“That heightened the sense of urgency and the sense of guilt that I had spent so long putting off getting a smear test – stupidly,” Diona told BBC News NI.
“When you come off the phone from a medical professional, I think you forget what they said, you forget the ins-and-outs of it and I didn’t really know how serious it was or how serious to take it.”
She added that she felt “guilty as a mum for not having done it earlier”.
Diona had to go for a biopsy at Daisy Hill Hospital, where she was told she was actually at a “severe level of pre-cancerous cells” and was offered treatment there and then.
“I sort of was in a bit of a state of shock because I thought if I had left that any longer, surely that’s [cancer] what would have happened.”
She then underwent a procedure where her pre-cancerous cells, and a part of her cervix, were removed.
Laser therapy, or laser ablation, is a procedure done under local anaesthetic where a laser burns away the abnormal cells.
“I was like, well, let’s just do it right now. Let’s handle the situation right now. I want it done immediately,” Diona said.