Interview OV06

Age at interview: 47

Age at diagnosis: 35

Brief Outline: Ovarian cancer diagnosed in 1991 following night sweats. Treated by surgical removal of the affected ovary followed by chemotherapy.

Background: Complementary therapist; single; no children.

Describes how she only had a cyst and one ovary removed.

The cyst was removed and the ovary that it was attached to, which I always forget which one it was, whether it was the right or the left, but it was one. That's all I had removed. The other ovary, uterus, because they didn't see any sign of it having spread, not that they were thinking it was malignant. I mean they just saw a cyst there that had squashed an ovary. So they took out the ovary because it was a bit of a mess I think they described it as. It looked a bit messy and they took out the cyst but there were no signs of anything else there. And as the surgeon said 'we had a good look around'. Imagine (laughing) these people cutting you open and oh yes, having a good old look round. And then I was in hospital for about a week recovering.

Was asked to phone the hospital to receive her results and realised then that there was a problem.

Oh well, what happened was they said 'we will write to you, we'll write to your doctor and let him know. There shouldn't be any problem with it, you should know within the next 2 or 3 weeks. Everything will be fine, we're convinced'. 'We're convinced'. And then on a Friday evening in late February there was a message on my answer-phone which was 'can you please call the doctor as soon as you get in'. As it was Friday evening, I couldn't, it was too late. And I knew then, because they don't leave you messages to call doctors unless there's a problem, and there was. I phoned and yes it was malignant, it was cancerous. That's how I knew. I mean I knew over the weekend. I knew before I was even told.

She felt sick after her early chemotherapy treatments but felt fine in later ones.

But the surprising thing is I felt great. I felt great during the chemotherapy. The first one, I was very sick for the first day or so but then after that I was fine. The second one, I was I think sick on the first day but then fine after that. The third one I wasn't even sick at all. The fourth one, nothing. And between the third and the fourth or just after the fourth, yes I think it was between the third and the fourth I went on a walking holiday in Yugoslavia, that's how well I felt. So chemotherapy, people get really uptight about the word 'chemotherapy' and they think 'oh it's going to be an awful life, I won't be able to live it and I won't be able to carry on doing the things I do', but I did.  

She developed meningitis after chemotherapy damaged her immune system.

Yes, I was told that it was advisable for me to stop at that point, particularly in view of the fact that it was a very early stage ovarian cancer.  

So for my, for my particular case it was felt that the risks were now becoming too great.

So it wasn't that you had a bad reaction to it or anything like that?

Not physically but internally obviously it was depleting my immune system and it wasn't swinging back. With the chemotherapy the cells drop off and then they start to recover and that's why they give you monthly treatments and they give you time for the immune system to recover. But it probably doesn't recover to the same level. It is expected to drop down, but with mine it dropped down and didn't recover and dropped down even further and didn't recover, and carried on to the point where it was becoming dangerous or certainly not advisable as a treatment for a stage 1 cancer.  

And then I got meningitis, but that's another story and that was because my immune system was depleted from the chemotherapy treatment.