Smear Your Mea, cancer victim urges
After a painful cervical smear test in 2008, Talei Morrison never went back for another.
And annual letters reminding her to get checked were promptly chucked out.
Morrison, 42, was diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer in August last year.
Now the Hamilton-based kapa haka performer is determined others won’t make the same mistake.
Morrison initiated a Smear Your Mea campaign, urging women to go for the commonly dreaded smear test.
‘‘Mea in Ma¯ ori means thing, the thing that we’re talking about is obviously female genitalia. So we’re telling women to Smear Your Mea. And it’s catchy.’’
Regular smears can reduce the risk of cervical cancer by 90 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health.
‘‘There’s still that generation that are just, like, you don’t talk about it. I’ve been contacted by women in their 70s who had cervical cancer earlier who struggled on their own, who were lonely. Who had such a hard time because you just didn’t talk about it then.
‘‘It’s bad enough when you talk about it now.
‘‘It’s 160 women each year [who get cervical cancer] and 50 of us are going to die from it.
‘‘Could you imagine if the statistics got worse? At the moment it’s nearly one in three.’’
And while smear tests can be awkard and uncomfortable, they’re not as bad as radiation therapy, Morrison said.
‘‘When I was diagnosed, nothing spoke to me as a middleaged Ma¯ ori woman in New Zealand.
‘‘I was like, you know what? I don’t want anyone to end up like me. So, I got a group of close friends who have high profiles within their region in kapa haka and I said to them, I want to do a kind of campaign.
‘‘We thought, let’s just aim at all women kapa haka performers to have their smears done before they have their regional competitions.
‘‘It just spread like absolute wildfire. It’s gone beyond kapa haka, it’s gone beyond Ma¯ ori.’’
When symptoms began, Morrison knew something was wrong.
But she was too healthy for it to be serious, she thought.
‘‘My body was sending signals. But I was so passionate about life, I just ignored them . . . It wasn’t until June when I had a big scare. I thought I was having a miscarriage. But it was actually my insides, the cancer was just eating me up.’’
When the doctors told her she had cancer, Morrison flew into survival mode, intent on getting better.
But the treatment, the daily cocktail of painkillers, the agony and anxiety were exhausting.
‘‘Admittedly I can count three times where I was, like, just kill me. And it was killing me, obviously. I thought I cannot take a minute more of this.
‘‘I’m glad it happened to someone like me, because I’m not afraid to speak on the issue now.’’