'I don't have time for this' - Doctor told Louth woman (27) before cancer diagnosis

January is cervical cancer awareness month and over 250 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in Ireland every year.

According to the Mary Keating Foundation, Ireland has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in Western Europe and 82 women die from the disease in Ireland annually.

Cervical cancer mostly affects women aged 30 to 50 and it is very rare to be diagnosed under age 25, according to the foundation.

Aine Lawrence (44) from Dundalk, Louth, was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 27-years-old in 2008 when she was experiencing some irregular bleeding.

Aine ended up in A&E and it was there she says a doctor was really dismissive towards her and her situation.

He told her: "I don't have time for this, this is so stupid, and anyway, you're 27, women your age just don't get cancer.

"I was like, what? Cancer? Oh my gosh. So they took me back in for tests and within a week and a half they told me I had cancer.

"I'd had a smear test done earlier in the year and I hadn't got the results yet, but the results came in that week while I was waiting and it showed I had irregular cells. In the time it took for me to end up in A&E, it had progressed rapidly into cancer.

"So I went to St James's and I had a total radical hysterectomy and they'd hoped that it would get all the cancer, but it didn't."

At that point, the cancer had spread to Aine's lymph nodes and she had to stay in St Luke's for seven weeks where she had chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

"I finished in St Luke's Christmas week and I was able to come home and we did like follow-up scans and everything was fine. I was given the all-clear in March and we all went to Disneyland," she recalled.

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A year on from this, in 2009, Aine went back to college and her life carried on as normal.

She had an appointment with her radiologist and she asked for another scan to be done because it had been a year.

Her radiologist told her it wasn't really necessary but they did the scan anyway.

"He was like, 'well, not really, but I'll give you one anyway...but you're fine'.

"I was actually up in St James's with my gynecologist about something else and I was like, 'oh yeah, there's a scan on the system for me if you want to just check it'.

"And they were like, 'you've cancer in your lungs and your lymph nodes at stage four, which is terminal', which was crazy. They basically said like get your affairs in order kind of thing, it was a lot to take in."

This period in Aine's life was beyond difficult, she was at a point where she was told she had about a year left to live.

"I had palliative care nurses coming to see me all the time. I got married, like it was a big rush cause, we thought I was going to die the next year. I was really unwell. I lost my hair this time and I looked really, really unwell, I felt awful, of course."