When Terri Lyon noticed irregular bleeding between her periods, she assured her fiancé that it was nothing to worry about.

For two months, the 27-year-old brushed off her symptoms, which sometimes appeared after sex.

Persuaded by her sister, she visited her GP expecting to be told she had an infection.

But in February 2006, three months before she was due to get married, doctors broke the news that she had stage 1A cervical cancer.

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Terri was told she would need a radical hysterectomy if she were even going to survive the year.

“I remember half crying and half laughing and then it was like something snapped in me and I said right, what do we do,” Terri recalls.

“I suppose I went into survival mode and it was very much about fighting it for me and what I needed to do to give myself the best chance.”

Terri, though, had dreamt of becoming a mother. Her devastating diagnosis would deny her the chance of carrying a baby.

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The hysterectomy would remove her womb, cervix and her ovaries.

Terri and Hugh were weeks away from their wedding when she was diagnosed with cancer. Terri Lyon

“[The surgeon] said ‘you don’t have children do you?’ and I said no and he said ‘because we don’t have time to save your ovaries, we don’t have time’.

“He said ‘We could give you time to have a child but I’m telling you now, if we don’t do this operation now, you’ll be dead in a year and you won’t be here to see any baby you have grow up’.”

It was a sobering message for Terri. The happiest period in her life, finalising the details for her wedding and dreaming of a family was replaced with urgent surgery and a bleak diagnosis.

“The biggest thing for us was that we were young and we were on the plan for getting married and having kids so that was completely upturned and we weren’t going to be able to have children,” Terri says.

A few weeks later, her fiancé Hugh drove from their home in Falkirk in the driving snow, traffic reduced to one lane towards the hospital in Glasgow. As Terri recalls, everything you would not want to happen on the day you had a radical hysterectomy happened.

When she came round from the operation, she instinctively knew something wasn’t right. Despite an operation scar running from her navel to her pelvic bone, her ovaries were still intact.

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Her surgeon had discovered her grade four cancer had spread aggressively in the time between her scan and the surgery, reaching her lymph nodes.

“As he told me [the cancer is] in your lymph nodes and it’s spread, I really thought ‘I’m going to die’.”

With chemotherapy and radiotherapy scheduled, Terri would not be strong enough to undergo both radical surgery and intensive treatment and so doctors had removed as much of the tumours as possible.

Terri was left to heal and prepare for her first two rounds of chemotherapy which would begin weeks before her wedding.

Despite her diagnosis, Terri says her wedding was ‘the best day of her life’. Terri Lyon

“I very quickly had to get a bigger wedding dress because I put on a bit of weight and knew I was going to put on more weight from the treatment, and it was really a bit of a tailspin,” she says.

Despite her cancer diagnosis, Terri describes her wedding day as “incredibly joyful” and while she was quite tired, often needing to rest, she happily adds that it was “the best day of my life”.

Yet just hours after her wedding, she would return to hospital for more chemotherapy and her first radiotherapy appointment

Soon after she would have brachytherapy to directly attack the cancer cells in her body internally.

Terri found chemotherapy lonely, meeting just one woman a similar age whilst in hospital. Her brachytherapy, in which rods are surgically placed directly at the site of the cancer, was a frightening experiencing, lying in a room for 20 hours as radioactive seeds were directed at her tumours.

Feeling so alone and with no-one her age around her for support, Terri couldn’t help but wonder wondered why she had cancer.

“That was a really big part of it for me, just feeling so cheated and so dirty and just with it all tying in your mind that you weren’t going to make it.”

Soon after her wedding at the age of 27, Terri entered the menopause. Prescribed hormone replacement therapy (HRT), she will have to take it for the foreseeable future.

She explains: “I’ll be on [HRT] for a good long while because there is a risk of heart disease because your ovaries protect you from all of that, which is all stuff you have no idea about when you’re 27”

The aggressive treatment worked however, and on August 4, she was told she was cancer free.

“I felt just completely relieved, I was happy I felt a bit of disbelief but I was so happy and I said to the consultant ‘I could kiss you, I could kiss you, you’ve saved my life’.

“I remember just thinking how do you ever repay that to somebody.”

Despite health issues which continue to affect her day to day from her treatment, Terri has been in remission for 11 years.

Looking back, she wishes she had seen her doctor sooner and they may have been able to save her ovaries.

“Don’t ignore anything, just go,” she advises.

“It’s better that you went and it was nothing than you ignored it then you went two months later and you end up with all the treatment I had.”

Terri lives life to the full, climbing Ben Nevis after being in remission. Terri Lyon

Now the 39-year-old mental health nurse has backed The Eve Appeal’s ‘I am Adam’ campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the symptoms of gynaecological cancer in men throughout September as part of an awareness month.

“Men having an awareness, it lends an extra support because it’s hard for people to support you through things that are gynecological because it is very taboo,” Terri says.

“I think if people knew [gynecological cancer is] not anything to feel dirty about or feel ashamed about and if men were aware that these things can happen to women and it’s not about being dirty, and if they were aware of the symptoms they might be the one to encourage someone to go to the doctor.

“Because I said it was ok, my husband just took that, whereas if he had known that was a symptom of something bigger, he might have said ‘I don’t think you should ignore that’.

“And that could have been the difference.”

More than 21,000 women diagnosed with one of five different types of gynecological cancer in the UK each year.

Cancer charity The Eve Appeal has said that nearly one in six men in Scotland are not confident enough to discuss gynaecological health issues with their partner while just 22% of women would talk to their partners about any signs or symptoms they may have.

Conducted to raise awareness for Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month throughout September, the charity is the only UK organisation raising awareness and funding research in all five gynaecological cancers – womb, ovarian, cervical, vaginal and vulval.

The ‘I am Adam’ campaign aims to encourage both men and women to be aware of the key symptoms of gynecological issues, such as irregular bleeding, pain during intercourse or changes in urinary habits.

“These survey results show shockingly low levels of awareness about the symptoms of gynaecological cancer among both men and women,

” explains The Eve Appeal’s Chief Executive, Athena Lamnisos

“For too many men, women’s bodies are still a taboo subject, shrouded in mystery. Yet for every woman there is at least one man in their lives who cares for them.

“We know from the many calls that we receive at The Eve Appeal from men, that they can play a vital role in identifying the symptoms of gynaecological cancer, prompting their partners to visit the GP.

“Early diagnosis really is key and can save lives.”

Terri and Hugh with Cub on their first Halloween as a family. Terri Lyon

While Terri hopes that both men and women will become more vigilant in looking for the symptoms of gynecological cancer, she also wants women to know that there is a chance to move on after cancer – and even have a family.

Three years ago, Terri and husband Hugh welcomed a little boy into their family whom they have nicknamed Cub after their family name.

Adopting their little boy, now six, has brought so much happiness into their lives, mending Terri’s broken heart at the thought of never becoming a mother.

“I think it’s really important that women and their partners know that even if all that happens to you, you can still have a family, you can still be parents, you can still have a nice family life,” she says.