And if you didn’t hear any results or anything again from Genomics England how would you feel about that?

If I didn’t hear anything more from them?

Yeah.

I wouldn’t mind [laughing]. I don’t mind. Yeah, that’s fine as well. Yeah.

Yeah. So you’d be okay with not hearing anything.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And why is that? Can you explain sort of why?

Can I? Oh well, I don’t know. I want to live my life as normal again. You know? I want to be how I was before the diagnosis, if that’s possible. Or as near to that as possible. So any trawling over everything, anything that reminds me of my illness, I’d just quite like to close the door on it. Yeah.

And someone came to speak to us in the waiting room about it, if we were interested. I say ‘we’ because I was with my partner.

Yeah.

And, I was – To be honest mentally I wasn’t in a place to sort of do anything. And I would’ve said, probably said, “No [laughing], I can’t be bothered with it. I know I can’t be doing with it.” But my partner’s a scientist and academic. He works at the university.

Ah, okay.

And he said, “I think you should do it. I think it could be good, a good thing.”

Mmm.

You know he read through it with me, because I was a bit unable to focus. And he said, “It might, you know you might gain from it. There might be things in there that are going to help you, you get some extra screening possibly, and some extra stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise get.”

Mmm.

So I thought oh whatever’, you know, I’ll do it.

Did she sort of introduce herself?

Yes.

What did she sort of say? How did she sort of introduce the –

Gosh I can’t remember. She was quite formal.

Yeah.

She was polite and there was no pressure.

Okay.

I don’t think there was any pressure at all to do it. You know, I didn’t see her handing forms to everybody, or anything. She just gave one to me. But there was probably nobody else in the waiting room at the time. So I didn’t feel – I think my partner had heard of it, as a project possibly. No, she just left me to read it. She didn’t feed me with any information, like; this will be good for you because blah blah blah. You know, nothing like that. She didn’t use any tactics to influence my decision at all, it was very – read it, you can do it, or not, doesn’t matter either way.

And then, did you go then to the separate room?

Then we went to a separate room. And we, we filled this in, in the separate room. And I think I might have done this before the bloods, I can’t remember. Yeah I think we did the bloods last. So I signed all these, and she gave me the carbon copies.

So I did it. And I don’t really mind, they just had to – A woman that gave us the forms took some bloods. On top of the ones I had to take. I think maybe I had to take three more than the regular ones I would’ve needed for that pre-op assessment.

Yeah.

So she took those bloods and that was it. I just agreed to allowing them to take part of my stuff [laughing], after the surgery. During the surgery they took, took material, you know, from my womb. Part of – a sort of biopsy for their own, their own uses.

Yeah.

As well as what was taken, you know, for – by the surgeons.

And so did you then have to sign things?

Yeah.

What happened then?

I think I copied – this was the consent form that I had to fill in.

Oh yeah.

When she took my bloods.

Oh, so she took your bloods there and then?

She took my bloods. She did all the bloods. Because she was a nurse.

Yeah.

I didn’t need to have two sessions where they took blood. She just did five with one, you know, continuously with one thing.

Yeah.

Which was quite practical.

Yeah.

Because I thought I was going to have to have.

Another.

Two sessions in two different rooms with two different people. You know, one in one arm and one in the other arm, but it was all taken from one.

Okay. So it was the same nurse that you saw for the interview?

So that was quite good. The same nurse. No that was the – that was, it was this nurse. The nurse who gave me the genomes. [Name].

Yeah.

She did the, took the bloods, herself.

Ah okay, yeah.

And then – so she took the ones she required, and then she gave the other ones to the department for their needs.

Oh okay.

Which were, you know, the pre-op assessment needs. Yeah.

Well it sounded like a sort of big project. Sort of an ambitious one, so something that would be influential, not just a tiny thing. It sounded like a really big one. So that makes, you know – to me, yeah, it sounded useful. The fact that I might get extra screenings was a, was a plus. You know? Whether that actually will happen or not, I don’t know. But I guess that’s, you know – that’s a positive thing. And it’s almost giving something back isn’t it [laughing]. In, in a setting where you are, well receiving free health care from the NHS basically, and yeah, returning something to it.

Well it sounded like a sort of big project. Sort of an ambitious one, so something that would be influential, not just a tiny thing. It sounded like a really big one. So that makes, you know – to me, yeah, it sounded useful. The fact that I might get extra screenings was a plus. You know? Whether that actually will happen or not, I don’t know. But I guess that’s, you know – that’s a positive thing. And it’s almost giving something back isn’t it [laughing]. In a setting where you are, well receiving free health care from the NHS basically, and yeah, returning something to it.

Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Sort of, you feel like, sort of that you’re giving something back, or?

I haven’t really thought about it before [laughing].

Okay.

But I haven’t go much more to say on it, except that I think that’s probably, you know – I have a lot of respect for people that work in the health industry, and in hospitals. And you know, have that commitment to that kind of work. And I guess in in cancer as well particularly, because it must be grim, a grim area to sort of have to work. So I don’t know. It’s all part of yeah, respecting – you know, the people involved, who are striving to make things better. Yeah.