Midwife’s health alert
GLORIA HUNNIFORD has told how she has become a shoulder to cry on for grieving parents.
The TV legend’s life was torn apart when her daughter Caron Keating died from breast cancer in 2004, aged 41.
Now Gloria is helping others who have lost children. She has revealed it was her friend, singer Cliff Richard, who helped her cope with the loss.
Gloria, 78, said: “People often talk to me about grief. I have very deep and meaningful conversations with them.
“They bare their souls at times, as do I. You’re both strangers and you might never meet again, but you have that moment.
“When you lose a child you become part of a club nobody wants to belong to. But it does mean you share something unique.
“Just last week a woman who had lost her daughter a matter of months ago spoke to me. We had a very deep and emotional conversation.
“People know that I know what they’re talking about and what they’re going through. When you lose a child it’s a different form of grief. Before Caron died I’d lost parents and my husband and some friends. STARS of TV’s Call The Midwife hope a cervical cancer story will highlight the need to have smear tests, writes Ed Gleave. The BBC One series, which will see the nurses carry out the tests for the first time, even reminded Helen George, who plays Nurse Trixie, to get one. Helen, 34, said: “I hadn’t had a smear test in ages. And I suddenly thought, ‘Oh dear,
I’ve just had a baby, so I really do need to have my smear test’.” After the late reality star
Jade Goody spoke about her cervical cancer in 2008, an extra 400,000 women went for screening.
Helen said: “It’s been quite a few years since then. So And that was one level of grief. But I believe when you lose a child it takes you to a level you never thought possible.
“You can’t get pregnant, carry that child for nine months, love that child to distraction and then see them go. You can’t take it on board.
“I watched Caron battle cancer for seven years. I would have swapped places with her any time because in my mind I was thinking, ‘I’ve had a good life’. She was young and had two young children.”
It’s been nearly 15 years since Caron lost hopefully this storyline may well cause another surge.”
Athena Lamnisos, chief executive of The Eve Trust, which helps women with gynaecological cancers, said: “Call The Midwife has shone a light on many health and social issues, shifted people’s prejudices and provided valuable information.
“We hope that this storyline will be the prompt that women need to book their smear test.”
More than 3,000 UK women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year. It causes two deaths every day, but testing is at its lowest in 21 years.
For more information about screening, visit eveappeal.org.uk