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Why the latest screening tests and treatments offer hope for ovarian cancer

Why the latest screening tests and treatments offer hope for ovarian cancer
Written by adrina

When 58-year-old Karen Howley LaCamera came to the emergency room in January 2018 with acute abdominal pain, she thought she was having another gallbladder attack. Doctors in the ER ordered a CT scan and told her she would likely need surgery to remove her gallbladder if things didn’t improve. She was released later that night. But when she got home, the ambulance called to tell her the problem wasn’t her gallbladder, but a tumor the size of an orange that was sitting on her ovary.

Several tests, surgeries, and a biopsy later, LaCamera, who lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer. “I was just wow,” she recalls. “When I look back, I think of the symptoms I ignored.”

LaCamera says she’s “always felt uncomfortable and apologized.” She had frequent urination and pain in her abdomen, pelvis and back. She also had bloating, or what she called a tummy roll. “No matter what sport I did, I couldn’t get rid of it,” she says. She thought she was only getting older.

When LaCamera had surgery, doctors found that her cancer had spread to 11 different organs.

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