When Rebecca Redshaw 35 visited India and stayed there for six months recently, it seemed she picked up an unwanted souvenir. Like many Western travelers plagued by stomach troubles, she too experienced stomach problems and it showed no signs of dissipating. It seemed Rebecca had a bug. Her GP diagnosed it to be Giardia, a common infection and prescribed a dose of antibiotics.
Although the symptoms reduced but she started experiencing severe abdominal pain after which she paid her doctor another visit. Her doctor instead attributed her problem to the after effects of IBS.
When Rebecca who hails from West London sought a second opinion she got the shock of her life. What her GP thought was IBS turned out to be ovarian cancer instead. According to Professor Sean Kehoe, Chief medical adviser for the charity Ovacome, ““It’s a challenge for family doctors to pick up that the symptoms could signal ovarian cancer, and they will want to rule out less sinister possibilities first.” He also stated that it wasn’t uncommon for women to be mistake symptoms of ovarian cancer for something else.
More than 7,200 women annually are diagnosed in the UK with ovarian cancer which is the 5th most common cancer that attacks women. However if detected early, women have a 90% survival rate of more than 5 years. Unfortunately for Rebecca, it was too late. A camera operator for the BBC, she had first consulted her GP in 2012. By the year end, she was constantly suffering from constipation to the point of it affecting her work.
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“It was so painful,” she says. “I started taking natural laxatives, which helped a little bit. The pain became more intense and when I did go, there was blood.”A further delay in an appointment to see a specialist at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital resulted in a lump appearing on her left side. IT was also the point where she felt the most pain. A colonoscopy and CT scan finally revealed she had ovarian cancer. The lump was on her left ovary and it was blocking her bowels which were causing the pain. She was also told she would not be able to bear children.
At the Royal Marsden Hospital for further investigation, Rebecca was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer. She had a 9 cm tumor in her ovary and was administered the first stage of a six cycle chemo in July 2013. However as luck would have it, the treatment failed. Rebecca would need a complete hysterectomy that involves removing the entire womb and ovaries. She would also have to be fitted with a temporary colostomy bag since the tumor was attached to her bowel.
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When Rebecca woke up she learnt her colostomy bag was permanent. “I remember waking up in ICU and Ming was there,” Rebecca says. “He said he had bad news. The colostomy bag wasn’t temporary as they’d had to take a lot more of my bowel out. I remember being heartbroken.”
Rebecca married her boyfriend Ming Leung in April 2015. As her body accepted the fact that she would not bear children, it immediately went into menopause. After three more cycles of chemo, she was told that the cancer was finally in remission. Tragically though at Christmas she was given the bad news that the cancer had spread again to her liver, lungs, lymph nodes and pelvis. It was now in stage IV. In October 2016, she entered into a clinical trial at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
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Rebecca feels that the clinical trial is working as it turns off the growth signals of cancer cells. The trial was already showing positive signs of success with women in the USA. “I know it won’t cure me and I do think about death. I’ve asked how long I could live, but doctors can’t tell me. I try not to think about the future too much and just focus on each milestone, like getting married.” She said.
Vigilance is the greatest weapon empowering women against ovarian cancer. This and awareness about the disease. Rebecca stated “If any women reading this have persistent symptoms, I urge them to go and see their GP.”
Ovarian cancer symptoms:
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