Candice Sanders

On February 23 my world was rocked, I went in for a post op appointment and my OB/GYN told me I have ovarian cancer. Well, I technically don’t have ovarian cancer but squamous cell carcinoma (aka skin cancer) in a tumor on my ovary. More on this later….. Maybe I should start at the beginning. I will spare you the gory details.

For well over a year, I have been dealing with a lot of female issues and they found that I had a uterus “riddled” with fibroids. I had a hysteroscopic myomectomy surgery in May to remove the one they thought was causing the issue. Thought that would help, but it didn’t. So, after a lot of annoying phone calls and visits to my doctor, she agreed to do an abdominal myomectomy to remove the rest of them. I had my surgery on February 16 and they were shocked to find a 10cm tumor surrounding my left ovary. They removed the tumor and fallopian tube, and no one ever even considered that cancer was an option. The type of tumor I had was a mature teratoma. Those are the ones that can grow teeth and hair and, no, I do not know if mine had teeth. Less than 2% of these types of tumors come back cancerous. Within the 10 cm tumor was a 2.4 cm spot of squamous cell carcinoma. Yes, I am the freak with skin cancer on my ovary. I met with an oncologist on Wednesday and he said I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has experienced or treated this type of cancer. I guess it’s that rare. Due to the rarity, they want to get aggressive. They want me to heal for a few weeks before a PET scan and then they want to do a staging surgery to see if it has spread. Even if stage 1, they want to give me chemo. I do have an appointment at Stanford to get a second opinion, someone has got to know something about this right?

I wanted to start this because I know that if I have to call a gazillion people after each appointment, then I am bound to forget someone, and this is an easier way to keep everyone informed. I know that the next year is going to be hell, but I am confident that I will beat this.