Ovarian Cancer

It's the early detection, so I do actually say to people now, if someone says 'oh I have a problem with eating and I've been told I've got an irritable bowel', I do suggest, rather interferingly, that they go to their doctor and say 'could I please have a blood test, and can I have an ultrasound?' because it's early detection is the best, and my one real regret is that because my symptoms were so vague, I hadn't realised that there was a blood test and that I might have asked for an ultra sound. 

As the patient I wouldn't expect to have to ask, but I would have thought it would have been done, but it wasn't, and so that's one thing I do tell, I tell almost everybody I know if they start telling me they have these kind of symptoms I say 'do go to your doctor, just don't leave them', because they are vague and they're different for everyone, and you don't want to wait until you feel ill, because it creeps on you rather slowly, and if only we could wake up one morning and feel as we did when we were well, then we'd realise how far we'd slipped. But you don't get that, you just get used to feeling below par all the time.
 

Do you have any message to other women about ovarian cancer based on your experience?

Try and live as most normal life as you can and try and cram in everything you can. I think to sit and think about your illness, you must get very depressed. Try and get out and meet people and, I think also, by the fact that you're doing this sort of thing, you're going out but you've got cancer, and you're joining this and you're doing that, people think, 'oh it isn't so bad'.  You know, if you can lead a life like that, you know, it must be better. Because I think I would drive myself mad if I just sat in here all day. But I've never sat in here all day, anyway.