I share my ex­pe­ri­ence of cer­vi­cal can­cer with you and any­one who may need to read it, any­one who may need to draw strength from the fact that you are not alone.

My di­ag­no­sis of cer­vi­cal can­cer sev­er­al years ago marked a pro­found shift, forc­ing me to con­front my own mor­tal­i­ty and to con­front the thought of leav­ing my six-year-old son be­hind. I was on­ly 34 years old; how could this be hap­pen­ing?

Can­cer shred­ded all my plans and put a new per­spec­tive on suf­fer­ing, pain and pur­pose.

The day I found out I had cer­vi­cal can­cer, and the jour­ney that fol­lowed, is a sto­ry of fear and strength, but al­so of im­mense grat­i­tude to fam­i­ly, friends and all those who sup­port­ed me through my low­est pe­ri­od in life.

Two weeks af­ter my an­nu­al Pap smear in 2020, my gy­nae­col­o­gist reached out to me with un­set­tling news: my re­sults were not favourable due to con­cern­ing mi­cro­scop­ic find­ings. 

A week lat­er, I sched­uled a biop­sy and anx­ious­ly await­ed the re­sults. 

The day my doc­tor called will be for­ev­er etched in my mem­o­ry. I was prepar­ing for a meet­ing in my of­fice when my gy­nae­col­o­gist called, ask­ing me to come in as soon as pos­si­ble. The qui­et, som­bre tone of the doc­tor’s voice hint­ed to me that some­thing was wrong. 

Dur­ing my vis­it, it was con­firmed—the biop­sy had de­tect­ed “poor­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed squa­mous car­ci­no­ma”, the med­ical term for cer­vi­cal can­cer. My heart sank as I im­me­di­ate­ly feared the worst. My gy­nae­col­o­gist ex­plained the next steps and re­ferred me to a gy­nae­co­log­ic on­col­o­gist, as I was told that once there is a can­cer di­ag­no­sis, an on­col­o­gist (who has spe­cial train­ing in can­cer man­age­ment) should be in­volved.

As I shared the news with my fam­i­ly and dis­cussed the chal­lenges ahead, my gy­nae-on­col­o­gist pro­posed a treat­ment plan which start­ed with an MRI scan to con­firm the can­cer stage. I was di­ag­nosed with stage 1 cer­vi­cal can­cer that was ag­gres­sive. My treat­ment plan of­fered me the high­est prob­a­bil­i­ty of sur­vivor­ship. While I was sad­dened by the news that a rad­i­cal hys­terec­to­my would be nec­es­sary—mean­ing there would be no op­por­tu­ni­ty to have chil­dren in the fu­ture—it al­so gave me hope that I could be a healthy moth­er for my son.

Six weeks post-surgery, I un­der­went five ses­sions of chemother­a­py, 27 frac­tions of ra­di­a­tion, and two brachyther­a­py treat­ments. Each day af­ter ther­a­py brought chal­lenges as I curled in­to a foetal po­si­tion, wait­ing for the side ef­fects to sub­side.

My last MRI re­sults in De­cem­ber 2020 con­firmed no ev­i­dence of re­cur­rence or resid­ual dis­ease. Five years lat­er, I con­tin­ue to have an­nu­al check-ups, which con­firm my re­mis­sion.

Al­though the jour­ney was in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult, I sur­vived. My scars serve as a re­minder of the im­por­tance of ed­u­cat­ing oth­er women—both young and old—about pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, such as the HPV vac­cine and the ne­ces­si­ty of reg­u­lar Pap smears.

Ear­ly de­tec­tion through Pap smear screen­ing gives you a bet­ter chance of sur­vivor­ship and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live a ful­fill­ing life af­ter can­cer treat­ment.