Why are women STILL gambling lives? with their M
Ten years ago, reality star Jade Goody’s death from cervical cancer prompted thousands to have smear tests. But now, testing rates are lower than ever — with heartbreaking consequences...
Every three weeks earlier this year, Helen Forman went through rounds of aggressive chemotherapy. Having been diagnosed with stage- four cervical cancer last November, the 36- year- old was pumped full of powerful drugs to try to beat the disease. The side-effects were devastating.
‘After only two courses my hair fell out and my brows and lashes followed,’ she says. ‘My mouth was tender, I had a permanent sore throat. But the dragging tiredness was the worst. I slept for hours, unable to get out of bed until late afternoon.’
Then came radiation and more chemotherapy, which left her with clots on her lungs and tinnitus in one ear. She’s now waiting to hear if she’ll have to have a hysterectomy.
Luckily, she’s never wanted children, but still doesn’t know what the outcome will be. e. ‘But I have to remain hopeful.’
What haunts Helen is this could so easily ly have been avoided. Had she taken up even n one of the smear tests she’d been offered over er the past decade, doctors might have detected d abnormal changes to the cells in her cervix (the opening of her womb) and the problem could have been dealt with swiftly.
Instead, she will endure months of treatment t— all for the sake of a two-minute test. .
‘At the time, I was too embarrassed to get et undressed in a communal changing room, let et alone in front of a nurse or doctor,’ says ys Helen. ‘every time I got a reminder letter I would throw it in the bin. I thought ht it would never happen to me. But it has and now I have to deal with it. t. It’s so stupid.’
Tragically, Helen is far from unique. e. research this year revealed three in n four women have risked their lives s by missing their smear test at some e GP surgeries.
At one practice in North London, n, just 13.8 per cent of women aged 25 5 to 49 have been tested in the past st three years. A survey of 2,000 young g women found 81 per cent feel ‘embarrassed’ rdy by the test, while an interim NHS report damned the appointment system for making it difficult for women to book their test.
LAST month saw the release of a harrowing documentary about reality Tv star Jade Goody, who died of cervical cancer ten years ago, aged just 27. The no-holds-barred coverage of her illness at the time saw a huge increase in screening attendance. Sadly, it wasn’t to last.
Uptake in Britain stands at 71 per cent, an all-time low. It means about five million women are overdue a test. The disease is killing 1,000 women in Britain a year, with 3,200 diagnosed. But this is projected to rise by 40 per cent over the next 20 years.
Worried experts at Public Health england have launched a screening campaign to boost take-up.
‘The statistics are very worrying,’ says Kate Sanger, of cervical cancer charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. ‘ We know in some areas that only one in two young women are attending screening, yet when they do, they often have a positive experience.
‘We need to do more to tackle the myths around smear tests. There are many reasons why they don’t attend, but embarrassment certainly is a factor. Women are bombarded by images of “perfect” bodies and they worry what they look like.
‘But we have to get the message across that health professionals who perform these tests only care about what your cervix looks like.’
Jade Goody’s ex-partner Jeff Brazier, the father of her two sons, has revealed she, too, ignored doctors’ letters, hiding her head in the sand.
He says: ‘We know how that ended up and I know as the father of the two children left behind that the last thing you want to do is tell them they are going to have the rest of their childhood, from age four and five, without the most important person in their lives,’ he said.
Helen Forman admits she, too, ignored at least five doctors’ reminders to book a smear test, from the age of 25. ‘ I’m bit weird when it comes to my body,’ says the senior payroll administrator, who lives in
High profile Good dy Merseyside with partner Joe, 40, a store manager.
‘I didn’t even like getting undressed d for Pe at school. Joe saw me throw w my reminder letters away, but said d nothing. But then he throws away his s health-screening letters, too.’ But in April last year, Helen noticed d
P,abnormal bleeding. ‘I went to the GP, who agreed with me that it was probably from missing a Pill,’ she says. . ‘But she asked me to come back. Of f course, I didn’t go because I hated d the thought of being examined.
‘In the September it got worse, so I finally booked an appointment. I felt t sick and nervous.’
Sadly, she had left it too late. ‘My y GP tried to make me feel at ease but t I could tell how worried she was.
‘I remember saying: ‘ you don’t t think it’s cancer, do you?’ All she e would say was: “I hope not.” ’ Helen was referred for a colposcopy, where the cervix is examined with a microscope. ‘I was very scared but the nurses were brilliant, explaining everything to me and making me feel calm.
‘It didn’t hurt. I came away from that appointment feeling that if I did have something wrong, it would be caught early and treated. I really wasn’t too worried.’ However, in late October, Helen got the devastating news that she had cancer. Further tests revealed it was advanced stage four and had spread to her lymph nodes. She needed aggressive treatment.
‘ It’s scary and it’s unreal and I have good and bad days,’ admits Helen. ‘No one has told me I’m definitely going to die, but of course we know it’s serious.
‘I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to just go for the smear.
‘There should be more support for women like me, who are embarrassed. We should be telling girls in schools and colleges how important it is.’
Hayley rosindell was also diagnosed with cervical cancer after ignoring her smear test for four years. Now she says she’d ‘march her daughter to the doctor to get it done’.
Or, at least, if she had a daughter. But Hayley, 39, can never have a child
of her own, due to her illness. ‘I’d been getting reminder letters for years and the GP kept mentioning it, but I was too embarrassed to go,’ she says. ‘My mum kept saying it was important, but I just brushed it to one side.’
Aged 29, she finally went for her first smear. ‘It didn’t hurt a bit and I had no idea what I’d been worried about,’ says Hayley, a recruitment consultant from Bexley Heath, in South-east London.
‘Two months later I had a letter saying they had found abnormal cells and I’d need a colposcopy. However, I wasn’t unduly worried. Mum said she’d had a similar scare and it turned out fine. But a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call to tell me there was a problem and I needed a scan.
‘By this point I was really scared. I kept thinking of Jade Goody and that I was going to die like her.’
A scan showed nothing, but a biopsy found that Hayley had a 30mm grade- one tumour. Her womb, fallopian tubes and cervix would have to be removed — meaning she could never have a baby.
‘I was single, and the idea of meeting someone and having to tell them I couldn’t have children was really upsetting. But if it was a choice between dying or not having children, it was an easy choice.
‘I met my husband Jamie a few years later. Thankfully, he has nine-year-old twin boys, so I’m a stepmother. But it’s devastating to think I’ll never have my own. ’
Cervical screening can prevent seven out of ten cases of cervical cancer by treating any abnormalities before they develop.
But for women who refuse the tests, the results can be tragic. Women such as Amanda Booth, a mother of three from Middlesbrough who died aged 28; mother-of-four Donna Lowe, of Milton Keynes, who died aged 32; and Sarah Glover, a mother of two, from Lancashire, who died in 2014 aged just 36.
‘It’s still very hard to believe she’s not here,’ says Sarah’s best friend Lisa Turnbull, 35. ‘I’ll never understand why she didn’t go for her test. Her death was avoidable.’
Suzanne Morgan, 53, a retired hospital worker, lost her mother Beryl to cervical cancer at age 63. When she went through her belongings afterwards, Suzanne made a haunting discovery. ‘My mother had never been for a smear in her life,’ she says. ‘She didn’t like the thought of anything like that. After she died, my sister and I found she’d kept all the NHS reminder letters. She’d written on them: ‘What a fool!’ and ‘Such an idiot!’ It broke our hearts that she could have been saved.’
It’s a regret many women have. Marianne Nicholson says she could ‘ shake myself ’ for not having a test. The legal secretary, 42, from Belfast was diagnosed with cervical cancer two years ago. ‘I’d had a really bad experience in my early 30s when a nurse made me feel embarrassed about bleeding during the test,’ says Marianne. ‘After that, I ignored the reminder letters.’
By 2016, Marianne started suffering lower back pain and bleeding between periods. But, like Helen, didn’t seek help until a concerned friend stepped in.
‘My good friend Nicola booked me in for a smear test. On the day they could see something was wrong and I was warned it could be cancer. I remember crying my eyes out and panicking.
‘I got the results a week and a half later. The consultant told me it was a grade one 4cm tumour. You hear those three words “you have cancer” and you immediately think the worst. The Macmillan nurse in the room was great and explained what would happen, but I was terrified I would die.’
ARIANNE had a hysterectomy in September 2017. ‘Amid all the stress and fear, mentally I was OK with it as I’ve never wanted children,’ she says.
‘I was in theatre for six hours but didn’t need chemotherapy. So far there’s no evidence the disease has spread and it’s been a year.
‘I feel so lucky that my friend booked that appointment.’
GP Philippa Kaye, a Jo’s Trust ambassador, says: ‘I hear all kinds of reasons why women put it off — they don’t want to take their clothes off, they think it will hurt, they worry what they look like “down there”. I’m not bothered.’
Hayley agrees. ‘I tell everyone my story hoping I can get others to get their smear.
‘ It doesn’t hurt and it’s not embarrassing. And it’s definitely not worth dying for.’