’ve been told ‘No. Which, from what I’ve read about it I was really surprised because I’d only been with one man, I only had one sexual partner in years and I said ‘Well why has this happened now? If that was the cause of it then why didn’t it happen fifteen years ago when I met my current partner you know, what’s happened?’ And he did tell me it can lay dormant and then anything can have an effect on cells that might make them transform from quite an innocent virus into something more aggressive. But I mean whether it was that, I don’t know and he didn’t really dwell on any other causes.

The other thing with cervical cancer is sexual connotations and that’s very difficult to deal with because there are theories you’ve been a bad person basically which I’m not sure how medically that pans out these days. Theres various theories on people who are more prone to cervical cancer anyway. One thing, again I wish I’d known more about about at the time is that I had HPV for a long time and there was never any connection made when I was treated for that, that I should have more regular smear tests and now I think you would do which would pick it up earlier. So that’s something that’s progressed on since then. There wasn’t the connection at the time at all I don’t think.

I think medical opinion differs anyway, I mean I don’t think anyone can say it’s a direct causal relationship or anything. It’s just one of the factors that seems to be involved when people have cervical cancer. And I think the important thing that came out with talking to people is that people shouldn’t blame themselves. Nobody really understands cancer otherwise they’d be able to cure it wouldn’t they?. So theres no point blaming yourself. It’s very difficult with that sort of cancer in particular in some ways because other sorts of cancers. I suppose you could blame yourself for eating the wrong food or something like that, there again if anybody wants to blame themselves I suppose they will, but theres more connotations with cervical cancer in a way I think that makes it harder for people I think.

I read, when I had the dodgy smear and I had the colposcopy I got a book about it and some of the things that they said were starting sex life at a very early age. These are possible causes, having more than one sexual partner, I forget what the other things were.

I suspect most women in the last sort of 30 or 40 years, may be not 40 but the last 30 years, there aren’t that many women who meet the person they are going to spend the rest of their life with and spend the rest of their life with one person. There are some of course but I wouldn’t advocate sort of blatant promiscuity but I had a broken marriage I’ve had a few different relationships and I wouldn’t see myself as being wildly promiscuous when I was young but nor was I a little nun either. So I don’t blame myself for that, I don’t sort of sit and think, because I think that’s a bit futile really isn’t it, what’s the point me sitting around thinking oh if only I’d done this, if only I’d done that.

And so I think that some of the information that’s going round about the causes of cervical cancer is actually causing people to think well you only get cervical cancer if you’re wildly promiscuous and started having sex when you were sort of 15 or 16 years old and of course that’s wrong. I think that there may be are some misconceptions.

The interesting thing that I found was that one of the things that I can remember saying when I went for one of the consultations, I can’t remember which one, was I’d better give up smoking and I’d better lose some weight fast. Both of which he swept to one side and said “Don’t worry about either of that, we can treat you especially at this stressful time you might feel that you need to have a cigarette if that’s your way of coping.” He said “Think about that afterwards.” He didn’t say at the time that it may a contributing factor. I’ve heard over the course of time that it is one thing that is thought to be a contributory factor.

I no longer smoke, not because I gave up because I’d just sort of made a conscious effort to give up smoking but during the course of my radiotherapy treatment one of the things that I couldn’t face was a cigarette and smoke of any sort, it was just one of the things. Another thing was coffee, went off coffee. But it’s not something I consciously did and when I’d got to the end of my various treatments, one thing I really, really wanted that I was really looking forward to was a cigarette, but it was like going back to what wouldve been day one I suppose because I couldn’t understand how I ever started smoking in the first place because it was feeling light headed and awful and I thought no I can’t do this.

So I didn’t make a conscious effort to give up smoking I just did, due to other factors, but I never started again. And yes I have heard about the links but I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. It still, smoking isn’t good for many different things. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to smoke. I feel it’s a person’s right to choose. I don’t condemn anybody for doing it either because once you’ve started it is very difficult to give up. But I do believe that for many different illnesses it’s not a good thing.