Dying from cervical cancer, and the questions surrounding Jade Goody

Jade Goody is 27-year old British reality TV star who is dying from cervical cancer.

As part of an ongoing reality show, her last days will be filmed and broadcast.

In this day and age of the Pap smear, cervical cancer should be all but eradicated. And Ms. Goody did have Pap smears. Several, in fact. However, as gynecologist Margaret Polaneczky observes, she ignored letters to come in for followup and treatment.

Apparently, that probably would have involved an invasive intervention, to which Ms. Goody said she was “too scared to do anything about it.”

Was this the patient’s fault, by ignoring multiple abnormal Pap smear letters and failing to followup? Or could the UK medical establishment have done more? Did doctors and nurses call the patient, and was a certified letter sent?

A 27-year old woman should not die of cervical cancer. Dr. Polaneczky wonders if everything possible was done. And if not, “the tragedy is not just Jade’s, but all of ours.”

Comments

Reality Rounds
I have written about this story numerous times and find it very sad. On a positive note, because of Jade’s story, cervical cancer screening has increased dramatically in England. Similar to the “Katie Couric” effect for colonoscopy. It is an all too common story for patients to be too scared to follow-up on the lump in their breast, dark mole on their skin, persistent cough, etc. Fear and denial are powerful motivators to do nothing. As health care workers we can try as hard as we can to council and plead with patients to follow up, but we surely cannot force our will on patients. Jade Goody is a sad example of this. It takes examples like hers and Courics to motivate the public to take action, but keeping that motivation up is the hard part.
Please don’t tar and feather me
This probably isn’t a terribly popular position, but people need to take some responsibility for their health and well being.
You ignore letters and calls to come in to talk about your abnormal test results at your own peril. Honestly, if you’re just going to ignore positive test results, why have the test in the first place?
Frankly, if I’m scared of potentially having cancer, the FIRST person I want to see is the doctor. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Resolution to positive test results requires follow-up.
Patients who avoid follow-up despite reasonable (not exhaustive) efforts by clinicians deserve at best our pity and perhaps in our meanest moments our scorn for the economic toll their negligence takes on the entire medical system.
Ms. Goody isn’t some brave soul battling cancer, she’s a fool whose misery has become spectacle.
Anonymous
ITA with the poster above! Ms. Goody is not an unfortunate victim of a random nasty disease like ALS. She was sexually active without the use of condoms, ignored test results and life-saving treatment, and is now the tragic heroine to many TV viewers. Much like the forty-year old smoker who blew up her trailer and family whilst smoking with O2 in use in my little town this morning…Darwin in action.
Anonymous
The fact that a woman has lost her life after dying in a horrible way, and leaves a family behind including young children is a tragedy, whether or not certain members of the public decide that the deceased deserves our pity or scorn, but not our compassion. The fact that many women, like Ms. Goody avoid treatment until it is too late out of fear and not being able to deal with the situation truly does merit compassion and attention from the medical community. What could be done to alleviate the fears in patients like these? To help them realise that there is treatment out there from caring medical personnel, not the impersonal could-care-less approach that so frequently happens in our time from the medical establishment. Invasive treatments to a woman’s reproductive area can be traumatic in themselves. I personally know of a case of a woman diagnosed with cervical pre-cancer who was too scared to go for the surgery because she had had terrible experiences in the hospital when losing a child. She waited too long to go for treatment, and the lesions became cancer and turned into a tumour. Fortunately, she overcame her fear and was able to finally trust an oncologist and receive treatment, with success. Cases like this are more frequent than many think, and deserve careful consideration, not mindless scorn. We do not know the inside of another’s mind, when trauma, fear and perhaps unknown mental illness are involved. This should not be just dismissed as stupidity that deserves derision. The price paid by Ms. Goody was very very dear, and this is not a story to be scoffed at or put down to a ‘burden on the medical system.’ As for mentioning sex without condoms, what 27 yr old woman in a marriage hasn’t had sex without condoms?! The HPV virus is very common, and circulates in the population quite rampantly. Aquiring the virus is not a patient’s fault. It gets tiresome to hear improperly educated people spout off with blame and stupid comments that can be read by the deceased person’s family, and simply cause more harm than good. I would like to see these people keep their mean and “clever” comments to themselves. I am very sorry that this happened to this woman and her family.

Dying from cervical cancer, and the questions surrounding Jade Goody

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