Tears for the women, boos for the doctor

By FIONA BARBER

In a plain office block, in a long narrow room, the emotions generated by the Gisborne cervical cancer inquiry were laid bare.

Women wept as they recounted how aggressive cancers and abnormal cells had suddenly appeared after normal smears.

Also crying were people in the public gallery listening to the harrowing evidence.

There was applause from the gallery after the testimony of six women.

And when some of them were asked questions by Christopher Hodson, QC, representing Dr Michael Bottrill, the supporters bristled.

Hushed boos and gasps of disbelief could be clearly heard.

The scene of solidarity was set when a group of women affected gathered at a nearby band rotunda and together made their way to the first-floor office space that is the venue for the inquiry.

When it was their turn to speak, "Patient One," the woman the Herald calls Jane, opened with the sequence that led to her diagnosis of invasive cancer, her fight for life and the realisation that something had gone very wrong with the reading of her cervical smears.

"I am going to tell you a little about my past five years. I don't want you to think of it as a cathartic exercise for me, because I can assure you it is not.

"What I need for you to understand is what it is like to be in your youth and handed out a life sentence, possibly a death sentence."

Then, walking the long aisle between the public gallery and the witness stand, came Kerri Tombleson, husband by her side.

She told the inquiry that Dr Bottrill had missed four consecutive smears with high-grade abnormalities. She had undergone two procedures to try to gather the precancerous cells, the second of which had led to heavy bleeding. When her father died in October 1993, she flew to Napier but haemorrhaged and collapsed after the funeral and was taken to hospital.

"The reason I am speaking out is to make sure this cannot be explained away as differing pathology opinions blurring the lines between normal and abnormal cells in what seems to be grey areas in slide reading," she said emphatically.

"There can surely be no grey areas as to what is normal and what is high-grade."

The next woman to walk the long walk spoke of the future, that improvement in the screening programme was needed so her daughter did not "suffer the hurt and emotions that I felt."

Why was it, asked Deborah Murphy, who is pregnant with her second child, that millions were spent gathering statistics for the cervical screening programme but the figures were not able to be analysed?

The next witness, Raewyn Page, who had a radical hysterectomy after recurrent illness, spoke about now getting the most out of life and of accepting challenges readily.

But she also wanted apologies - from Dr Bottrill, Gisborne Hospital and the national screening programme.

The final two witnesses, who had their names suppressed, shared their accounts of life-threatening illness, surgery and lack of support and information from the public health system.

Both appeared frail but their words - read by lawyer Victoria Anderson - still seemed to cut through a room full of people who had been listening to tragedy most of the day.