Monday, January 3, 2011

CA125 count drops down to 400

Good news: mom's CA125 count is down to the 400 level. It is not down as much as we wanted, but I'll take it. I really don't know what else could gauge the effectiveness of the chemo at killing the cancer if we didn't have that number.

 

There was a law passed last month: Johanna's Law. Actually it was the renewal of an old law… a reaffirmation/reauthorization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop and implement campaigns to raise awareness and educate women and medical professionals about the signs and symptoms of gynecologic cancers. http://bit.ly/dLvnFG

 

While that is all nice and good, I think that money going toward that cause could be better used for prevention and screening of Ovarian Cancer. Because with Ovarian Cancer – once you start getting the symptoms (and really pay attention to the symptoms) it's too late. There's no "pre-emptive" screening for Ovarian Cancer. You can't walk in to your doctors office and ask for a count without having symptoms to back it up. That is the catch 22.

 

Before mom started getting sick, we didn't run across any ovarian cancer awareness campaigns of any sort. And supposedly there was $16 million dollars from the Johanna Law going toward getting the message out.

 

Mom wasn't in the risk category because we have no family history of the cancer. But if Johanna's Law is supposed to do its job, we should be hearing more about gynecological cancers in the most conspicuous places…maybe a coffee shop or at the grocery store. Church?

 

I read an article the other day about Ovarian Cancer prevention and screening study done by Duke University. http://bit.ly/hHKU9Y One of the doctors stated that more work needs to be done to find better approaches to screening methods. They are exploring models to determine better preventative methods and screening methods before things get out of hand. They even talk about the high-risk group – which is obvious, but the end all is a screening method for the rest of women. At this point I consider any woman who doesn't have a history of cancer in the family to be at high risk for Ovarian Cancer.

 

To be continued. 

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