SEEKING MEDICAL HELP: AIDA MORRIS’S STORY
In 1991, at the age of thirty-eight and with a five-year-old daughter, Aida was diagnosed with breast cancer. ‘When my GP examined my breasts he told me to go home and forget about it – that it was just a hardening of the tissue – but to come back three weeks later. At the next appointment he sent me away once again, but as I was leaving his office I had a surge of соurage and insisted on a mammogram. When I rang for the results (I had been told not to bother with an appointment as it was undoubtedly benign) he had a very different humbled and hushed tone. I had surgery within days and, once again, was at home on my own when the malignancy was confirmed over the telephone – which left me pretty devastated. Just as I was about to start radiotherapy I heard news of a friend, also thirty-eight, who had just died from breast cancer. She had also been told, a year previously, that there was nothing to worry about – but obviously there was. I was really knocked back by this news and shocked by the parallels. At some point later when I was asking some questions, having done a little research, the doctor, who had been perfectly nice in the past, actually asked me, ‘Don’t you think we know what we are doing?’ I felt like a naughty little girl who had stepped over some invisible boundary. I feel exasperated that at every turn I was not taken seriously. I feel much stronger now and am convinced that taking some control over my fate was the most important thing I could have done.’*44\240\2*
