My £5m Wall Street career was ruined by bungled smear test By JOHN ROBERTSON Published on Wednesday 2 May 2012 00:00 A MATHEMATICIAN seeking millions of pounds in compensation over botched cervical cancer smear tests has told a court that she felt robbed of a lucrative banking career. Dr Helen McGlone, 32, said she had dreamed of working in investment banking since watching films as a girl of "powerful women throwing their weight around" on Wall Street. She told the Court of Session in Edinburgh that she had been a child prodigy and had completed a PhD, but her plans for a high- flying career were shattered when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She required radical surgery and radiotherapy, which ended her chance of becoming a mother naturally, and, she claims, ruined her career prospects. Dr McGlone said she had had a gift for mathematics and never made mistakes. "I cry now because I have to use a calculator," she added. Dr McGlone, of Falkirk, graduated from Glasgow University with a first-class honours in physics and applied mathematics, and became a researcher at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland as part of her PhD. In 2008, she had a cervical smear test in Geneva and cancer was discovered. She had had smear tests in 2005 and 2006 in the Sandyford Initiative, a family planning clinic in Glasgow, and had been advised they were negative. Greater Glasgow Health Board has admitted negligence in the interpreting of the tests and accepted that it is liable to pay damages to Dr McGlone. The size of her claim, £5 million, is disputed by the board as excessive. Lawyers for Dr McGlone have submitted to Lord Bannatyne that she continues to suffer the effects of her treatment. They state: "The missed diagnosis of cervical cancer and the consequent surgery and treatment have caused her to lose many of the abilities and qualities which would have enabled her to work in a high-pressure environment such as in the financial sector. She is fatigued, stressed and unable to cope with the demands of work of the type she had planned to undertake. She will never be able to work in the financial sector and will lose the very substantial income she would have enjoyed until her retirement age. Dr McGlone said in evidence that she had loved mathematics from the age of two. My mother had the sense to put me in front of Sesame Street and I learned to read and write. I could write my name when I was two years and three months. When I went to primary school, my parents were told I had a reading age of ten and similar in maths. I was known for being the ridiculously clever one," said Dr McGlone. She said maths was "divine." I mean that genuinely. Maths is the basis of life, the basis of science. I genuinely see a divinity in it. It was something I had a gift for it. I do not consider myself special, because it is a gift," she added. Her PhD took her to Cern, the "foremost physics research centre in the world" and she knew she needed a PhD to enter the world of banking. I had grown up with 1980s movies about working on Wall Street... powerful women throwing their weight around in this fabulous environment. I used to think, "This is the kind of life and career I want." I thought you might need to be a lawyer to do that, but I found this dream of a fast-paced environment, this challenge, was something that was for mathematicians, and the idea of going to work on Wall Street was entirely within my reach. "I thought, "Hallelujah! I have found it. I cry now because I have to use a calculator. Before, I would never trust a calculator. Dr McGlone recalled doctors in Switzerland telling her the cancer was invasive and her life was in danger. She said that comparing the radical surgery she needed to a hysterectomy was like comparing "a manicure to having your hands amputated." The pain was so intense, she thought she was dying. Just as soon as you are on your feet again, they put you on the radiotherapy. Your body is on fire and there needs to be a word for this tiredness. Dr McGlone said at one stage she was so thin that when she had looked in a mirror side-on, she could see her skeleton. "It looked like I had been in a famine," she said. She continued to see a consultant for checks, and she added: "I saw him two weeks ago and I am three and a half years clear." The hearing continues.