I’m glad I was lying down when the doctor told me the true cause of my stomach pains.
“Well, you’ve got a tumor” were his first words to me. I had just awakened in a hospital bed on the morning after emergency surgery. It was Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017. Halloween.
…The tumor turned out to be Stage 3 ovarian cancer. It also created another life-threatening situation: the imminent possibility that my colon would rupture. The surgeon relieved the obstruction by performing a temporary colostomy, in which a piece of the colon is diverted to an artificial opening in the abdomen.
The doctor told me he had left the tumor for another day, for which I am forever grateful because this gave me the opportunity to consult with specialists on how to proceed.
…Cancer can move quickly. I wanted my cancer OUT. I wanted it eviscerated. That ultimately meant a drive out of the New York metro area to Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center. A family friend had told me about the surgical oncologist Armando Sardi, who has performed nearly 600 cytoreductive surgeries.
…HIPEC has been used for years in some abdominal cancers, but researchers are just beginning to test it on advanced ovarian cancer. Mercy says it is the only U.S. institution investigating CRS with HIPEC in women newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer to see if it could be a new standard of care.
