Talk about it first and foremost. Have a cry about it because it is your right to feel that, Oh my God I’m a victim of this or that; I don’t understand what’s happening with my body Get emotional, get it all out. Speak to people, speak to your family about it so that they have some understanding. If you get given some leaflets don’t just put them on the side and, Oh that’s never going to happen to me Read them. If you can’t tolerate reading them, get your family to read them to you.

Subsequently went to hospital, colposcopy clinic. And that kind of misnomer thing where they either freeze it or burn it, or whichever way it is around, I don’t know. But a bit unpleasant, and it obviously got somethere was lots of treatment and things. I don’t know exactly what it was called, medications and what not and after a while I seemed to be fine.

But then obviously they like to review the smears after that because of the abnormalities that had occurred, and subsequently the same thing happened, a little bit later, a couple of years later.

But this time, yet again it did go very, very fast. And my doctor was so concerned that I’d actually booked a trip to Australia. I was going away for sort of six weeks and she was aware of that. And when the results came back, I remember it was the Thursday of the week. I was flying on something like the Sunday or early the Monday morning.

So she must’ve got the results, and actually when I got home on the Thursday evening, there was a hand delivered note through my door, saying that she’d booked me into the colposcopy clinic at [hospital name] to go on Saturday. That’s obviously the concern that she had. Throughout all of this I can’t say that I felt ill physically.

So for the last seven years pretty much you’ve been fine?

I have been fine. They did keep reviewing it which obviously, and I was sort of, Can I have six monthly smears Not that I love that, legs up in stirrups business but, that sort of scrape, but I didn’t want the same situation to myself happening. And I wanted to know how my body was reacting, also to that treatment and whether it was fighting everything, and what cells were going to develop again. So, yes, touch lots and lots of wood, no nothing has happened since.