Brave Rachel puts cervical cancer in the spotlight

Mum tells of devastation when given stage three diagnosis

A West Lothian mumof-two who put her heavy bleeding down to abnormal periods has spoken of her devastation after being told she has stage three cancer.

Brave Rachel Kennedy (32) thought she was perfectly healthy until she started experiencing unusual bleeding.

At first, the busy single mum believed her symptoms were just down to having the mirena coil fitted after the birth of her second son. But after experiencing a “scary amount of bleeding” for a third time, Rachel was referred to St John’s Hospital in Livingston for further investigations.

In November 2020, she was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer and has now started a gruelling regime of chemo, radiation and other medications and treatments.

Now Rachel, who lives in East Whitburn and works for Tesco Bank at The Gyle, has started a campaign to raise awareness of the disease and its symptoms.

Rachel said: “When I had the first bleed it was really heavy so I went to the doctors to have it checked out, but at the time I was going through a separation so they thought it could be a stress thing or maybe hormonal.

“But when I bled the third time it was a scary amount of blood so I went back to my GP and was referred to St John’s Hospital for further tests.

“The doctors were amazing, they looked around my cervix to take biopsies and unfortunately I bled again.

“But they said my cervix looked normal and that they would have the results for me in 10 days.

“It was ruled out that the coil was causing my issues, but cancer was never mentioned.”

Ten days later when Rachel was dropping her sons off at nursery, she received a worrying call to come into the hospital to speak with the consultant.

She said: “I headed into the hospital with my family and because it was lockdown, you weren’t supposed to take anyone, but the doctor asked me if I had brought someone for support and I knew then something was about to happen. The doctor said ‘I’m really sorry but it’s not good news’ and they started to talk to me about how I would need more scans.

“I had to get my sister Cheryl to come in because I couldn’t really process what they were saying because I was in so much shock.”

Rachel continued: “I then met with the doctor after I had an MRI to find out what stage I was at and was told I had stage three cancer.

“That means the tumour is in the cervix and surrounding tissues.

“They originally thought they would be able to just do a hysterectomy but discovered it had travelled into my lymph nodes.”

Now Rachel (pictured right) has set up a Facebook support group called Be the Queen of your own Castle to share the stories of herself and other brave women who are experiencing cervical cancer.

She has also started the #wearthatdress campaign which hundreds of people have already taken part in.

The fun movement encourages people to get dressed up during lockdown and take a picture with the hashtag #wearthatdress and when someone asks ‘why are you so dressed up today?’, you reply with ‘cervical cancer awareness.’

Rachel said: “I had originally set up the page to keep friends and family updated with what I was going through.

“But also I wanted something other women with cervical cancer could relate to because when I was looking for stuff, I couldn’t really find anything.

“It was all scientific and hard to understand rather than real people’s stories.

“The page just kind of took off and I was blown away by the reaction.

“Everyone wants a reason to dress up, even in lockdown, so the #wearthatdress campaign is for anyone who can take part and raise awareness of cervical cancer and how important it is to get smears and get checked out if anything seems different.

“It wasn’t a smear test that picked up my cancer, so I want women to know if they have any unusual symptoms, they should get checked out, regardless of lockdown.”

I could not really process what they were saying Rachel Kennedy