Honoring and Remembering Women with Ovarian Cancer

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In honor of National Ovarian Cancer Awareness month, I would like to introduce a new blog to our Health and Wellness blogroll. Dee Dee, the author of "J's Daughter," has written an intensely personal account of her mother's battle with the disease.

In her own words:

I have learned much in the last nine months. I have read that ovarian cancer whispers. I say it screams. It just needs someone to listen. The American Cancer Society statistics for ovarian cancer estimate that there will be 22,220 new cases and 16,210 deaths in 2005. This is a death rate FOUR TIMES that of breast cancer.

Almost 70 percent of women with the common epithelial ovarian cancer are not diagnosed until the disease is advanced in stage. The 5-year survival rate for these women is only 15 to 20 percent. This is unacceptable.

Women need to be made more aware of the symptoms, and doctors need to listen to their patients. Especially when the patient tells them that they fear they have ovca, as my mother did for almost a year before she was finally diagnosed. It’s so sad and senseless when a woman knows the symptoms but can’t get anyone to listen to what she is saying.

Ovarian cancer cuts across all borders, and kills women both young and old. Jessica, the author of "Cancer, Baby," lost the fight against this terrible disease but her words still live on:

Though you probably don't know it, September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. As such, this is as good an opportunity as any to post a brief public service announcement so you can be vigilant about early ovarian cancer detection in yourself and your loved ones. As with most cancers, early detection is key to long-term survival.

The problem with early detection, however, is that the symptoms of ovarian cancer often mimic many truly benign or non life-threatening physical discomforts and ailments that most healthy women experience at some time or another in their lives. For that reason, ovarian cancer is referred to as "the disease that whispers," because its symptoms are often so "ordinary" that you have to listen very carefully to hear what they are saying. These symptoms include:

* Unexplained change in bowel and/or bladder
habits, such as constipation, diarrhea,
urinary frequency, and/or incontinence
* Gastrointestinal upset, such as gas,
indigestion, and/or nausea
* Unexplained weight loss or weight gain
* Pelvic and/or abdominal pain or discomfort
* Pelvic and/or abdominal bloating or
swelling
* A constant feeling of fullness
* Abnormal postmenopausal bleeding
* Pain during intercourse
* Unusual fatigue
* Persistent lower back pain

As you can see, most of these symptoms are pretty mild, and they can be occasionally normal for many women. Therein, of course, is the rub -- and the danger.

In fact, it isn't uncommon for women to go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for alarming periods of time after they initially present to their gynecologists or family physicians. In a lot of cases, it seems, women are paying attention to the whispers but their healthcare practitioners are not -- dismissing their symptoms as minor irritations, or pursuing fruitless or erroneous diagnostic paths.

Typically, women with ovarian cancer complain of gastrointestinal upset. After a standard pelvic exam that reveals nothing, they often end up getting a colonoscopy, which either turns up negative or leads to the misdiagnosis of a gastrointestinal disorder or disease, such as irritable bowel syndrome or, in my case, Crohn's. Often, it isn't until months later that ovarian cancer is eventually diagnosed -- months in which their cancer has had more time to grow and metastasize.

If you experience any of the above symptoms for more than two or three weeks, head to your internist. First, make sure you demand that he or she does a rectovaginal exam rather than just a standard pelvic exam. In nearly all cases, standard pelvic exams, which are practiced routinely by most healthcare providers, cannot diagnose ovarian cancer. Rectovaginal exams, on the other hand, are effective diagnostic tools. You should, in fact, be requesting them during your annual visit to