Denise's story — transcription

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My name is Denise Burgin, I’m here because my daughter died of cervical cancer last year March 2007 she was 27 years old, she was a beautiful, lively, healthy girl, loved sport loved tennis, went to the gym regularly didn’t smoke she loved life, and she got married in Oct 2005 and 8 months later she started with irregular bleeding and went to the doctors who just assumed that it was the contraceptive pill that needed changing and this went on so I insisted she go see a specialist and the specialist examined her and said, you’ve got cervial cancer.

Later that week we went to see another specialist who told her that she had advanced cervical cancer and the only treatment that would be available would be chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

We were absolutely devastated a young newly married young woman, she was a graduate, post-graduate she worked in the NHS as an Occupational Therapist and had all her future in front of her.

The treatment was very intensive, the chemotherapy made her hair fall out, she was very sick and the radiotherapy was very intrusive she had radium into her vagina and that really made her feel ill.

From the day she was diagnosed she never worked again and she died 9 months from her diagnosis to her death, 9 months. She died at home and we were able to look after her my husband was with her and me and her father and Christian, her brother was with her when she died.

Really what I want to say is that Shelly did participate in the cervical screen programme but unfortunately her cancer wasn’t detected. If only we could raise peoples’ awareness that the majority of cervical cancers are caused through the human papilloma virus and there is now immunisation to help to protect people from cervical cancer, we know it’s probably not going to treat all cervical cancers but I do feel that they are saying that 70% of cervical cancers could be treated if people would come forward and have the immunisation. I realise people don’t want to think of their young daughters going ahead and having yet another immunisation on top of all the vaccinations and immunisations they’ve had in childhood but if only Shelly could have had this I feel pretty certain that that along with the cervical smears that she could still be alive today and we’ve just lost our future.