Joanne sometimes bled after sex and between periods. She ignored it – and paid the ultimate price. Now her fiance says: ‘If telling her cancer story prevents even one death, it’s worth it’

For years, Chris Hicks repeatedly begged his fiancée Joanne Lloyd to go for cervical screening for cancer, but she was too nervous to go through with it – and paid a terrible price for her fear.

Sadly, by the time she finally agreed to have a ‘smear’ test in 2021, 17 years after her last one, the news was not good: the results showed that the mother-of-five had cervical cancer.

Three years later, Joanne lost her life to the disease at the age of just 48.

Now Chris is urging women to attend their cervical screening appointments, hoping to spare others the heartbreak he’s endured since losing Joanne last year.

It was only months into their nine-year relationship when Chris, 48, from the West Midlands, started urging Joanne to get a check as she developed spotting and abdominal pain after sex.

‘I was desperate,’ he says. ‘I kept begging her, in tears sometimes. But she was so scared. She thought that if they found something, she’d end up dying like her parents.’

Joanne had been traumatised by losing her mother to a brain tumour when she was 14 and then her father to motor neurone disease (a progressive disease that affects the nerves controlling muscle movement) when she was 21.

The sense that she, too, would die young haunted her, and when it came to screenings that might show early signs of cancer, she ‘just didn’t want to know’, says Chris.

Every five years, women between the ages of 25 and 64 are invited for a smear test, where a speculum is inserted into the vagina and a sample of cells taken from the cervix.

The test checks for the presence of the human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes most cervical cancers, and ‘if it is present, the sample is checked for cell changes’, explains Helen Hyndman, lead nurse at the gynaecological cancer charity, The Eve Appeal.

Such cell changes can progress to cancer over time, so the hope is to pick up them up at the earliest possible stage, when they can be simply burned away or monitored.

Every year in the UK, the cervical screening programme saves around 5,000 lives, according to the NHS.

But despite the pain and bleeding she was experiencing, Joanne was adamant she wouldn’t have a routine smear test – telling Chris her symptoms were most likely due to the perimenopause (the lead-up to the menopause) – even though, then aged 39, she would have been unusually young.

‘She was in some pain after the first time we had sex and there was only a small amount of blood, but the second time there was a lot,’ he says.

‘She would lie in bed holding her stomach until the pain went away. The rest of the time, she was full of energy and never tired. She didn’t feel sick and was always on the go. That’s why she never thought it was anything serious.’

Joanne’s symptoms were some of the classic red flags for cervical cancer, says Helen Hyndman.

‘The most common symptom of cervical cancer is vaginal bleeding that’s new or different than what is usually experienced,’ she says.

‘This includes vaginal bleeding during or after sex, bleeding between periods, and bleeding after the menopause.

‘Other symptoms may include pain or discomfort during sex, unexplained lower back or pelvic pain, or changes to vaginal discharge,’ she adds.

It is important for anyone experiencing any of these symptoms to see their GP, even if their last cervical screening result was normal.’

Despite Joanne’s assurances that she was fine, Chris remained worried and the research he did online rang alarm bells.

‘I told her it [the pain and bleeding] wasn’t normal and when I Googled the symptoms, I read it was either a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or a serious underlying problem. I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose her.’

Finally, in 2021, Joanne, now 45, agreed to see her GP, who referred her to hospital where she had a smear test – 17 years after her last one – followed by a biopsy. The results confirmed cervical cancer.

‘Joanne told me I’d saved her life, by making her go to the doctor – at that point we thought because the cancer had been found, she could be treated, and she’d be OK,’ recalls Chris.

An MRI showed the cancer had spread to the surrounding tissues and she underwent a radical hysterectomy – ‘they removed everything’, says Chris.

‘Her cervix, womb, fallopian tubes, ovaries, pelvic lymph nodes and part of her vagina. They thought they got it all – but she had chemotherapy and radiotherapy as a precautionary measure. It was brutal.’

After five weeks of treatment, Joanne was told her prospects were good.

She then had regular check-ups every three months, then every six, and things seemed to be heading in the right direction.

But two years after the diagnosis, just before Christmas 2023, Joanne began complaining of lower back pain and constipation.

‘She said it was nothing,’ Chris recalls. ‘The GP thought it was sciatica [back pain] and IBS and gave her medication to treat both. But I worried, so I called her cancer specialist directly.’

On Joanne’s 48th birthday, the couple went to see the consultant together.

After Joanne underwent an internal examination, they were told the cancer was back, ‘and this time, it was terminal’, says Chris.

‘We sat in the car afterwards for two hours just crying. We had no idea how we would even begin to tell the kids. It was the worst possible news.’

The couple met in 2016 on a dating app, both recovering from broken marriages. Their first date was at an Italian restaurant, and Chris says he knew straightaway that Joanne was someone special.

‘Within minutes I realised she was beautiful, inside and out,’ he says.

‘She always was smiling and positive. She loved walks, weekends away and family time.’

After just eight months, they moved in together. Chris and Joanne each had five children – Chris had a special bond with Joanne’s youngest son, who was just three when they got together, and has autism; Joanne was his full-time carer.

‘She was always up early and always doing something for someone else,’ say Chris. ‘She never stopped.’

But after her terminal diagnosis, her decline was rapid and within months the cancer had spread through her body, eroding tissue between her vagina and bowel.

‘She started passing waste through the wrong place,’ says Chris.

‘She had to have emergency surgery and ended up with a stoma bag. Then it started affecting her kidneys, so they fitted a urostomy bag to collect urine too. It was relentless.’

However, ‘when the worst came, Joanne faced it with incredible courage,’ he says.

‘We all cried a lot, but she kept going. She didn’t want to leave us, especially her kids.’

Through it all, Chris, who worked as a manager for DHL, but gave it up to care for Joanne at home and remained by her side until she died in September last year.

‘On her final day, she waited until her children were in bed,’ he says. ‘Then seven months after her terminal diagnosis, she died in my arms.’

Joanne and Chris were planning to get married, but the money that was earmarked for their wedding was used for her funeral instead, with additional help from their older children.

Despite the benefits of the cervical screening programme, around one in three women don’t accept their invitation to have a smear test: in 2022/2023, only 67 per cent of eligible women had it.

Chris is sharing Joanne’s story in the hope that it will encourage women who have turned down the chance to be screened to think again.

‘I begged Joanne to be screened and now I’m begging every woman reading this,’ he says. ‘That five-minute test could save your life.’

After posting about Joanne on Facebook, Chris received more than 700 responses from women, many who said the story had inspired them to book their own overdue tests.

‘One woman told me she hadn’t been for over ten years, but she booked it that same day,’ he says.

‘There are thousands of women out there putting it off,’ he says.

‘They’re scared or embarrassed or just think it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. I can assure you, feeling the way I do, that it really does. I wouldn’t wish this grief on anyone.

‘If sharing her story prevents even one family going through what we have, I’ll keep telling it.’