Hannah Fry has spoken about the terror she felt after being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2020, describing the "sheer terrifying drop of the end of my existence" while she waited to learn whether the disease had spread.
The mathematician and broadcaster, 42, who recently appeared in the second series of The Celebrity Traitors and was voted out in the fourth episode, opened up about her experience on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.
Diagnosis and biopsy
Fry said she put off a cervical screening examination for several months in 2020, but when she finally attended, cancerous cells were found. She told host Lauren Laverne: "The results didn't come back for a few weeks and then I got a call from my GP telling me they needed me to come back and do another test and they did a biopsy. I was trying hard not to panic but when they found it was in the lymphatic system... that was when it really started to come down."
Although it remained unclear "how bad it was at that point", Fry was told her survival prospects depended on whether the cells had spread to her lymph nodes. She explained: "It's all about basically how far into your lymphatic system has it got. If it had not got into any lymph nodes, then the odds were in my favour and I had a really good chance of survival. But if it was in one it would drop to a 60% chance of survival and two – the odds would go against me and it would be a 40% chance of survival. Any more and you are really seriously in trouble."
Hospital isolation
After a hysterectomy, Fry was isolating in hospital when she asked her surgeon how her lymph nodes had looked during the operation. She said: "He said four of them were enlarged...like it's not good news really. I was in this hospital bed on my own and no-one could come and visit me for over a week with nothing but the sheer terrifying drop of the end of my existence in front of me – it was horrific."
Holding back tears, Fry continued: "I think the problem is that when you are in that situation your mind doesn't really have anywhere to go. You can't think back to happy things that have already happened because it is sad and you can't look forward to things you are hopeful about because it doesn't feel like it is there. And you can't be there in the moment because it is too painful – you have tubes everywhere and it's painful because you are stuck on a bed. It's awful."
Fry said she could not ring family and friends because she was "too sad", and asked her husband to position FaceTime in the corner of a room like she was "CCTV" so she could watch their two young daughters play. "I didn't want them to see me, it was too much," she said.
Five-year clear and reflection
Despite the ordeal, Fry described how "lucky" she felt. "My goodness me, as awful as that was, it had a full stop at the end of the sentence," she said. "That is an experience that happened in the past. I managed to get through it. I had my five-year clear the other day. I feel so unbelievably lucky. Going through something like that I don't think I would swap it. I think it was honestly such a gift to have that experience when you're 36 and then come out the other side of it."
She added: "Every now and then I think about the lessons that I learnt. They are fading a little bit but I want to hold onto them for as long as I can."
Fry is the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. She previously served as president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and held a professorship in the mathematics of cities at University College London. She has fronted numerous BBC television and radio programmes, including The Secret Genius Of Modern Life.
Desert Island Discs is available on BBC Radio 4 and Sounds from 10am on Sunday.
