The blood test found elevated levels of cancer antigen 125, a tumor marker that is not an entirely reliable indicator of ovarian cancer. Too many false positives. Also false negatives. My CT scan a week later showed that each ovary had been overtaken by tumors the size of small citrus fruit, and I had a third tumor the size of a larger citrus fruit in the center of my abdomen. The cancer had spread up through my umbilicus and out my navel, which was, as far as I knew at the time, the only symptom I had.
There seem to be as many ways to find the cancer as there are people who have it. According to the American Cancer Society, that’s 1 in 78 people with ovaries, of all ages. One in 108 will die of it.
A Pap smear doesn’t detect ovarian cancer, and there’s no ovarian version of a mammogram. Among the people in my online support groups, some discovered their cancer while they were pregnant, or trying to figure out why they weren’t getting pregnant. Some had unusual bleeding, or another emergent event that landed them in a hospital.
Countless others sought medical help for the symptoms listed above, but were misdiagnosed with something like irritable bowel syndrome, heartburn, diverticulitis or menopause. Too many patients were sent home believing it was nothing, or they were making too big a deal out of it, or it was their fault because they were overweight.
We misdiagnose ourselves, avoiding trips to the emergency room for those same three reasons. I did. In hindsight, I did have excruciating back pain six months before I was diagnosed. I thought I’d strained my back lifting my 85-pound elderly dog. I learned to lift with my legs and it mostly went away. I can’t imagine a scenario where my efforts to alleviate lower back pain would have led me to ask about ovarian cancer.
More than a year after my diagnosis, after several months being cancer-free, I recalled intermittent sharp chest pains in recent years. My internet research at the time convinced me it was heartburn, most likely from overindulging in processed carbohydrates and chocolate. Waiting it out at home was preferable to sitting in an emergency room for hours, and I never thought to mention it to anyone. It only occurred to me that this could have been a sign of ovarian cancer after 13 months of racking my brain trying to think of symptoms I missed.
Had my belly button saved my life?
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