In 2020, Anna Ogo underwent a pap smear as part of a routine checkup. Ogo felt stunned when the results were abnormal, and soon she learned she had cervical cancer.
“I knew that disease existed,” the 35-year-old from outside Seattle tells TODAY.com. “But I didn’t really know what it was.”
Ogo grew up in Japan and never received the HPV vaccine. There’s also a stigma surrounding human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer in her home country, she says.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding around it. It’s related to sexual activities, and nobody wants to talk about it,” she says. “I felt shame and guilt.” (The vast majority of cervical cancer is caused by HPV, and HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection, according to Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.)
As a teen, Morgan Newman understood the importance of regular pap smears in screening for cervical cancer. But when she was offered the HPV vaccine as a teen, she refused.
“My mom begged and begged me to get the vaccine, but I looked at her and I said, ‘That’ll never happen to me. I will never get that cancer,’” Newman, 33, of Norwalk, Iowa, tells TODAY.com. “Here I was eight years later, getting diagnosed with HPV-related cervical cancer.”The two women are sharing their stories to encourage people to receive the HPV vaccine and undergo regular cervical cancer screenings.
“If I could prevent someone else from making that same mistake, for thinking that this will never happened to them, (I want to),” Newman says.
Routine screening finds cancer
For both Ogo and Newman, a pap smear found their cervical cancers.
Before she was diagnosed in 2014 at age 24, Newman experienced pain and bleeding after sex that could have been an early sign of cervical cancer.
“I was…
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