Trish, 53 years

When you think that you did pretty well organising your life so that you could retire and enjoy the fruits of your labours at the age of 47, it certainly comes as a rude shock to be asked at the age of 49 by your GP, “Do you happen to know a good oncologist?”

As it happened, I knew exactly where to find a good one because my husband was in the process of being treated by a haematologist for Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia – we always thought that one lot of cancer in the family was enough, but that just wasn’t to be.

My visit to the GP, which unearthed this horrible disease, was triggered by pain when I went to the toilet. I went along thinking that I would leave her office with a plan for treating haemorrhoids (oh I wish!), but following urgent scans I found myself within five days discussing a laparotomy, radical debulking and chemotherapy with a gynaecological oncologist. I must have been well and truly in shock, because my most vivid memory of that visit was a colourful tirade about the fact that I had only just paid 75 dollars for a perm and what I really needed was to be told that my hair was going to fall out.

So there I was, within a week of having seen my GP, in a hospital bed waiting for surgery and hoping above all else that I would not wake up to the fact of having a colostomy bag. Thankfully, there was no bag, but there was lots of time to think about how I had managed to get to this position. My gyneaoncologist explained the symptoms and all of a sudden a lot of things started to make sense. Who would have thought that bloating, burping, indigestion, lower back pain, flatulence and an inability to lose weight no matter what I tried, were all symptoms of ovarian cancer. Because these symptoms were intermittent and never debilitating in any way, and because I was menopausal, I just thought that this was “my lot” for a few months. If I had only been aware of the fact that they were all symptoms of ovarian cancer, I would have been bashing down my GP’s door a good six months earlier and would have caught this thing a lot earlier than the Stage IIIC that I was at.

Well, that was almost four years ago and I have to say that it has been a fairly long road to haul. I have a marvellous medical oncologist and a fabulous team of oncology nurses who look after me and at this point in time, I am onto my sixth drug combination with a total of 70 treatments behind me, I am on drugs to treat osteoporosis and blood clots (both as a result of either the cancer or the chemo); but I feel glad to be alive and fit enough to fight this and win. Our aim is to get my CA125 marker down as low as possible and keep it there until such time as a “magic bullet” comes along.

I have a lot of thing going for me in this battle, not the least of which is a positive attitude engendered and constantly reinforced by my husband. He had such a positive attitude throughout his CML treatment and having been told at the time of diagnosis that he had five years, here he is totally cured because within that time the cancer research world found a “magic bullet” for him.

There is no time to be negative and get down in the dumps – a positive attitude feeds on itself and when it is reinforced by family, friends and medical staff it is a drug in itself. I have also found that keeping fit is a huge plus, not only physically but mentally as well and for that I have a band of wonderful gym staff that look out for me and worry whenever I miss an aqua aerobics session or two. My very dear mother-in-law rang me every single day for four months following my surgery and through my first round of chemo. My best friend made me some gorgeous turbans to hide the bald head (only men are supposed to be bald!) and her wonderful husband came visiting, wearing a theatrical bald head in sympathy.

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