This is a personal rant regarding my feelings about ovarian cancer. As many of you know, my wife, Barbara, passed away in early 2012 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer 8 1/2 years before. We were given a terminal diagnosis. Barbara lived bravely and stoically fighting her disease as best she could. I recently saw a video that was posted on Facebook and it was Pierce Brosnan speaking about the death of his first wife and one of his daughters to ovarian cancer. And so it triggered this personal rant.
After living with this disease, I know that there is very little that you can do to prevent this horrible disease. However, I still wish that there was a better way to diagnose and treat ovarian cancer. From personal experience, I know that the early symptoms mimic many other conditions and diseases and so make it very hard to catch ovarian cancer in its earliest and most treatable stages. There will come a time when the researchers and medical community will be able to turn a woman’s immune system against the disease and defeat it with fewer of this scars and side effects that come from the current treatments.
Please consider learning all of the earliest signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer and do not let your loved ones suffer the deadly consequences that ignorance allows. If it is within the realm of possibilities for you, please consider giving a donation to fund the research to help better diagnose and treat ovarian cancer. If nothing else, please share any information that you can with the women that you care about so that they will be better able to prevent the difficult life that one has to lead with a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
I will provide a link to the information regarding the early detection of ovarian cancer. If you have any questions about whether you may be suffering the early stages of ovarian, know that a blood test, the CA–125, may be the best early detection that is available for us today. Ask that your doctor take any symptoms of bloating or abdominal distress seriously, unlike the doctor that missed Barbara’s diagnosis for eight months, despite her repeated concerns. I do not know if an earlier diagnosis would’ve been helpful but my anger has not abated even after a decade. The Ovarian Cancer Organization http://www.ovarian.org/symptoms.php
And hopefully, you will never have to deal with ovarian cancer. You would benefit from remembering to always hug your family and friends and tell them that you love them.