| Hi, my name is Jana, I am a mother of 2, a stepmom of 2, and a grandmother of 7. My journey began on Monday July 18th, 2022, when I finally decided that my abdominal pain would not go away and it was time to go in and find out why. I went in to the same day clinic expecting them to send me home telling me I was constipated take some laxatives and you will be fine, but to my surprise the doctor I got pressed around on my stomach and with a few flinches and ouches he said I want to get a CT scan of your abdomen so they had an opening right away so went down and did that and went back up to the room and waited for my results. While sitting and waiting the mychart came up saying my scan came back worrisome for peritoneal implants and right after reading that my doctor came in the room and I could tell by the look on his face that was probably not a good thing. When he told me what the result was and that there was nothing more, they could do for me there and I would have to find an oncologist, they only thing that came out was “hmmm I was not expecting that”. But in 2018 I was diagnosed with an inflammatory blood disorder called IGG4 so I had to go through Rotuxamab infusions so I had an oncologist so I asked him to send the scan and info to him so he did and I got a call from his nurse on Tuesday saying he wasn’t seeing what the other person saw and set me up for a CA125 blood draw on Wednesday which came back in the 4000’s. The nurse called me back on Thursday with a Friday appointment with a gyn oncologist because mine doesn’t deal with female issues. Met with my new gyn oncologist and she said, “I am pretty certain you have stage 3 ovarian cancer and the life expectancy of this is 2-5 years maybe longer”. My comeback was, “Well ok then, what do I need to do to get this gone, I am ready for whatever is next, let’s do this”. August 1st, I got my biopsy and port placement and the 8th I had my 1st of 6 chemo treatments every 3 weeks (my starting CA125 was in the 10000’s) of paclitaxel/carboplatin/bevacizumab and I would have my debulking surgery on October 25th after my 3rd chemo followed by the last 3 chemo treatments. I had my last one January 10th, 2023, with a CA125 at 5.6 and started my maintenance of Lynparza 2 pills 2x a day and bevacizumab infusions every 3 weeks in February. I am not going to lie the chemo was not that bad I lost my hair but I really didn’t have many side effects mostly just tired so I felt extremely lucky, but these pills, uhg, they caused me to go anemic so they had to put me on iron pills too and I ended up dropping down to 7.8 hemaglobin and had to do a blood transfusion and now they cut my Lynparza to half dose but my hemoglobin has gone up to 9.6 so it is getting better but my CA125 has been trending up with each CA125 check which triggered a CT scan which came back clear but my number went up again to 59.9 so they did a PET scan and that came back clear, I see my doctor on September 15th and get another CA125 so we will see if it goes up again, so I am grateful about my scans but a little nervous why my CA125 numbers keep going up. Through all this I think the hardest thing I had to do was tell my daughter my diagnosis, she has had such a rough 5 years. Her brother (my son) passed away in May 2018, she lost her dad (my ex-husband) a year and a half later and now me going through this. My faith is strong, and I hope I can pass that to her during this all. I know my journey is not over. No matter what comes my way I know God walks with me and carries me when I am weak and I know no matter what happens during this journey I will never suffer as much as what Jesus suffered to save my soul. I just want the light and love of my Lord to shine bright in me for others to see. God bless. (We sadly lost our teal sister Jana in 2025). |
Share Your
Teal Story
"*" indicates required fields