By Wendy Herman for Stand Up To Cancer
Oftentimes, it can be difficult to listen to that nagging voice in your head—that voice that tells you something may be wrong… that something is wrong. You might be at work, or vacationing with your family, or taking your kids to school. Or maybe you’re reading this right now. This past summer, a mother of three and a wife of nearly 30 years heard that voice. That’s when Jean Brown says her idyllic life seemed to quickly fall apart.
Jean’s symptoms started back in August, but nothing seemed unusual at first. “I started feeling a little bloated, which I thought might be a result of menopausal symptoms or the ‘female cycle,’” she says. But the symptoms continued, and then they progressed. Each time she ate, she felt incredibly full, like each meal was a “Thanksgiving feast.” “My friends thought I was crazy, nuts, out of my mind,” she says. But she couldn’t help but listen to the voice inside that kept telling her something was terribly wrong. After extensive research on the internet, Jean felt certain that she should see her doctor for a definitive diagnosis, although she already had her suspicions.
The following days included visits with her gastroenterologist, a colonoscopy, an endoscopy—all showing nothing of major concern. Finally, her doctor scheduled an MRI, and on September 2, Jean says, “The bomb was dropped.” Her doctor said that the results were “complicated” and that they wanted her to come in to the office.
When Jean sat down in front of her doctor, she was already in tears. “I was right, wasn’t I?” she said. While nothing was certain, he said he would be shocked if it wasn’t cancer. After endless tests with no definitive results, Jean was surprised (yet relieved) that her doctors continued to search for the root of her pain. “Why did you push me along? Why didn’t you think I was a hypochondriac?” she asked. But they were committed to her, they listened to her, and they didn’t give up. More than anything, she says, “They actually heard me.”
Soon after, Jean would learn that she had Primary Peritoneal Carcinoma—a rare cancer that is treated like ovarian cancer. “I felt like I had been given a death sentence,” she says. “Do I have a week? A month? A year?” With such little information available about the disease, Jean could do nothing but wait for more news from her doctors.
Jean was immediately scheduled for a biopsy, but unfortunately, that meant having to wait six long days over the Labor Day weekend for the procedure. “I had to put ice packs on my head that night from crying,” she says, “I thought my head would burst.” But surrounded by the comfort of her family, she waited patiently.
The day before Jean was due for her biopsy, she received a call from her doctor, insisting that she needed surgery immediately rather than delaying the inevitable with a biopsy. Given a list of four surgeons she could choose from, Jean enlisted the help of her friends, family, and extended contacts—anyone she could think of—to pursue the surgeon she felt was the best (Dr. Richard Barakat of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center). Once she made contact, she was miraculously able to slip into his schedule due to a last-minute cancellation.
At 2:00pm on September 8, Jean met her husband at the hospital. After an examination by Dr. Barakat, she was told that she would need debulking surgery as soon as possible (the excision of the major part of a malignant tumor in order to prepare the body for radiation therapy or chemotherapy). By September 21, she was in, and her fight against the disease had officially begun—amazingly, only weeks after her symptoms started to surface.
Jean attributes her speedy diagnosis to self-advocacy and the support of her doctors. “I’m stage 3, and I’m not a stage 4,” she says. If she had waited, if she had ignored her intuition and hadn’t insisted on diagnosing the cause of her pain, Jean believes that she may be in a very different place today.
“I want to educate women on the early signs of ovarian cancer,” she says. “I want to encourage them to run, not walk to their doctors.”