Howard heard the news of her diagnosis on a phone call from her gynecologist. She was at home by herself.
“It was like an out of body, surreal type of experience,” she recalls. “I just remember I fell to my knees and the whole room was spinning. Then there comes the realization that, OK, I’ve got to share this with the people in my life that I love and I don’t have all the details yet. It’s terrifying.”
Howard had never missed a Pap test. She’d always gone to her doctor for any follow-ups. In most cases of cervical cancer, the first noticeable symptom is some vaginal bleeding other than your monthly period. Howard didn’t have any spotting, so cervical cancer felt like, “it happened overnight,” she says. “What I did have, and what I realized when I was diagnosed had been a symptom for quite some time, is increased vaginal discharge,” she explains, adding that she talked to her family doctor about it but a routine Pap smear came back normal. This abnormal vaginal discharge can be thick, odorous and sometimes tinged with blood and is an early sign of cervical cancer.
“I had carried on for the next couple years and I remember thinking obviously your body changes after you have a child, and [the vaginal discharge] just became my normal.”
Cervical cancer and HPV
Cervical cancer is now the fastest increasing cancer in women in Canada. The cause in almost all cases is human papillomavirus, or HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection,
according to the Canadian Cancer Society
. In fact, HPV is more common than all other sexually transmitted infections combined. More than 70 per cent of sexually active Canadians of all ages will have HPV at some point. Your body naturally clears most strains of the virus within two years.
