Interview OV10

Age at interview: 65

Age at diagnosis: 62

Brief Outline: Ovarian cancer diagnosed in 2000 following an abdominal ache. Treated by surgical removal of ovaries and womb followed by chemotherapy.

Background: Retired finance clerk; married; 2 adult children.

Her body's reaction to chemotherapy followed a pattern.

But then I had 6 weeks, 6 sessions of the Taxol and I said to my Oncologist 'how will I know this is working 'cos I am really really suffering?' It's not nice, it's not something you would want to wish on anyone. But I think having, I've said it before I think I got away pretty well. I mean I had the session sort of we'll say on the Friday, I was OK till perhaps the Monday and then I started to go downhill. You can't sleep, you, I wasn't sick because I had plenty of drugs to stop that, so I wasn't sick. And as I say, this kept going on, you'd get two weeks of feeling really rotten then suddenly it lifts and you're back feeling a bit normal. I continued with my golf, I couldn't do 18 holes, but I continued with the support of my friends, you know, and you sort of age 20 years, you feel really really lethargic, you know, I got that I could hardly move my legs at one stage, they just felt like glue at the end, when I'm getting to the end of the 6 sessions.  

Waited until her husband had driven her home from hospital before telling him she had cancer.

So I recovered from the operation quite quickly and on the 6th day I was due to come home and they said 'well we'll give you the results that we've found'. So they called me into a little room and there was, oh I don't know, the sister, the two doctors, there seemed to be a crowd of them, and they sat me there and said that they'd found a cancer. And I, you know, it's not happening, you know, you 'it's, it was a cyst, what do you mean it's cancer?' They said 'well we've caught it in the very early stages' he said 'it's just, it's all within itself' he said 'it's attached to your bowel, it attached to the lining of your stomach' he said, but he said 'we've got it' he said 'we should be okay'. He said 'we'll get our oncologist to come and have a word with you later on'. 

So when the Oncologist came he was extremely nice, he explained what they'd found, 'this cancer' he said, but he said 'I'd like to give you chemotherapy'.  

So I, pretty numb really, my husband was waiting for me so he said, he said 'what, you know, what was the problem?' I said 'oh well we'll get home first'. So we drove home, so we had a cup of tea and we sat where we are now and I said 'there's good news and there's bad news'. So I told him the bad news which it was cancer, I said 'the good news is they've caught it, there's no problem but they're going to give me chemotherapy to be on the safe side'.

Got Ovacome's newsletter but didn't want to read the stories of women who hadn't survived, preferring positive information.

You mentioned to me earlier that you had the Ovacome newsletter. How did you find out about them?

That was in the hospital, the cancer section, there's a little section in there for people to wander in and you ask, you know, you say what your problem is and they point you into 'well perhaps you'd like to read this'. And I didn't subscribe to it I didn't, I don't have it every month or anything, I just collected it at the hospital and they would say 'well if you bring it back next time you come'. So I just read about various, people's various way they'd been diagnosed, how they'd been treated, but I didn't feel I needed to have it every week. Every month rather. So I just read it when I was at the hospital.  

Did you find that helpful?  

Bit frightening really because I was reading of people, that was talking of people that had died and, you know, had had it two or three years, and so I found it, you know, I didn't really want to go down that road, I wanted the positive things, which I found that I could do that myself. I didn't really want to know about people that hadn't survived, so yeah I was a bit cowardly that way.