Early detection is the key in treating ovarian cancer

Friday, Oct. 12, 2007

In women, ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths — the deadliest and most aggressive of all the gynecological cancers, with 70 percent of women not being diagnosed until the cancer has advanced to a late stage with a five-year survival rate of 20 percent or less. Due to the anatomical location of the ovaries, its subtle, non-specific symptoms, lack of education and awareness, the nonexistence of an effective, accurate and reliable diagnostic screening test, ovarian cancer is rarely caught and treated early when five-year survival rates can be over 90 percent.

I’m a living witness to the anguish, suffering and confusion this disease causes a woman and her loved ones. My mother and best friend, Carol Sparshott-Stockman, sadly was one of the 16,000 women to die from ovarian cancer and the complications thereof last year, on Dec. 8. She was misdiagnosed by physician after physician for years, leaving the disease untreated until late March 2004, during an emergency room visit for severe abdominal⁄pelvic pain, bloating⁄pressure and an intense feeling of fullness causing her the inability to neither eat nor drink.

She was an extremely health-conscious person, getting all her regular diagnostic exams every year. No doctor could determine why she was having sudden unexplained persistent weight gain⁄bloating, swelling in her ankles, fatigue and a mass on her ovary had been declared benign with no possibility of ever turning malignant. These symptoms were ignored and passed off as something else insignificant by medical professionals until it was too late and her cancer had advanced to a very serious stage 3c. Before her diagnosis, my mom and our family had been uninformed, unaware and ignorant of ovarian cancer. It’s a disease that’s said to whisper because of its subtle, vague symptoms with a low public profile, unlike other cancers affecting women such as breast and cervical. If only we had been more aware and more informed, we may have known that her symptoms were anything but normal and it could’ve been caught earlier.

We need to turn the volume up on ovarian cancer, making the whisper become a shout. We need more public awareness about this insidious disease, knowing that the current, tragic status quo is unacceptable. Johanna’s Law: The Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness act was signed into law earlier this year, providing funding for awareness and education by way of a national public service campaign, including written materials, public service announcements about early symptoms and early detection, better educating health-care providers and increasing women’s own awareness of the signs, symptoms, and risk factors of this disease. Symptoms include pelvic⁄abdominal pain, pelvic or abdominal swelling⁄bloating, felling of fullness, difficulty eating or drinking, unusual persistent fatigue, urinary frequency, gastrointestinal upsets such as gas, nausea, and indigestion, unexplained weight gain or weight loss and unexplained change in bowel habits.

These symptoms may vary in intensity and can seem vague, especially in the early stages when diagnosis is crucial. If you experience a persistence of these symptoms, it’s important to see your physician and request a pelvic examination and a CA-125 blood test. While reliable diagnostic screen test for ovarian cancer has yet to be found, women should see their gynecologist annually for a routine pelvic exam. Pap smears do not detect ovarian cancer.

Awareness does not begin or end in September; rather it’s something that must be maintained year round. The fight against ovarian cancer continues to be one of the biggest battles of women’s health issues. Increasing education and promoting public awareness will better facilitate physician-to-patient and patient-to-physician knowledge and communication of ovarian cancer’s symptoms and risk factors. If women and medical doctors learn to listen more carefully to the whispers, then we may begin to reverse the fatal trend, giving hope amid the bleak statistics of this illness by early detection.

Carol C. Stockman, Hollywood, Md.