This bride's heavy periods turned out to be cancer
Your honeymoon is the one time you definitely don't want to be on your period, so when newly Talitha Sargeant came on during hers, she was frustrated.
"My periods had been so up and down in the run up to the wedding, which I’d put down to pre-wedding stress, that I thought it was me finally relaxing and my period was starting," the 29-year-old from West Sussex said. "We still managed to make love, but there was blood everywhere."
Talitha was on the honeymoon of a lifetime - a four-week tour of the USA, visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii and Las Vegas - with her new husband, 30-year-old Mathew in October 2016, when she noticed her heavy bleeding. But what started as an inconvenience soon became something much more concerning, when she felt an urgent need to go to the toilet two days into their holiday.
98 days until we say "i do" cannot wait #wedding #datenight #atesomuch #prosecco #ilovemyman
A post shared by Talitha (@roseabella) on Jul 10, 2016 at 2:15am PDT
"I pulled my dress up and saw there was blood everywhere," Talitha told Press Assocation. "It might sound a bit graphic, but it looked like someone had been murdered. The blood was dripping down my legs, onto the floor and had soaked through my dress and knickers."
Concerned, the couple rushed back to their hotel room, stocking up on sanitary products on the way. After a while, the bleeding became lighter, and Talitha tried to push it to the back of her mind. "It didn’t actually put a downer on the holiday. We still had an amazing time and I didn’t feel that worried about the bleeding."
In Hawaii, however, the very heavy bleeds returned, so Talitha's mum organised a doctor's appointment for when she arrived back in the UK. The GP prescribed the new bride some hormone tablets, urging her to return in a week if things didn’t improve, and when they didn't Talitha went for an ultrasound.
"Two months earlier I’d married my soulmate, and now I discovered I had cancer"
There, the sonographer noticed shading on her cervix, and she was sent for further examinations just four days before Christmas. "I felt really scared," Talitha said. "I knew something wasn’t right and with it being the festive season, everything felt a lot darker."
On Christmas Eve, Talitha was given the scary news that she had a 7cm mass in her cervix that was most likely to be cancer. "I was devastated. It felt like I was in a big black hole. Just two months earlier I’d married my soulmate, on the happiest day of my life, and now I discovered I had cancer."
Talitha, Mathew and their families did their best to enjoy Christmas, but on January 3, 2017, after a cervical investigation operation, it was confirmed that she had cervical cancer stage 2B.
"It hit us all like a bus," Talitha recalled.
Recently married, the couple had planned to have children, so the news that Talitha would require surgery to move her ovaries in a bid to preserve her fertility came as a further devastating blow.
A post shared by Talitha (@roseabella) on Mar 7, 2017 at 10:14am PST
"I was told I would never be able to carry my own child. This left me feeling robbed and devastated," she said. "I was a newly married wife planning on starting a family. Oddly I found this more upsetting than being told I had cancer."
Talitha's treatments included seven weeks of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy – a form of radiotherapy. After three months, she was told the tumour on her cervix had gone, however there was also some bad news: the cancer had spread to her lungs and lower back - and doctors wouldn't be able to cure her.
"I cannot describe in words how it is to hear that news," Talitha said.
The 29-year-old has been given a prognosis of two to three years, and is receiving palliative care, with chemotherapy and immunotherapy every three weeks. Her husband has supported her the whole way through, and it's only made them grow closer together.
