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Cancer or not cancer? How I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer (part 2)


Today is a very special day for me. Exactly one year ago my life was completely changed as I was diagnosed with cancer. Last month I wrote about how I was told by the doctors in Australia that I had a large, but benign, cyst. My sister insisted that she didn’t like the look of the ‘cyst’ in my first ultrasound, and therefore it would be safer to remove it anyway. I then arranged another doctor in Melbourne who had agreed to remove the ‘cyst’, but I had issues with my private health insurance, so the surgery didn’t go ahead. So my sister arranged for me to go to Brazil to do a videolaparoscopy, a keyhole surgery. I remember crying when my fiancé Ian dropped me at the airport – for some unknown reason I felt scared. On the day of the surgery, I remember feeling mostly calm but a bit worried about my left ovary, the one with the cyst. I was hoping my surgeon, Dr Fernando Anschau, would be able to remove the cyst and leave the ovary intact, as I was only 31 and didn’t want to jeopardise any chances of having kids in the future. My sister and dad, both gynaecologists and friends with my surgeon, were present during the operation. This is when our nightmare started.

The surgery was supposed to last about 40 minutes, but instead it lasted more than 2 hours. To reach the ‘cyst’, the medical team had to battle a forest of adhesions in my abdominal cavity. When they finally got to the left ovary, there was no ‘cyst’. Neither an ovary.

When I woke up from the surgery, I immediately asked my sister if everything had gone okay. I was still drowsy from anaesthetics, but I remember she told me: ‘Fran, you are not coming back to Australia next week.’ She had already printed a research paper about borderline ovarian tumours, but she told me it, without mentioning the word ‘cancer’, that it could be something else.

One night before the pathology results were released, I couldn’t sleep. The whole night I kept having thoughts about ‘what if...’ and I cried a lot. I didn’t want to be on menopause at 31, to be bald because of chemotherapy, or even worse, I didn’t want to die. I loved my life, Ian, my family, my friends. I remember lying in my sister’s bed that morning and crying, telling her I didn’t want to lose my other ovary, I didn’t want to have cancer. She went to work but called me about midday. She told me the surgeon wanted to see me at 5 pm, and I should start fasting because they would try to operate that night. That is when I was sure something wasn’t quite right.

At 5pm, we walked into the surgeon’s office. I remember smiling and telling him ‘I’m here for you to give me good news’. But there were no good news. He told me I had stage 3 epithelial ovarian cancer. If that wasn’t bad enough, he told me we would have to remove my other (healthy) ovary and uterus, that I needed chemotherapy, and that I was going to lose my hair. The only good news was that because he had seen that my upper abdominal cavity was clear, he would do a horizontal (caesarean-like) cut instead of the traditional vertical cut ovarian cancer patients usually get. I was so confused, how did that happened? Until today, I ask myself what went wrong as so far no mutation has been found in my family that could explain my diagnosis.

Being diagnosed with cancer was terrifying, but the hardest thing that day was telling Ian about my diagnosis over the phone. It was one of the most painful things I have ever done in my life – it still brings me to tears every time I think about it. We both cried, a lot. I was so scared of how he was going to react, I was afraid he would leave. But he didn’t, and never would. (And for those who like a happy ending story, we are now engaged and planning our wedding!)

Then I had my second surgery, did 6 cycles of chemotherapy with paclitaxel and carboplatin, lost my hair... all that kind of stuff, over a 7 month period. And then I was in remission, and it was all worth it! Yesterday I saw Dr Anschau, who told me that some ovarian cancer patients don’t make it to one year after the diagnosis. I feel privileged I did. I also feel it is my obligation to help other patients to go through this. If you have received a cancer diagnosis recently I wish for you lots of strength – too keep you going during tough times, love – to bring meaning to your life, and hope – so you never, never give up, because everything is possible.

Lots of love and health

Fran xo

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