Woman's campaign to raise cervical cancer awareness (From Wiltshire Times)

Woman's campaign to raise cervical cancer awareness

5:10pm Sunday 5th February 2012 in Trowbridge By Mike Wilkinson, Senior Reporter

Chantelle Jenkins, right, with friend Tasha Dunford

A young woman in Trowbridge has launched an awareness drive after being told she might die from a disease she had never heard of.

Chantelle Jenkins, from Lambrok Road, put her high-profile sales job at Cooper Avon Tires and her party lifestyle on hold after finding out she faces a year-long battle with cervical cancer.

The former John of Gaunt pupil said: “I never knew anything about it. They thought it might be stage four and that I could be on death’s door. I just felt so numb.”

Miss Jenkins learned her diagnosis on December 14 and spent Christmas not knowing what was going to happen next.

Last week she was told that her chemotherapy and radiotherapy was about to start.

She said: “I am usually a fun person, but this has really affected me.

“I feel like I have already lived a whole year in just one month and I know there is still a long way to go.”

She may need complicated surgery to remove a growth from her back, which has partly engulfed her bladder and the nerves which control the feeling in her right leg.

Miss Jenkins has been supported by friends and family members, including her best friend Tasha Dunford, 22.

Miss Dunford said: “Chantelle is such a strong person and I know we will get through this, but we are all here for her.”

The best friends have set up a Facebook campaign called Togetherness We Will Fight, to raise awareness of cervical cancer.

They have found almost 1,200 people to back the cause in under a week.

Miss Jenkins and Miss Dunford are now planning to hold a series of fundraising events, including an auction night and a sponsored car wash.

Any money raised will go towards cervical cancer research at the charity Cancer Research UK.

But Miss Jenkins wants to take her campaign further than fundraising.

She said: “The 19 to 25-year-olds out there, like me, are the forgotten generation.

“We don’t get offered smear tests like the new generation.

“If I had been given a smear test earlier, I would have found out about my cancer sooner.”

To support Miss Jenkins’s campaign, visit the Togeth-erness We Will Fight Face-book page, or contact her friend, Tasha Dunford, on 07858 300309.