A dad who lost his wife to cervical cancer at the age of just 45 is calling for women to go for their smear tests - after finding five letters inviting her to screenings following her tragic death.
Peter Johnson said his family's lives were ripped apart when his wife Elke passed away in March 2019. Their two children Kayla and Kenan were just five and seven at the time.
He now raises them as a single parent at their home in Littleborough in Rochdale, but said 'the grief never stops'. He said he is tormented by the thought of whether her life could have been saved, after finding multiple reminder letters for cervical screenings that were sent to her in the years before her devastating diagnosis.
Peter, 50, has chosen to share his family's story with the Manchester Evening News in the hope that women will take up their offer of smear tests. He said he does not want 'The Jade Goody Effect' to wear off, particularly after research showed that testing numbers dropped during the coronavirus pandemic.
Elke first started feeling ill in 2016, Peter said. She suffered from symptoms like back pain and bleeding.
She underwent various tests and scans and doctors found a mass on her cervix. In September 2017, at the age of just 43, Elke was given a devastating diagnosis of cervical cancer.
Experts gave her a positive prognosis at first, Peter said, but after she was referred to The Christie hospital in south Manchester, doctors told her the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
The family were told the cancer was at stage four and Elke started chemotherapy treatment. She was also treated under a clinical trial for six months.
In March 2018, doctors then said that despite signs of the tumour shrinking, that no further treatment could be offered because of how the cancer had spread. Determined to keep battling the disease, Elke and her children moved to Germany - her birthplace - so she could try and have more treatment there.
She then started another round of treatment at a German hospital.
"My wife was the optimist", Peter told the M.E.N. "She would not lie down and just take it, she was positive. But I knew what was going to happen."
Peter is a cancer survivor himself, having battled testicular cancer in 2000. He said he stayed in England while his wife and children were in Germany and visited as often as he could.
"I kept things going as much as I could", he said. "We had a home and I had a job. It was like self-preservation."
In February 2019, Elke's condition 'deteriorated rapidly', Peter said, and he stopped working to move over to Germany to be with his family. Four weeks later, she sadly passed away.
After she died and was buried in Germany, Peter and his two children came back to England. "I remember getting home and putting them to bed and just thinking 'what do I do now?'", he said.
"Our life was ripped apart. I had to learn to be both mum and dad."
He said he is 'really, really lucky' that he has family who can help look after the children while he works as a transport co-ordinator but that it is still 'a struggle everyday' living without his wife. He added that one of the hardest things about losing Elke was finding the cervical screening letters afterwards.
"After she passed away, about 12 months later, I eventually got her documents and everything and was sorting things out and I found five smear test referrals from her doctors in England", he said. "These were being sent from around 2013.
"I remember seeing one of these at the time around 2013 or 2014 and asking her about it, the answer she gave me was probably the same as what many women would say, that it was a women's problem. For whatever reason she didn't go as she was sent reminder letters, I'll never know. Any one of these tests could have saved her life."
He said he wants smear tests to not be such a 'taboo' subject and that his daughter Kayla, now 11, and son Kenan, now nine, are the 'happiest' kids, but that they will one day realise the true extent of what their mum went through.
"The message is to go out there and get tested", Peter added. "The grief never stops."
According to the NHS website, women aged between 25 and 64 should be invited for cervical screening. In England, all women aged between 25 and 49 should get an invite every three years. After that, you get an invite every 5 years until the age of 64.
The screening test aims to pick up changes early that could develop into cervical cancer if left untreated. A small sample of cells are taken from the cervix then checked for certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV).
If any 'high risks' types of HPV are found, the sample is then checked for any changes in cells on the cervix. These can then be treated before they get a chance to turn into cervical cancer.
A cervical screening only takes a few minutes. A nurse takes the sample of cells using a small, soft brush.
Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust is sharing tips and experiences on smear tests for Cervical Screening Awareness Week this week. Find out more information here.
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