Jennifer Solar knows all too well how awareness can save lives.
Solar, who is president and founder of the New York City chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition, lost her mother to ovarian cancer in 2000. Her grandmother had the disease, too, but is still living at age 87.
There is no easy test to diagnose ovarian cancer. The symptoms often lead doctors to suspect totally different conditions. And few women survive if the cancer is not detected early enough.
Solar’s grandmother was lucky. While running a rototiller in the garden in 1979, she felt a sharp pain that turned out to be a gall bladder infection. Her physicians found and removed a tumor in her ovaries while they were treating the gall bladder. If it hadn’t been for that infection, the tumor probably would never have been found.
Solar’s mother began experiencing symptoms in the summer of 1999. First, she was nauseous, but the family assumed it was just a case of food poisoning. Throughout the summer and fall, however, she had bloating, indigestion, diarrhea and gas. She visited a gastroenterologist, who said it could be irritable bowel syndrome or lactose intolerance.
Late in October, she had trouble breathing. An x-ray showed her lungs were full of fluid. They were drained, but soon it happened again.
"At that point she put her foot down and said, ‘I’m not leaving the hospital until I get an ultrasound or a CAT Scan,’" Solar said.
The scans found a huge mass in her abdomen.
Solar’s mother had visited the gynecologist the summer before, around the same time she had begun experiencing symptoms. The gynecologist did not test her CA-125 level. CA-125 levels increase when ovarian cancer is present, but they can rise for a number of other reasons as well. Many gynecologists do not use them, because they can lead to costly false positives. In this case, however, it could have saved a life.
By the time the tumor was found, it was in stage three and had spread to four out of nine lymph nodes. Beyond stage two, the 5-year survival rate is very low, Solar said. Her mother passed away six months later.
"It happened so fast," Solar said. "I knew it was happening but I didn’t understand it. Before we knew it we had Hospice involved. … It’s not as brief as a car accident, but for a long time you wonder what happened."
Solar said a number of factors could have helped her mother get the right treatment earlier. Because she had a family history of ovarian cancer, her gynecologist should have taken the CA-125 levels more seriously. Gastroenterologists should be more aware of the disease, so they can help women who come to them with abdominal symptoms. She also hopes research will lead to an early detection blood test like the PSA test for prostate cancer.
Above all, however, she said that women should listen to their bodies. "Don’t be paranoid," she said. "But if I had known then what I know now I would have suspected [ovarian cancer]. Also, if there is something you feel like you’re not getting from your health care, get a second opinion."
