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The Numberphile Podcast

The Orchid Room and Cancer - with Hannah Fry

The Numberphile Podcast

Brady Haran

Natural Sciences, Science & Medicine, Social Sciences, Educational Technology, Education

4.9619 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Professor Hannah Fry discusses her cervical cancer diagnosis - and subsequent attempt to make sense of it all. Making Sense of Cancer - Showing on BBC2 on June 2 and then on BBC iPlayer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017wzq Telegraph Article - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/prof-hannah-fry-calculating-risks-cancer-treatment-would-have/ Hannah Fry website - https://hannahfry.co.uk/ Hannah Fry books - Amazon - https://amzn.to/3PzW4nz Numberphile videos with Hannah - http://bit.ly/hannah_vids Hannah previously on the podcast - https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/hannah-fry Macmillan Cancer Support - https://www.macmillan.org.uk NHS Cancer help - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer/ You can support Numberphile on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/numberphile Like these people - https://www.numberphile.com/patrons With thanks to MSRI - https://www.msri.org

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Today we're being joined once again by Professor Hannah Fry, a mathematician at University College London.

0:09.3

Hannah's also an author, a broadcaster and a familiar guest here on Numberphile.

0:15.2

Hannah's always great fun, quick with a joke, yet today we're talking about matters of life and death. That's because

0:22.3

about a year and a half ago, Hannah was diagnosed with cervical cancer. It was extremely

0:28.7

serious. There were fears it was spreading. Within a month, Hannah had radical and life-changing

0:34.8

surgery, including a hysterectomy. It was a move which has hopefully saved her

0:40.2

life. Hannah's a wife, a mother of two young girls, and experience the fears and emotions you'd

0:46.5

expect from anyone facing cancer. But she's also a person supposedly well-versed in the details of

0:53.3

risk, probability. She's rational, analytical.

0:57.6

Did that change the way she thought about cancer? Well, Hannah filmed much of her experience,

1:03.6

and that deeply personal footage is going to form part of a program about to be broadcast on the BBC.

1:09.5

The show's called Making Sense of Cancer,

1:13.1

and today we're going to hear more about it. But first, I asked Hannah about her diagnosis

1:18.0

and how she spent many months setting aside a routine letter inviting her to be screened.

1:28.0

I did, in fact, have symptoms, but I just dismissed them because I just had a baby, like, you

1:34.2

know, you're kind of all over the place.

1:36.0

And yeah, I was just really busy.

1:37.2

So I had had symptoms, but they weren't like these really strong, you know, I wasn't like

1:40.9

doubled over in agony or anything.

1:43.6

I just, they were mild enough that I just, that I just dismissed it.

1:46.3

So yeah, I really came close to missing it. And then you had this letter telling you to come in and, you know, have a screening, but you were like, aren't too busy and pushed it to the side. Yeah, which I think happens quite a lot, actually. I mean, I think, I don't know. maybe it's just me

1:41.5

but I don't think that

...

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