Professor Hannah Fry has spoken of her fear at confronting the "sheer terrifying drop of the end of my existence" after being diagnosed with cervical cancer. The mathematician and broadcaster, 42, recently appeared in the second series of The Celebrity Traitors but was banished after being unmasked as a Traitor in the fourth episode.
Fry has now discussed receiving her cervical cancer diagnosis six years ago. In 2020, she delayed a cervical screening appointment for several months, but when she eventually attended, she was told that cancerous cells had been detected.
Diagnosis and Lymph Node Fears
Appearing on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, 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."
Despite it remaining unclear "how bad it was at that point", Fry was told that her survival prospects depended on whether the cells had spread to her lymph nodes. "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," she said.
"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 and Recovery
Following her hysterectomy, Fry found herself isolated in hospital when she questioned her surgeon about the appearance of her lymph nodes 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."
Fighting back tears, Fry went on: "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 explained that she couldn't phone family and friends as she was "too sad", revealing that she asked her husband to position FaceTime in the corner of a room like she was "CCTV" so she could observe their two young daughters playing. "I didn't want them to see me, it was too much," she said.
Nevertheless, Fry spoke about 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 went on to say: "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."
Academic Career and Broadcast Work
Fry holds the distinction of being the inaugural Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and is 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 additionally fronted numerous television and radio programmes for the BBC, among them The Secret Genius Of Modern Life.
Desert Island Discs is available to listen to on BBC Radio 4 and Sounds from 10am on Sunday.
