One in Three!

Current cancer statistics say that 1 in 3 of us will be affected by cancer at some point in our lives!

It could be you! Or you! Or me!

Actually, it was me!

I was diagnosed with womb cancer on 23^rd Dec 2009.

Womb cancer? I’d never heard of it until I got my diagnosis! I’d heard of ovarian and cervical cancer. I’d even had a smear test a month or so before that came back clear – so how come I’d got womb cancer?

Apparently I ticked a lot of the boxes for risk factors! I was classed as obese; I’d never been pregnant; I had started my periods at an early age; my periods had always been heavy and prolonged.

Turns out I was the perfect candidate for womb cancer – even though I’d never smoked, rarely drank and had been a vegetarian for over 20 years!

Go figure!

So a hysterectomy was swiftly arranged for the beginning of 2010 and then I endured 4 sessions of chemotherapy and 5 weeks of radiotherapy.

All through the treatment, I searched on the internet for information and support. I wanted to talk to other women with womb cancer – women who knew exactly what I was going through and who understood what I was feeling. But I could only find the odd one or two. There must be more out there, I thought. After all, I’d discovered that at that time, over 7,000 women each year were being diagnosed with womb cancer.

 

I used the Macmillan Cancer Support website and a few others but I was perplexed to find that a) there was very little information about womb cancer and b) there wasn’t a dedicated womb cancer charity out there raising funds for research.

After months of scouring the internet looking for information, I decided to do something positive and set up an online support group for women with womb cancer, which I run with another womb cancer survivor.
http://wombcancersupportuk.wix.com/home  

What started out as a small group of women on a Facebook page talking about their experiences and sharing stories has now grown in almost 18 months to a group of over 500.

Women from around the world who, like me, had been searching for other women to talk to. They share their stories; they offer advice and tips but above all they can empathise with each other because they know what its like!

There is still no national dedicated womb cancer charity – but we’re hoping there will be soon. There is a petition running and there are currently over 1,400 signatures. The target is 1,900 – the number of women that are dying each year from womb cancer.

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/wombcancercharity  

Since my diagnosis, I have discovered that womb cancer is supposed to be a cancer that post menopausal women get, but I was 46 when I was diagnosed, and there are women in the group who are in their 30’s. Sadly, the latest to join us was just 19 when she was diagnosed!

Many of the women say the same as I did – they had never heard about womb cancer.

This needs to change!

Over the years, there have been massive awareness campaigns for breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer. Well now its time for there to be one for womb cancer.

We at WCSUK can only do so much; what is needed is a nationwide media campaign by a large cancer organisiation or the NHS. Sadly, it would appear that nothing is likely to happen in the foreseeable future, so it remains for us, the women who have had or are still dealing with womb cancer, to do the awareness raising. So we will continue to do so, because we know just how hard a womb cancer diagnosis hits a woman.  

Present statistics show that around 8,000 women are diagnosed each year, and the numbers are rising.

There needs to be much more awareness of the risk factors and the signs and symptoms to look out for.And it’s not just women who need educating about this. GP’s need to start taking unexplained or unusual bleeding seriously and stop telling women in their 30’s or 40’s that they are too young to get womb cancer.

As many women in our group will tell you; you’re never too young!

Thank you to Margaret MacGillivray for this, and all the other images she created for us during the last few weeks.

I also want to say a huge thank you to all the brave ladies who shared their stories here and the ones who allowed me to use their stories and turn them into short films for our youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WombCancerSupportUK/videos?flow=grid&view=0

Together, we will change things. xx