Diagnosis

Hi! My name is Donna. Upon initial eval the docs thought I would probably be stage 1C ovarian cancer. However, down the road they discovered that they had missed the fact that it had already spread to my liver...which meant it should have been staged at a 4C. Anyway the reason I replied to your email is because like you I was told that I had an extremely rare form of cancer of the ovary. Mine is hypocalcemic type small cell cancer of the ovary. Small cell usually occurs in the lungs or colon. My husband did a lot of research on the subject and found that at the time there were only about 250 cases total reported and this type was only discovered in the 80's. It made finding info very hard. The other complication was there were no protocols to follow since very few people get this type. The docs, in a sense, made up my chemo routine. I took chemo that is not common for ovarian cancer. Due to this reason I did seek a second opinion from the Mayo Clinic...but they said that the chemo my docs wanted to do would be a good place to start. From the articles my husband found the survival rate for the stage I had was about 5% and reaching the five year mark was even less! I had about a year and a half of many different combos of drugs, some that were so rough I didn't get out of bed for a few days, others weren't so bad! I am now at 3 years and am told for now the cancer is gone. However, the doc did tell me that it is not a matter of "if" but a matter of "when" the cancer will come back. He said that I will be battling this again sometime in the future, but hopefully we'll follow the same regimen and it will work again. I guess what I'm wanting you to know is that even the worst of cancers can be beat! Sometimes the future looks bleak, but the silver lining of the cloud is out there and you will get there!!! If you want to "talk" here's my email smithzoo03@hotmail.com