Interview 08

Age at interview: 19

Age at diagnosis: 19

Brief Outline:

Abnormal smear in 2001 referred to colposcopy clinic. Diagnosed with abnormal cervical cells. Waiting for results of biopsy.

Background:

Single, no children.

She was not given support by her GP when she was referred for further tests.

Because you know when you get told something like that and I've got a history of cancer in my family as well because my paternal grandmother had a growth in her womb which turned out to be cancer and she died of that and when you know you've got a history of cancer in your family and you're telling this to a doctor and the doctors like "oh there's nothing wrong, don't worry about it, we've just found some abnormalities but it's okay don't worry, it's just the fact that you're abnormal but there's nothing to worry about really." 

That was like, and she never really explained to me what abnormal cells they'd found. I asked a question and she said "oh don't worry we'll just have to refer you to try and sort out the problem and take a biopsy" and I was sitting there thinking okay biopsy what exactly is involved in a biopsy and she was like "oh they'll just take some tissue samples". Oh how will they do that? "Oh don't worry about it, it's really simple, it's painless". 

But how do they do it, she wouldn't give me an answer as to how they did it and so that sort of hyped it up for me and I was like okay they're going to cut me open and I'm going to be there bleeding to death, so in that sense it was awful.