The Cancer is Back...
Bad news. Today we learned that Stephanie’s cancer has started to grow again. It has been just over 5 years since her original diagnosis on September 22, 2014. Ovarian cancer has a high recurrence rate, unfortunately. So what does a recurrence of ovarian cancer mean and how is it treated? When Stephanie was originally diagnosed it was through an exploratory surgery triggered by a very large tumor growing from her ovaries. In that case, there was a large mass that needed to be taken from her body and that was the most effective way to remove the bulk of cancer. After the surgery in 2014, although the visible portions of the disease were removed, cancer still existed at a cellular level or at a concentrated level not visible to the human eye. To treat the remainder of cancer left in her system and that was visually present on organs that couldn’t be removed (like her colon), they used traditional chemotherapy. The traditional chemotherapy targets fast-growing ce