Cervical cancer will always be scary. But it doesn't have to be isolating. When I was diagnosed with cervical cancer, it was like a bomb went off right in front of me. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, I couldn't think. I was devastated. Brokenhearted. Terrified. I would frequently stay up all night, feeling around in the dark, looking for hope in the blue light of the internet. But all I found were scholarly articles. Scary ones about women who died from cervical cancer. The invasive and painful treatments I might need. Survival and recurrence rates. Isolation. Fear and anxiety. Cold hard facts. Very few real-life stories. What I needed was comfort and guidance. I needed someone who had walked the road I was on and knew the way out to grab my hand, hold it tight, and guide me through. I needed to know I wasn't alone, nor was I the first person to face this pain. I needed someone to make sense of the chaos in my mind; Who knew that there's so much planning and logistics involved in having cancer? Organizing caregivers, scheduling surgery and treatments, making calls to insurance companies and specialists, sorting out the details of taking a leave from your job, all while trying to maintain your mental and emotional health as they fall apart, still reeling from that cancer grenade that blew up in your face just weeks ago. The Cervical Cancer Companion exists to help care for your mental and emotional health and help you process the trauma of cancer as you experience it, with the hope that you can arrive on the other side with a strengthened heart and mind, healthier relationships, and a spirit that is ready to build a new life after cancer. What's Inside Personal journal entries from the author through each stage of her experience with cervical cancer. Journaling prompts and open areas to help you process through your own journey. Mantras to keep your heart and mind centered on peace and well-being. Practical tools like caregiver calendars, medication trackers and shopping lists. The knowledge that you're not alone.

This book provides readers with a thorough review on cervical cancer, treatment guidelines and emerging therapies available for the disease. It reviews the epidemiology clinical features, diagnosis, and medical management of cervical cancer. Given the increasing need for preventive strategies, treatment optimization with collaborative and integrative work, this book improves the actual and integral knowledge in this neoplasm. Given the high prevalence of this disease in Latin America, this is an important text for clinicians in this region. This book outlines the state of the art in cervical cancer treatments and is an indispensable companion for oncologists, gynecologists, surgeons and medical students.

Discusses cervical cancer, its possible causes, its diagnosis and treatment, and preventive measures

Life plays tricks on us many times and we only understand much later (quite often too late) fragments of the messages we had received earlier in our existence. We must always learn from our and others’ experiences, even from the unfortunate ones. Before he became our friend „Adi“, Adrian was (and still is) a man full of humor and innovative ideas who had found us and had invited us into his charming Jiu Valley, surrounded by beautiful mountains, in Transylvania - Romania, in a mining area devastated by unemployment and economic crisis. His brilliant idea was for us to build an adventure park, as we had been the first to implement this exotic idea in this country. Excited by the project which should be connected with an interactive mining museum, engaged in enthusiastic conversations, and getting closer, we became friends. The park project never saw daylight, even if it was fairly advanced. But we gained the trust and sympathy of the lovely couple made by him and his wife Marlene – on her real name - Marilena. During one of our business trips in the Jiu Valley related to the park project, we had the opportunity to meet Marilena once, before the slightest hint of the horrible and quick disease that finally took her life away gave the slightest hint. Later the imperatives of existence separated us from their couple. When in 2012 we found out about the death of this woman of our own age, we were profoundly shocked and sad. Adi sent us the manuscript that you are about to read: a shocking and moving testimony which tells the story of the „radiography of a drama“- the last year of Marilena’s life, who some people called Marlene. She was a woman full of life who left us too early, defeated by a disease which does not forgive negligence, does not take into account love, despair or even the willingness to go on living and sharing a quiet and happy couple life similar to the one Adi and Marilena had in a small town in Romania, Petroșani. This book is more than a moving confession of a drama lived by both of them, in the intimacy of a couple violated by such a hard experience, of an irreplaceable loss, of a liberating gesture to register everything in writing, a traumatic experience both for the cancer victim and for her companion, but it is above all a distress signal addressed to women, parents, girls, wives and loved ones who do not wish to live through such a nightmare. As a matter of fact, the disease that took Marlene so quickly can be treated if discovered in its early stages. A regular check up and a very simple test allow the detection in due time of the pre-cancerous cells and their treatment. In order to go on... living. By this sincere and sad chronicle where humor is not a miss, Adi wanted to pay a unique homage to his wife, to give her a gift that exceeds time and space, showing her his deep love, and at the same time trying to spare the life of other women and of their entourage to live such dramas. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful lesson of humanity and love that can be taught from such a mournful experience. It is the same prophylactic endeavor to avoid such a disease, to give life and love a chance that made me conceive my little notebook «Mon carnet féminin intime», (published in several languages), which, if you are a woman, might help you remember to take care of yourselves. And if you have a daughter, this booklet might help you teach her the importance of this information and to create her healthy reflexes to maybe save her life. As a companion of a cancer victim you must never get discouraged, you must forge in yourselves this resilience which will humanize and transcend the disease, even as a last adventure as a couple. Thus you will be able to show your most profound, human, beautiful love: the one that consists of not uselessly adding your unhappiness to the victim’s suffering in order to truly help him/her, with all your heart and from the bottom of your heart. Hoping that his message and his cry of despair will be heard, Cristina & Olivier Rebière

Research in health of women who partner with women (WPW) operates in a context of multiple factors: local legislations, political pressures, community attitudes, methodological and ethical challenges in the study design and process, respondent identification issues, and funding availability. The reluctance to conduct research based on the above mentioned reasons results in lack of randomized control trials. As such, the risk of cervical cancer in WPW remains ambiguous due to the lack of data on specific aspects of its continuum. Secular trends in cervical cancer and sexuality inferences, as well as determinans and barriers in this nexus, are difficult to interpret. A meta-analysis of 73 studies of the empirical and vigorous evidence, current effort determines: (1) the risk of cervical cancer in WPW beyond the theory of papillomavirus infection; and (2) the barriers for WPW to preventive screenings. A "sexuality-oriented cervical-cancer research index" (SOCRI) is designed to inform the ratio of WPW involved in cervical cancer studies per country or region. The SOCRI indicates on how the research on cervical cancer in certain countries or regions reflects issues of sexuality. Firm conclusions await the results of additional studies that specifically address some of the methodological shortcomings of the previous investigations. At this stage we conclude that further research is essential to elucidate metabolic factors (leptin, Cu/Zn ratio), histological variances of the tumor, distant or central recurrence/survival ratio, and mortality rates based on sexuality choices. Likewise, country or state-oriented research would address the statistical challenges related to the undercounts of registered or civil WPW units in the census data.

The only text to provide both the patient?fs and doctor?fs views, 100 Questions & Answers About Cervical Cancer aims to provide a much needed primer for patients and their families and aims to address the questions most relevant to a woman following a diagnosis of pre-invasive changes or invasive cervical cancer. This text gives up-to-date, authoritative, practical answers to your questions about cervical cancer; not only the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, but also female survivorship. This is an invaluable resource for anyone coping with the physical and emotional turmoil of this frightening disease. Among the 100 Questions asked in this text are: -What does it mean to have early invasive cervical cancer? -What is the prognosis for women whose disease is advanced? -What should I know about my general health maintenance? -What is the cervical cancer vaccine?