Overview
- Pamela Alexander, 56, from Greenock, is speaking out to urge women to attend cervical screening after surviving advanced cervical cancer.
- She ignored reminder letters for roughly two decades and, on August 7, 2012, collapsed at home before doctors found a tennis ball-sized tumour in her cervix.
- Her cancer was upgraded from stage 2B to 3B with local spread, doctors ruled out surgery, and a private specialist proposed chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy with about a 35% chance of survival.
- She completed treatment and entered remission in April 2013 but now lives with lasting harm, including numbness in her hands and feet and brittle bones that led to spine and pelvic fractures.
- She backs Cancer Research UK's Race for Life and praises NHS England’s 2025 at-home HPV self-sampling, which checks for the virus that causes most cervical cancers and could help those put off by smear tests, though survivors like her are not eligible.