Screenings save lives from cervical cancer

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) – January is cervical cancer awareness month. It’s a time of year to remind women to stay healthy and fight against this life threatening disease.

We met Miranda Ashman about a year ago, and at the time she was 29, cancer free, but still cautious of her health. Today, she says she’s in the best place she’s ever been, continuing to advocate against the disease that could have taken her life.

“I just turned thirty, I just passed that five year mark, it’s like, I hardly even think about it anymore,” says Miranda.

As of May 2011, she was officially declared cancer free. But just five short years ago, cervical cancer was something she never saw coming.

“I had never had problems before,” she says.

According to the latest American College of Obestrics and Gynocolegy guidelines, women ages 21 to 30 should be screened only every two years.

But at age 24, Miranda had been getting routine pap tests on a yearly basis. It was that one test that caught her cancer in the nick of time.

“If I had waited even a couple of more months, I would have been well into stage three, and that really limits your options as far as what they can do to preserve fertility, save your life,” says Miranda.

Call it luck, fate, what have you, but Miranda tracked down a treatment that brought her all the way to Oregon, one that allowed her to keep her uterus and ovaries, as well as her potential to get pregnant. Miranda says she has yet to get pregnant naturally, but she and her husband Pete are content with just two of them for the time being.

“At this point, Pete and I have decided we aren’t interested in pursuing it right now. Adoption is always an option for us. We talked about it when I was going through it. We figured that it would be our only choice,” she says.

But for now, Miranda is focusing on herself, her husband, their dog Lupe, and living a healthy lifestyle.

“It made me more aware of my body, and more aware of what I eat and what I expose myself to. I don’t take any of that for granted anymore,” she says.

Miranda advises that every woman get a pap smear once a year in a routine check up with their gynecologist. However, there are too many women, even right here in Mesa County, who can’t afford these screenings. That’s why the American Cancer Society provides low income women with free breast and cervical cancer screenings.

“We hope that if you get screened early, they can detect it and they can remove it, and you can be cancer free and go on you know, living a full life,” says Jill Lacy, community coordinator for Women’s Wellness Connection, which works with the American Cancer Society to provide these services.

At least 50 women lose their lives to cervical cancer every year in Colorado alone. However, 92 percent of all women beat the disease when it’s found early through routine screenings.