A mum has been left devastated after learning that she only has months to live after being told her cervical cancer – which she’d been cleared of just a year earlier – had returned. She is now urging everyone to get their smear test, to prevent it happening to them.
“I broke down when they told me,” Tasha Doran says of her life-threatening disease. They hadn’t got through telling me before I ran out of the room crying and collapsed to the floor.”
Her only son, Jamie, 21, is due to have a baby in December with his fiancée, and Tasha knows she is going to miss out on so much.
“I’m going to do everything to hang on until then,” she said.
Tasha will start life-prolonging chemotherapy on October 31 at Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, Wales.
Looking back, all the signs were there that something was wrong.
“In hindsight, I’d had symptoms which I now know are signs of potential cancer,” said Tasha.
“I had pain during intercourse and heavy bleeding afterwards.”
When invited for a regular smear test, Tasha wouldn’t go out of fear and embarrassment.
All women in the UK between the ages of 25 to 64, who are registered at a doctor’s clinic, will be invited for smear test.
“I want to use my voice now to tell people to get tested,” Tasha told Wales Online.
“I’ve never had a smear test because I was scared, embarrassed and afraid of the result. I know there are so many women out there feeling the same way. I want to tell them, ‘Do it. Please do it.'”
In January 2022, Tasha was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer.
She began treatment in March of that year and jubilantly rang the bell in August, believing her fight with cancer was over.
But, by October, Tasha had “sharp shooting pains” in her groin that an ultrasound revealed to be a cancerous tumour.
The cancer had spread through to her cervix and left lung, and now Tasha doesn’t have long to live.
“I love all of my family and friends,” said Tasha. “I’m really proud of them, especially my son. He’s a principled man and he’s the biggest achievement of my life.”