Team Work for Successful Ovarian Cancer Treatment

You may never have been good at science, much less attempted medicine, and have still a major role to play in treating ovarian cancer! One in about 60 women will develop ovarian cancer. It is difficult to detect is often diagnosed when already in an advanced stage. What can every woman, husband, brother and adult son do?

�Make sure that every woman from menarche onwards has an annual medical evaluation.
�Splurge on the best ovarian cancer detection toolkit your doctor would like to use, even if health insurance does not cover it.
�Decipher the mumbo-jumbo of test reports to see if there is any reason to be concerned.
�Drop everything to take a follow up test if prescribed by your doctor.
�Drag every sister and daughter in sight to the doctor and have her checked out, if there is any indication that you may have the beginnings of a tumor. (Genetic disposition has much to do with the disease incidence).
�Use annual open enrollment to get a health insurance policy that covers you for all tests and treatment related to ovarian cancer.

First reactions to diagnosis are not medical in nature
Thanks to doctors and researchers, ovarian cancer is no longer the threat it once was. Do not panic if a woman in the family or you yourself is diagnosed with the condition. Prepare to meet the situation head-on with fortitude. Exorbitant grief and outpourings will be as counter-productive as a state of denial and neglect. These things are easier to write than to practice, but they matter all the same. It has much to do with successful treatment and you would do well to network with a trained emotional support care-giver at this time. Such a volunteer can do wonders to give you mental strength, keep you informed and literally and figuratively hold your hand and show you a way.

Health insurance is a basic fork in the path, for ovarian cancer treatment is prohibitively expensive if you have to pay for it directly. Financial planning and basic policy decisions will bear on treatment if health insurance is partial or absent altogether.

Late diagnosis could mean that treatment is not likely to succeed or that it is not possible in any meaningful way. Doctors call this Stage 4. The team of doctors, who arrive at such an unfortunate conclusion, cannot help as much with the implications as emotional care-givers, the family and the patient herself.

Communication with doctors
Doctors are generally more skilled at diagnosis and treatment than at communication. They are often under stress and may appear less than amenable to prolonged questions and discussions. It is for the patient to contribute to her treatment by:

�Identifying in formal manner, a person with whom the doctor may share confidential information about her case.
�Insisting of a full understanding of the spread of the ovarian cancer, as gleaned by visual observation during surgery, blood tests and diagnostic imaging reports. Doctors will speak in terms of stages but the woman should know the parts of her body that have become involved. Doctors call the spread metastasis.
�Participating in decisions taken about the course of her treatment. Repeated surgery, intravenous chemotherapy, peritoneal chemotherapy, external radiation, precision radiation and internal radiation implants are known options. Each of these is risky in varying degree. Some are more effective than others. Some are still experimental. Others are not widely available. Still others can be ruled out by sophisticated tests, that again may not be available everywhere. It takes years of study and experience for a doctor to qualify for the right to decide on such matters.

Even so, the woman has an inviolable right for her or her nominee to know:
�The chances of success
�Likely side-effects
�Likely repetition of the same treatment
�The opinion of a professional peer
�Chances of recurrence even if there is short-term success
�Financial parameters, especially where health insurance is not available
�Compromises made on financial, administrative or technical grounds
�Validity, regulatory clearance and how long such regimens have been practiced

*It is not all in the doctor’s court. You owe it to yourself to make a full disclosure of any Alternative Medicine that you decide to use at any stage of the treatment. Friends will ply you with options related to Naturopathic medicine, Nutritional therapy, Mind-Body medicine and Image enhancement, and you will find pages of them on the Internet. You have every right to try these and indeed they may be very useful. However, they can interfere with conventional treatment and confuse a doctor kept in the dark-at your cost! Spiritual counseling is an exception and you can use all of this that you can get, without having to ask or inform the doctor.

Coping with treatment and prognosis
Discomfort and depression are almost inevitable. You cannot undergo surgery, have chemicals plunged in to you and be bombarded with powerful waves, and still feel fit as a fiddle. The doctor can help you cope but why not let him or her focus on ‘finding them critters and chasing them out’ and lean on family to take care of the fall-out?

âÂ?¢Understand calmly the procedure to which you will be subject and how you are likely to feel afterwards. The effects will lessen their impact when you stare them in the face. Say “so what, that’s not a big issue’, to the following:
�Pain
�Changes in bowel and urine habits
�Nausea and diarrhea
�Dry mouth (doctors love jargon and call it xerostomia)
�Unease with intimacy
�Do not hesitate to seek counseling help to deal with these irritants.
�Be diligent with follow up and never forget that lifelong vigilance is essential even after the most successful ovarian cancer treatment.
�Seek help and plan for the best possible quality of life, should you have arrived in a late or advanced stage of the disease.

Conclusion
Ovarian Cancer is not a medical matter in isolation. Its detection, diagnosis, treatment and consequences, leave ample room for a woman and her family to influence outcomes. Sisters and daughters are often implicated as the disease has strong genetic undertones. Most people cannot afford treatment without health insurance. Discomfort and depression are most likely in some degree. Success is proportional to the stage at which treatment starts. Lifelong vigilance is inevitable. A health literate family can help the medical profession manage the disease.