Twinkle in our eyes

Lily's journey begins before she was, as my pop would say, a twinkle. Meaning that her journey starts long before full consideration had been given to having children by her father and me.

In late November 2008 I went for a routine pap smear. In early December I recieved the earth shattering news that the pap smear was positive. It rocked our whole family to it's very foundations because in October of the same year my pop had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. The same day I was given a referral to Dr Marcello Nascimento, a cheery, heavily accented, soccer loving, South American, Gynaecologist/ Oncologist. He explained that pap smears often revealed false postives, that cancer was a rare outcome for a postive GP smear and that if anything, it was likely to be easily treatable Carcinoma In Situ (CIS). I had a charming procedure called a colposcopy which revealed a postive CIS diagnosis.

CIS is treated with a day surgery called a cone biopsy, in which a cone shaped piece of tissue is removed from the cervix, aiming to remove all the CIS cells before they have the chance to become cancerous. I had this surgery in mid December, and after a few miserable days was feeling almost back to normal and I was fully able to enjoy my grandfather's precious last birthday and Christmas.

At the follow up appointment, Dr Nascimento said they had not removed as much tissue as they would have liked and there was a risk they had left something that should have been removed behind. In early February I had a second procedure. The follow up appointment from this procedure would change Bob's and my life forever.

Despite Bob's protests, I asked the question that had been clanging like a bell in the back of my mind since that terrible day in early December.

"What about children?"

Dr Nascimento's reply? "If you were my sister, I would tell you to have a baby."

He explained that there was a high risk of the CIS returning in my future, and at that stage a hysterectomy would be the preferred treatment. In fact, had I been older or had I already completed my family, that would have been on the cards this time round.

The bottom fell out of my world. I think I was also lucky that my boyfriend didn't fall off his chair.

Once we had recovered, we both left that office with a twinkle in our eyes.