Double Take on my diagnosis

Lisa is right....it means a
Lisa is right....it means a recurrence of your original OVCA on the inside surfaces of the abdomen.

This is really closer to the norm for us, rather than the exception, unfortunately. Eighty percent of all OC patients experience a recurrence within 24 months. Don't panic, though. Your doctor will, I'm sure, discuss second line treatment with you very soon.

Carlene

Hissy_Fitz said:

Lisa is right....it means a
Lisa is right....it means a recurrence of your original OVCA on the inside surfaces of the abdomen.

This is really closer to the norm for us, rather than the exception, unfortunately. Eighty percent of all OC patients experience a recurrence within 24 months. Don't panic, though. Your doctor will, I'm sure, discuss second line treatment with you very soon.

Carlene

I just don't understand why the recurrance???
Hi Carlene. You seem to have a lot of knowledge on this subject and I'm still wrapping my brain around it. My doctor doesn't say a whole lot but I do see that he can't make eye contact when I hit him up with some really difficult questions. I just don't understand why women relapse, can you explain it to me? I guess we go for chemo and it is suppose to kill the cancer but why does it come back? Is it because the chemo didn't get all the bad cells? Or is it like a new cancer. I'm sorry to sound so stupid but I just don't get it and I refuse to read anything more on the internet. When I first got diagnosed the internet made me crazy with worry and it turns out much of the data is 10 years old. That is true right? Any information you can provide would be great. I'm BRAC-1 positive and I'm not sure what that even does for me! I hear it helps my family but no offense, who cares... I'm the one needing the help!

Deb

debp26 said:

I just don't understand why the recurrance???
Hi Carlene. You seem to have a lot of knowledge on this subject and I'm still wrapping my brain around it. My doctor doesn't say a whole lot but I do see that he can't make eye contact when I hit him up with some really difficult questions. I just don't understand why women relapse, can you explain it to me? I guess we go for chemo and it is suppose to kill the cancer but why does it come back? Is it because the chemo didn't get all the bad cells? Or is it like a new cancer. I'm sorry to sound so stupid but I just don't get it and I refuse to read anything more on the internet. When I first got diagnosed the internet made me crazy with worry and it turns out much of the data is 10 years old. That is true right? Any information you can provide would be great. I'm BRAC-1 positive and I'm not sure what that even does for me! I hear it helps my family but no offense, who cares... I'm the one needing the help!

Deb

I typed a long, detailed
I typed a long, detailed response, hit the "post" button, and pffftttt. It disappeared into the deep abyss of cyberspace.

Recapping here....

Your BRCA positive status is a GOOD thing. BRCA positive women fare better than the rest of us, statistically speaking.

As for recurrence, it happens in all types of cancer. Cancer can come back because there were cancer cells left behind during surgery, or cancer cells had broken away from the primary cancer before the operation and spread to elsewhere in the body.

All Cancer begins with a single cell that mutates. It is unlikely that any cancer treatment will kill every single cancer cell in the body. To do that, the treatment would have to be very strong and would have too many dangerous side effects. What doctors are trying to do is to reduce the numbers of cancer cells so much that there are too few cells left for the cancer to survive. They hope the remaining cells will be killed off by the body's own defenses - or will just die off naturally, as many cancer cells do when they leave the primary tumor.

This is NOT a death sentence. There are many women on this board who have had more than one recurrence and are still going strong. I know one in "real life" that is 11 years out from her diagnosis (stage 3c) and she had one 12 month remission and the rest were 6 or 7 months. It keeps coming back and she keeps on kicking its butt.

If I were you, I would have a heart-to-heart with my doctor, but that's just me. I made my doctor promise me that I would know everything he did, and I would be the first to hear it, after him. If he didn't have the cujones to tell me what was going on in my own body, I would seriously consider finding another doctor. Or I would at least insist on copies of all my blood work, all the radiologist's reports, etc. Again, though, that's how I feel. You get to decide how much information you want, but by golly, if you want that info, no one has the right to withhold it.

Carlene