A few years after she got married Karen Mohamed-Dias decided it was time to have children, but she knew she had a hormonal condition and that it might pose some difficulty in her getting pregnant.
But the journey she envisioned culminating with a bouncing baby in her arms ended instead with her having a hysterectomy, which killed all hopes of her carrying a child. The surgery was done after it was found that she had cervical cancer and was advised to have the hysterectomy instead of having radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as she might not have been able to become pregnant anyway after those treatments.
It has been just months since the surgery and while she is still dealing with the physical and emotional consequences, Mohamed-Dias wants to use her experience to alert other young women that they are not too young to be diagnosed with cervical cancer. But more importantly she wants to encourage them to ask questions when visiting a gynaecologist and to seek second opinion.
