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Living
with ovarian cancer |
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North Haven resident Etta Pittala has no intention of joining the ranks of women who die each year from ovarian cancer. It’s a star-studded list, with comediennes Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner, former Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso and Harper’s Bazaar Editor Liz Tilberis among the most noteworthy. But Pittala, 42, is determined to stay right where she is as a full-time mom to her 5-year-old daughter, Danielle, and a part-time volunteer for Saint Raphael’s Looking Forward patient education, support and wellness program at the Father Michael J. McGivney Center for Cancer Care. |
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“I have a ton of faith, and I don’t want to waste time dwelling,” says Pittala, who in April 1995 was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer that had spread into her lymph nodes. “ ‘Why me? I don’t know why. But I want to go on living.” Approximately 25,000 women are diagnosed annually with ovarian cancer, while more than 14,000 die from it. It’s the fifth most prevalent cancer in the United States, and also one of the most insidious. Most women experience few, if any, symptoms in the early stages of the disease. In fact, it’s so difficult to detect that only 24 percent of cases are diagnosed, and treated, before the cancer has spread. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to be hopeful. Pittala says she’s proof that people can not just survive ovarian cancer, but live fully with it. “Attitude and outlook are everything,” she says. Medical researchers are also making progress developing better screening tests. And surgery, followed by new combinations of chemotherapy drugs, have brought about improved survival rates in recent years, says oncologist Andrea Silber, M.D., director of Saint Raphael’s Cancer Control and Early Detection Unit. “There are always reasons to be hopeful,” says Silber, who’s board-certified in medical oncology. “Everyone involved is taking steps in the right direction.” How it forms Every woman has two ovaries, which produce eggs and the female hormones estrogen and progesterone. They’re located in the middle of the pelvic cavity, about 4 or 5 inches below the waist, and are each about the size of an almond. Cancerous tumors form when ovarian cells grow uncontrolled or abnormally. Most ovarian cancers develop in the epithelium, the thin layer of tissue that covers the ovaries, and are called epithelial tumors. Other types of ovarian cancer include germ cell tumors, which form in the egg-producing cells, and stromal tumors, which form in the tissues that hold the ovary together and produce hormones. In its early stages, ovarian cancer produces few, if any, symptoms. But as a tumor enlarges, Silber explains, it can put pressure on the bowel, bladder or other organs in the abdomen. This causes vague symptoms that are easily confused with other conditions, or often ignored by the woman experiencing them. They can include:
How to prevent it
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