As Diane Crawford sat waiting for doctors to remove the cancer buried inside her, she decided her own surgery wasn't going to be enough. Once this was over, she was going to see that others never got this far. And in this case, there actually was something she could do.
As Diane Crawford sat waiting for doctors to remove the cancer buried inside her, she decided her own surgery wasn’t going to be enough. Once this was over, she was going to see that others never got this far.
“My goal was to do something so nobody had to go through what I went through,” said the Westerville mother of three.
And in this case, there actually was something she could do.
Crawford’s cervical cancer likely was caused by human papillomavirus, a common and mostly sexually transmitted infection. Most sexually active people will contract HPV, but most won’t suffer ill effects. Some types of HPV, however, can cause cervical cancer as well as cancers of the vagina, penis, anus, throat and mouth.
Health officials began recommending HPV vaccines for girls a decade ago, and later proposed them for boys as well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say 11 and 12 are ideal ages for the vaccine, though patients can still receive it in their early 20s.
But most children aren’t being vaccinated. The most recent figures from the CDC show that 40 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys receive all three doses of the vaccine.
“It’s pretty sad, isn’t it?” said Dr. Electra Paskett, co-leader of the control research program at Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. “The public has been clamoring for years for a magic bullet to cure cancer — well, here we have something even better.”
A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that within six years of the vaccine’s introduction, there was a 64 percent decrease in certain types of HPV among girls ages 14 to 19 and a 34 percent decrease in women ages 20 to 24. The nation’s top cancer centers recently issued a statement saying that the vaccination was the best defense against HPV.
But selling people on HPV vaccines hasn’t been easy. Beyond the usual concerns surrounding vaccines is the matter that HPV is primarily transmitted through sex, which can make for uncomfortable conversations, especially between doctors and parents.
That frustrates Paskett, who said some health-care providers won’t discuss it at all. She said the HPV vaccine should be as routine as a tetanus shot.
“I think it’s important to look at this not so much as a sexually transmitted infection ... as it’s an infection that so many adults get by the time they reach their 30s,” said Dr. Amber Traugott, a colon and rectal surgeon who sees cases of HPV-related anal cancer.
Echoed Paskett: “It’s not about sex. It’s about preventing a disease.”
Crawford, 49, has no shame in telling her story. “I’ll talk about HPV all day long,” she said.
She was 43 when a routine pap smear came back abnormal in 2009. She hadn’t missed a yearly pelvic exam in more than 20 years and had never had a problem.
Her doctor told her that HPV was almost certainly the cause of her cancer, and that the virus likely had lingered in her body for decades. Crawford opted for a radical hysterectomy, in which doctors removed her uterus, cervix and part of her vagina.
“I came out of that and immediately was like, ‘What the heck happened?’ “ she said.
Crawford decided to make it her mission to educate people about the vaccine, which she didn’t know about in 2009. Within three months of her surgery, she founded the Crawford Crew, which since has raised more than $100,000 to raise awareness of cervical cancer.
She doesn’t want to push the vaccine, but she wants to make sure parents at least know about it. Two of her three children have been vaccinated, and the third soon will be, too.
“I survived,” Crawford said. “And my kids are going to survive because my husband and I are doing, I feel, the right thing.”