“I took home pamphlets describing it as a ‘silent killer’ because most people miss the symptoms.”
I knew what to look for, but I missed the signs.
It is incurable and often fatal.
There are too many false positives, she said.
It was a dermatologist, not a gynecologist, who diagnosed me.
I had a small growth, the size and color of a pencil eraser, in my navel.
When the dermatologist removed it, he thought it was something harmless.
The biopsy said otherwise.
The call came on April 1, 2020.
That first day, all I could do was get my blood tested.
At this point in the pandemic, we didnt know if we could get COVID-19 from surfaces.
Too many false positives.
One in 108 will die of it.
A Pap smear doesnt detect ovarian cancer, and theres no ovarian version of a mammogram.
Some had unusual bleeding, or another emergent event that landed them in a hospital.
We misdiagnose ourselves, avoiding trips to the emergency room for those same three reasons.
In hindsight, I did have excruciating back pain six months before I was diagnosed.
I thought Id strained my back lifting my 85-pound elderly dog.
I learned to lift with my legs and it mostly went away.
Had my belly button saved my life?
It could have been a death sentence.
My gynecologic oncologist said, The chemotherapy didnt work as well as we hoped.
I had to clarify, You mean it didnt work at all.
A common thing for people to ask at this point is, So youre good now?
Ovarian cancer is considered a chronic illness.
I am likely to have a recurrence eventually.
Even with the removal of all those organs, the cancer can come back elsewhere.
But I dont feel any closer to dying than I was a year ago.
The ribbon for ovarian cancer is teal.
The nurse who took my vitals complimented the coordination.
Thanks, I said.
Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
She paused in her disinfecting of the pulse oximeter and gave me a second look.
Why didnt we know that its Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month?
Ovarian cancer is a sneaky bitch.
I have all of those, they usually say.
I asked my gynecologic oncologist what they should do.
Should they demand a CA-125 blood test and abdominal ultrasound?
No, she said.
Then she told me thatearly screening does not improve ovarian cancer survival rates.
That took me some time to wrap my head around.
Kari Neumeyer is a writer and editor in the Pacific Northwest.
When shes not writing about cancer, she writes about dogs and salmon.
She is working on a memoir about her ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Her first memoir, Bark and Lunge: Saving My Dogs from Training Mistakes, was published in 2014.
She has a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern Universitys Medill School.
This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
