Jenni's Screening Story

Hello Jenny, thanks for joining me today. Um, and if you'd like to share your cancer experience with us, that'd be fantastic. Yeah, certainly. So er hi, my name's Jenny

Um, and I had um. Bit of a close call, you could call it er with cervical cancer, so I just wanna talk to you about that today. So I had been having my er smears um as I was supposed to do and I just went for a routine smear as I normally would have done

Um, and I, I had a bit of bad news that there was some, er, abnormalities that come back from that smear. Um, so basically. As I'm sure you well know, um, that gets picked up, it gets referred on, you go to the hospital

Um, I was seen by the wonderful team at, um, DRI Doncaster Royal Infirmary, er, the gynecology nurses there. And, um, I was seen about my results and they were explaining to me that basically they had found, um, that I was positive for HPV and that I also had some quite serious um cell changes and er these were so serious in fact that they could have led to cervical cancer. So obviously we had to do something about that

And um they, yeah, the wonderful ladies at DRI looked after me amazingly. Um we did some tests, had a consultation like I said. er that all then kind of er went off and was looked at what the best er course of action was gonna be was then decided

And it was decided that I was gonna have those cells removed er by a procedure called LEETS um which is just simply a procedure to remove er anything in or around the cervix that is not meant to be there. um so I then had another appointment um with a consultant and that consultant saw me for the procedure and completed that. And um the the kind of general um Process, if you like, after that is to leave it a few months and then we test again with another smear um to see if everything's as it should be

er luckily for me it was. So I'm incredibly thankful um for that like swift and efficient action, for want of a better word, um from the medical staff that I encountered. Um, and I just wanted to say like it is, you hear these stories all the time, but it's incredibly incredibly important that you do go for any kind of screening, not just smears

Um, anything that's available to you. We're incredibly lucky, um, to live in a country where that is accessible and available and I highly, highly, highly urge you to take advantage of that. um, because I'd dread to think what could have happened had that not been found, um, and dealt with

So I just wanted to say today that you know if you're offered any kind of screening, please my advice is to go um you know. Worst case scenario with something like what happened to me happened um but it's not the worst case scenario is it really? um you know you have to go through that sort of stuff to prevent anything, you know, worse happening. Um, and, and all being well, you know, in an ideal world everything's fine

So you've lost nothing have you but um yeah, it was, uh, today was just to explain, you know, it's. You can think nothing's wrong, I had no symptoms, um I didn't feel anything different at all. And er yeah, I'm just incredibly glad that it was picked up the way it was

um and it happened the way it did for me. And er yeah, get, get your screenings. Thank you very much for sharing that, Jenny

Can I just ask you then, do you, do you still go for regular screenings then? Yeah, so obviously, um, in England, I'm not aware of the rules for Scotland and Wales, but in England the, um, age has been raised to 25 for your first smear. Um, so I, I highly urge you to go for that, and if you do notice anything different sooner, push to go sooner. Um, but yeah, from, from age 25, you'll be sent a letter

And um I, I highly encourage you to, to go for that. Thank you Jenny so much for sharing that with us. That's a really er really positive experience

Thank you. Thanks for thanks for your time today.