Some background

Life turned upside down

 My wife Michele and I married in June of 2006. My wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about three days before Thanksgiving 2007.

How it began

 She had been having intermittent back pain for about a year. Some nights she even slept on the floor because the mattress was too soft for her. I kept trying to get her to go to a back specialist, but she told me she had been told before that she had a degenerated disk and she didn't think there was anything that could be done.

In November she finally couldn't take it anymore and made an appointment to see a back specialist. The Dr. ordered an MRI and they gave my wife a copy of the views on a CD. She called me at work to tell me about the MRI and sent me a screen shot telling me that there were big holes in her vertebra. Well, there weren't any holes, she was looking at an "interior slice" and was mistaking her bone marrow for structural flaws.

After I got home that night I  looked at the entire MRI and the computer. I made a comment that it looked like her bladder was really full and asked her if she needed to pee during the MRI. She said no and I dropped it. Not suspecting a tumor or anything like that, I didn't think any further about that large object I saw.

The Call 

The next day, she called me at work and said the radiologist called and said she needed to go see her OB/Gyn right away. At the time, my wife had a GP and not an OB, so I looked on the website for our insurance company and gave her the names of a couple of OBs near the house. She made an appointment and called me a couple of hours later. She was in a panic, she was lost and couldn't find the Drs office and was really worried the radiologist was so vague about what she had seen. I got on the internet again and gave her the name and phone number for a different OB/GYN that was she could find that was actually in the same building where she had the initial MRI.

Dr. Small was able to see her right away, talked to the radiologist, got the MRI and made an initial diagnosis. Stage III ovarian cancer. Dr. Small trained at UT Southwestern in Dallas and called one of his former teachers, Dr. Lipschitz a gynecologist/oncologist and made the referral. Her initial CA 125was somewhere around 2000. CA 125 is a cancer tumor marker for ovarian cancer, but not a diagnostic test for the presence or absence of cancer. Though a normal number is somewhere around 30 or less.

With Thanksgiving approaching, there was some doubt as to whether or not a surgery team could be assembled until after the holiday. Drs Small and Lipshitz got it arranged and the surgery was done on Tuesday. The tumor was removed, it was about the size of a large eggplant. (After i wrote that, i realized the irony in my choice of example and I decided to leave it in because it is a good visual for the size) Happy Thanksgiving. My coworkers were very supportive, I spent part of Thanksgiving morning at the fire station, got to have some turkey and pie, before heading to the hospital. Michele came home on Friday.

 The long road to treatment and recovery begins.

Thank goodness for decent healthcare insurance and an understanding employer. Michele began chemotherapy shortly thereafter. Using the good graces of my employer and the family medical leave act FMLA, I was able to flex my time and take time off to drive her to chemo, sit with her during and drive back home. Due to the advanced stage of the cancer, her chemo was very aggressive. Six rounds of Cisplaten and taxol through a central line. After that was done she had six more rounds through intra-peritoneal lavage. So in addition to the central line in her chest, she also had to have an intra-abdominal medport surgically installed.

The lavage required an overnight stay in the hospital about every 4 weeks and made her sick as a dog. This chemo required the nurse to dump about 1000 cc of saline into Michele's abdomen to expand it, then they pumped in another 1000 cc with the chemo added to it. 2000 cc of extra fluid pumped into your abdomen cannot feel good, then top it with a highly toxic cancer drug. I don't know how she did it.

Chemo, diet and fatigue

After a life-changing event like this, you make a lot of changes. When your partner makes a lot of changes, you kinda get swept along. In Pulp Fiction Jules says, "My girlfriend is a vegetarian, that kinda makes me a vegetarian too." How true. Michele was always a pretty active person, but chemo took it out of her. Getting up and moving around was a chore, much less trying to exercise, but she soldiered on. She became a juicer, grinding all manner of vegetables and fruits together, always wanting me to taste whatever the hell it was. Err, no thanks, I just ate. She started on wheatgrass and once a week I would drive across town to buy two flats of wheatgrass for her. She wanted to do her wheatgrass first thing when she got up in the morning, but she read that squeezed wheatgrass needs to sit for two hours for its best potency. (or something like that)

The end result was that every morning when I got up, I would get out the hand cranked expeller and grind out a couple of wheatgrass shots for her before I left for work.

On the mend

The 5 year survival rate for Stage III ovarian cancer is about 10%,  Some women die from the cancer itself and some find the chemo itself so physically devastating that they cannot complete the treatment. Michele spends a great deal of time on the internet reading about cancer and cancer treatments. (Sometimes too much time I think) Supplements to take, vitamins to avoid, vitamins to take in combinations with other vitamins, supplements to avoid if taking vitamins. All the while making friends on the internet, sharing treatments, BUT frequently hearing that they are dying or have died. They talk about living with cancer. How about living with knowing that you have a 1 in 9 chance of not living 5 more years even with the best treatment you can find.

This Thanksgiving makes 5 years

She's not out of the woods yet, but this is a milestone she never thought she would make it to.