Television star and mother-of-two Jayne Kiely wouldn't think twice about taking the HPV vaccination after two frightening cervical cancer scares.
The popular Mitre 10 Dream Home presenter was acutely aware of the dangers of cervical cancer after her mother contracted the disease in her 30s and underwent ahysterectomy.
"I always have been very proactive about looking after myself, I don't want to be one of those women that say, `If only I got on to it sooner'," said the mother of two boys aged 10 and 8.
When she was 28, Kiely felt something "wasn't right," and booked herself in to see a specialist _ only to discover she had a high-grade pre-cancer in her cervix.
"I was in surgery pretty much the next day."
She underwent a procedure called a cone biopsy and a loop excision to remove the affected tissue, an extremely uncomfortable operation.
"Before I had the kids it was quite scary because you immediately wonder if it's going to cause problems and hold up a pregnancy. And you do think the worst."
Between having her two children, Kiely had a second abnormal smear test result and had to undergo another cone biopsy.
"You think `Oh gosh, there's something really wrong with me'," the 44-year-old said, adding that many of her friends have gone through a similar process.
"And cervical cancer, until it gets aggressive, it's not like a melanoma that you can watch change, or a lump on your breast that you can feel. It's all happening inside you and you can't track it, and that's the scary part.
"That's why I'm so behind this _ if there is something out there that can help you not go through this, and it's traumatic enough without being cancer, then you should do it."
As the celebrity face of the Gardasil programme, Kiely said it was important for young women to continue to have smear tests but that vaccination was a "personal choice" that parents and children needed to make for themselves.
"But I would absolutely get my daughters vaccinated if I had girls. I would not hesitate."
