In early October, on the brink of retirement, Sharon Laws wrote a powerful personal statement in which she revealed she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. The 42-year-old British rider had begun chemotherapy three days before her announcement. Now three chemotherapy treatments into an eight-round regimen, Laws has settled into a new routine of sorts – one that includes tests and treatment, friends and family and, of course, cycling.
The Cancer Diagnosis
Laws had a biopsy in mid-August that identified "secondary cancer in the lymph nodes" in her neck. Over the following two months, Laws had a CT scan, a CT-PET scan, 2 MRI scans, a tonsillectomy, a tongue base biopsy, lymph nodes removed from her neck and pelvis, and two cervical biopsies.
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"Initially they thought I had head and neck cancer because that was where the lymph nodes were first found," Laws explained. "It was only when I had the CT-PET scan that they found further infected lymph nodes in the pelvis and abdomen. Since head and neck cancer rarely spreads down, the focus shifted to searching for the primary tumour in the cervical region."
In September, five weeks after she was told she had cancer, Laws was diagnosed with stage IV cervical cancer.
"Spreading to lymph nodes in the neck is found in advanced cervical cancer," said Laws. "The histology from the biopsies in the lymph nodes in the neck and pelvis matched with that of the cancer cells in the cervix."
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