I can tell you why smear tests are so important
A DAD who lost his wife to cervical cancer at the age of just 45 is calling for women to go for their smear tests – after finding five letters inviting her to screenings following her tragic death.
Peter Johnson said his family’s lives were ripped apart when Elke passed away in March 2019. Their two children Kayla and Kenan were just five and seven at the time.
He now raises them as a single parent in Littleborough, Rochdale, but said ‘the grief never stops.’ He said he is tormented by the thought of whether her life could have been saved, after finding multiple reminder letters for cervical screenings sent to her in the years before her devastating diagnosis.
Peter, 50, has chosen to share his family’s story in the hope that women will take up their offer of smear tests, particularly after research showed that testing numbers dropped during the pandemic.
Elke first started feeling ill in 2016, suffering from symptoms like back pain and bleeding.
She underwent various tests and doctors found a mass on her cervix. In September 2017, at the age of just 43, Elke was told she had cervical cancer. After being referred to The Christie hospital, doctors told her the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and was at Stage 4. Elke started chemotherapy and was also under a clinical trial for six months. However, in March 2018, doctors said no further treatment could be offered.
Determined to keep battling, Elke and her children moved to Germany – her birthplace – for treatment.
However, in February 2019, her condition ‘deteriorated rapidly,’ Peter said, and four weeks later, she sadly passed away.
After she was buried in Germany, Peter and his two children came back to England. “Our life was ripped apart. I had to learn to be both mum and dad.”
He said one of the hardest things about losing Elke was finding the cervical screening letters afterwards.
“I was sorting things out and I found five smear test referrals from her doctors in England”, he said.
“I remember seeing one of these around 2013 or 2014 and asking her about it, the answer she gave me was probably the same as what many women would say, that it was a women’s problem. For whatever reason she didn’t go as she was sent reminder letters, I’ll never know. Any one of these tests could have saved her life.”
“The message is to go out there and get tested”, Peter added. “The grief never stops.”
For whatever reason, she didn’t go... any one of those tests could have saved her life Peter Johnson