By: Annette McElhiney
For 20 years teaching Literature and Women’s Studies courses in college, I recognized March as Women’s History month and African American History month. Having watched some of the 2016 presidential debates, I’ve been repulsed by the Xenophobic and angry complaints about political correctness or inclusion.
As a 75 year-old white survivor of ovarian cancer writing this blog, I find myself asking, 1. Do women with ovarian cancer, a rare disease affecting 1 in 67 women (but a deadly fast-moving disease and the only cancer limited to women) get the same amount of funding for research as does the more common prostate cancer (a slow-moving and, usually, less lethal cancer of men)? 2. Do women from different races, sexual orientation, classes and ages have equal access to ovarian cancer treatment and increasing survival? Sadly, what I find is that the ISMS- sexism, racism, classism, lesbianism, and ageism – are continuing to impact the quality and quantity of life after ovarian cancer. I HOPE to change that and invite you to join me!
Most cancers don’t discriminate in terms of gender or race — gastric, colon, liver, brain, breast, skin or brain. Some cancers have made great leaps ahead in terms of funding and research, e.g. breast, skin and colon. But note what happens when you look at funding for prostate cancer (a slow-moving cancer) and ovarian cancer (one that can be very deadly as it moves quickly and recurs again and again).
In just 2013, prostate cancer, received $255,612,921 as opposed to ovarian cancer, which only received $100,558,561. I can hear Anti PC folks saying, “Oh no! Here is yet another woman whining about how women are discriminated against in health care and women of color particularly.” Bring them on! I believe every ovarian cancer survivor has earned the right to complain loudly and act assertively to increase funding for this dreadful disease that strikes roughly 22,000 women each year and kills 14,000 of them.
According to the National Ovarian Cancer Alliance, only about 37 percent of women receive the standard of care, (debulking surgery, proper staging, and 6 rounds of intravenously and/or intraperitoneal chemotherapy) delivered by experienced gynecologists and oncologist, not a general surgeon or an obstetrician and gynecologist. Where you live and your proximity to surgical specialists who have performed many such procedures greatly affects your survival. Sometimes general surgeons or gynecologists whom we may have seen for years will reassure patients and their families that they’ve done this procedure many times before. Obviously, some of us have been taught not to question our doctors and because we don’t want to insult them, we allow them to do the surgery rather than traveling further away seeking an opinion from an expert.
“A gynecologic oncologist is a subspecialist who specializes in treating women with reproductive tract cancers.”
However, according to the National Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, one should seek and find a gynecologist and oncologist to do the surgery for the following reasons:
- Gynecologic oncologists are initially trained as obstetrician/gynecologists and then undergo three to possibly more than five years of specialized education in all of the effective forms of treatment for gynecologic cancers (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and experimental treatments) as well as the biology and pathology of gynecologic cancers.
- Gynecologic oncologists are five times more likely to completely remove ovarian tumors during surgery.
- Eighty percent of ovarian cancer patients receive inadequate surgical debulking–the removal of tumor tissue during surgery–and staging when done by non-gynecologic oncology surgeons.
- Survival rate and outcomes for women with ovarian cancer vastly improve with gynecologic oncologists.
- For those women with ovarian cancer who live in rural areas that may not have a gynecologic oncologist at a local hospital, her care can be supervised by a gynecologic oncologist at a major medical center who has relationships with medical oncologists in surrounding areas to provide the chemotherapy treatment.
To read Annette’s entire blog post on The Clearity Portal, click here.