Western Daily Press (Saturday)
I took off my brave face and started talking about how I was really feeling
Superfit former martial arts world champion Kerry Burridge is the third generation of her family to be diagnosed with what has been dubbed ‘the silent killer’. She explains to Janet Hughes how she is now campaigning to give women living with advanced ovar
KERRY Burridge may have been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer at the age of 39, but she has no intention of spending her life ticking things off a bucket list.
The shock diagnosis has brought some clarity, and all the former taekwondo world champion wants to do now is spend whatever precious time she has left doing normal things like walking her dog Bella with her wife Alison.
And she says being allowed to talk openly about how she wants quality rather than quantity of life and what that means to her without being hushed up has made all the difference.
Now the couple from Wickwar, Wotton-under-Edge, are fronting an emotional campaign to urge professionals and loved ones to make time to listen to the wishes of those who have ovarian cancer which kills 11 women every day.
Looking lovingly at her partner of 22 years, Alison May, the 43-year-old says she has no wish to go globetrotting and adds: “Just to be in her company is all that I need. For however long. Time together is the most precious thing.”
Kerry, who once travelled the world with taekwondo before injury forced her to give up competing and open a club in Stoke Gifford, Bristol, thought she would be the last person in the world to get ovarian cancer.
After watching how quickly it had taken both her mother and her nan, she was hyper alert to the dangers of the disease dubbed the silent killer and was determined not to go through the same ordeal.
Her nan, Emily Perry, was diagnosed in 1998 and died in 2002 aged 70. Her mum, Sue Burridge, was diagnosed in 1999 and died at home in 2003 aged 50.
“My mum was being treated for
IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] when she happened to see another GP, a woman, who examined her and got her straight into St Michael’s which is where I ended up,” she said.
“The surgeon opened her up and closed her back up again and said there’s nothing we can do. It’s terminal.
“I was 21 at the time and went in with my dad to get the news and was like, ‘hold on, no she’s only 47, you must be able to do something’. But he couldn’t. It was too late.”
Her mother had three rounds of chemotherapy to keep it at bay but eventually the treatment became too much.
“When my nan passed away my mum said ‘I can’t keep doing this any more. I can’t keep having this’,” recalled Kerry.
“I understood because I could see what she was going through and how painful it was for her. It’s really difficult to see somebody you love suffering and wasting away. You could tell she had had enough.”
Her nan passed away in November and her mother the following February.
It never occurred to Kerry that the same thing could happen again because she was young and healthy and did not have any symptoms, but in 2014 she she asked for BRCA gene testing as a precaution.
Eventually she was tested and in August 2016 was told her risk was slight rather than significant.
“I was going to go back and stamp my feet because I really wanted preventative surgery,” she explained.
“I never wanted to have children of my own so getting my ovaries removed wasn’t an issue but life gets in the way and I put it on the backburner.”
Before she could question the results Kerry found a lump in her lower abdomen in November 2016 and blood tests and an ultrasound scan confirmed it was cancer.
Six weeks after she saw her GP she went under the surgeon’s knife on December 20, Alison’s birthday, and doctors found it had spread to her bowel and liver.
She woke up to find she had been given a colostomy and within weeks needed further surgery for a bowel blockage that turned out to be caused by scar tissue.
By then Kerry weighed just six stone and had gone down downhill physically and mentally, finding it hard to get out of bed each day or motivate herself to do anything.
She didn’t even think there was any point bonding with their new puppy Bella because she did not know how long she would have with her pet and refused to plan ahead in case it tempted fate and the cancer
Just to be in her company is all that I need. Time together is the most precious thing KERRY BURRIDGE
came back. The removal of her ovaries plunged her into an horrific early menopause and in 2018 she gave up the sport she had been involved in since she was 11 years of age.
“It’s not just a hobby you do once a week, it was my life for 30 years,” said Kerry, who once coached the national side.
“I am fiercely independent and when you are that ill all control is taken away from you and you have to rely on other people, whether that be nurses or your partner.”
Kerry says she could not have got through it without Alison, who hired a wheelchair to take her out for walks and was supportive throughout. When they met, Alison had two children aged eight and ten who they brought up together so family is important. They lost their kitchen and bathroom business but have downsized so their lives are less
stressful and found new ways to make a living.
But Kerry, who at first refused to allow visitors when she was in hospital because she did not want anyone to see her looking vulnerable, says one of the the hardest things was trying to put on a brave face.
“Other people find it difficult to talk to you about it,” she explained.
“Everybody says the same things. ‘How you doing? You are looking well, you’ll get through this, you are a fighter like your mother,’ “she explained.
“I would say ‘yes I’m fine’ and they’d say ‘that’s good’ because it made them better, but it isn’t really what you want to hear.”
She doesn’t blame people who don’t know what to say because she has been through the experience from both sides.
But she says the system means that overworked doctors and nurses are too busy doing tests, checking observations and changing drips to have time to sit and talk with frightened patients about how they feel and discuss their options in depth.
One day she confessed to a nurse how she was finding it hard living up to everybody’s expectations to be brave and was surprised to be told: ‘F*** everybody else, this is about you and how you feel’.”
It was a turning point. Talking to people about how she really feels and how she does not want to go through the same pain and suffering as her nan and mother has made a difference but she wishes she had also spoken up earlier about testing and preventative treatment.
Slowly she has found the confidence to live with cancer and takes pleasure in little things like going swimming with Alison for the first time or taking Bella for a walk. She can finally look forward to the future and would like to go on holiday to Portugal when everything calms down.
“When the oncologist gave me the diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer he told me that there is a high rate of reoccurrence,” she said.
“He said if you get to five years we will pat each other on the back, and obviously, knowing what my mum and nan had gone through, you ‘think this is it, it’s the end of the road’.” But it didn’t come back and at the moment I am good. I am plodding on quite nicely and able to do probably 95% of what I could do before. But in November/December this year it will be five years, which is a bit of a milestone. Touch wood I’m fine and still here but I am doing this campaign to make people aware of what the diagnosis means.”
Kerry and Alison, 55, have become figureheads for the Give Her Time campaign by Ovacome and Ovarian Cancer Action to give women living with advanced ovarian cancer a voice. Campaigners want those diagnosed with an advanced form of the disease, which kills over 4,000 women every year, to have more time with healthcare professionals to discuss treatment and other issues.
A survey of more than 250 women with advanced ovarian cancer found it was almost equally split between those who prioritised quality of life and those who prioritised length of life. Yet many felt they did not have time to talk this through and Kerry says women need a voice to speak about what they want and to trust their instincts about their bodies.
She points out that her mother was treated for IBS for nine months by a male GP before a female doctor spotted something was wrong and she herself waited two years to be tested for preventative surgery.
Victoria Clare, CEO at Ovacome, said in recent years there has been significant progress made in the care and treatment of ovarian cancer but women do not get enough time to discuss the increasing number of options available, each with different short and long-term effects.
She said a national audit of cancer services in England shows considerable regional variation in care, with one in five diagnosed with ovarian cancer receiving no treatment at all. They say people over 70 are not receiving the standard of care necessary to survive.
“Ovarian cancer is a complex disease and it is so important that those diagnosed are given the time to discuss and understand the full range of options available,” she said.
Cary Wakefield, CEO at Ovarian Cancer Action, said the impact of Covid-19 on ovarian cancer patients has been devastating.
She added: “We want everyone with this cancer to know that they do still have options and that they should have the time they need to understand what these are and communicate what support and care they most want.”