‘I’d already had my boys – but it must be so hard if cancer costs you a family’
LOSING the chance to start a family will cause women caught up in the CervicalCheck scandal further distress, one cancer survivor has said.
Sarah Daly (40), from Clondalkin, Dublin, was diagnosed with stage CIN3 cervical cancer in 2005. She was 27 at the time and had delayed undergoing a smear test due to three successive pregnancies.
After diagnosis, she underwent a radical hysterectomy that left her infertile. She falls outside the time frame of the women affected by the CervicalCheck crisis.
But she believes women denied early medical intervention due to misdiagnosis face the trauma of reliving the illness.
“It is very scary,” Ms Daly said. “I was diagnosed in 2005 but still keep checking the dates. I can only imagine how difficult this is for the women affected.”
Ms Daly said it must be harrowing knowing your fertility was irrevocably damaged because of an oversight.
“To know you could have saved your womb, your fertility,” she said.
“It must be like reliving the trauma again. It must be so hard to think it cost you motherhood, and the chance of having a family.
“I had my boys by the time I was 27 but many people wouldn’t have started a family by that age. It’s heart-breaking.”
Ms Daly is mother to Ben (17), Lee (15) and Karl (13). After the birth of her third child, she went for a smear test which showed abnormal cells.
She went for a colposcopy, where it emerged she had CIN3 cervical cancer. Ms Daly had no symptoms so was stunned when she learnt of the results.
“You don’t listen when you get the diagnosis,” she said.
“All you hear is the word cancer and then you’re gone.”
Ms Daly’s mother had died three years earlier and she worried her family had experienced enough heartache.
“I thought, ‘how am I going to tell my dad?’ and ‘who is going to take care of my boys?’”
Ms Daly delayed treatment until after her sister’s wedding and then underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
She says the treatment and the staff at the Rotunda where she was treated were exemplary.
Ms Daly still gets regular smear tests despite having no womb or cervix and encourages other women to do so too.
“The reality is if I hadn’t had my smear, I would have died,” she said.
“I would advise women to keep getting their smear tests done. It is vital.
“I know so many people are upset at the moment and it is heart-breaking but so many women have been saved from these smear tests.”