Women's stories give doctors a new view of ovarian cancer
DANA PARSONS
Seventeen UC Irvine med students sit quietly at three long tables in the small classroom, listening to the middle-aged women tell their stories, one after the other. The students are used to hearing from doctors and other health professionals; now, in their third year of the medical school grind, they're meeting actual patients while making the rounds at hospitals.
Chances are, though, they haven't heard things said the way the four women are saying it to them.
"My luck ran out in the spring of 2004," says Sandi Shirey Kars.
Skip Pedigo follows her to the lectern and tells the students: "It all started on a Friday afternoon for me."
They and the two other women after them are talking about ovarian cancer, one of the crueler diseases because its seemingly benign symptoms can be overlooked in the early stages as no big deal. And though five-year survival rates are high when the cancer is detected early, they plummet quickly as it advances.
But the women aren't here to talk clinically, although they do use plenty of gynecological shoptalk with the students. Nor are they necessarily telling the students things they don't know about ovarian cancer -- many, if not all, are familiar with its nature.
The women are here to tell these future doctors how they can save lives -- not just with wonder drugs and state-of-the-art technology but by good old-fashioned listening and asking good questions. By not automatically dismissing a woman's abdominal pains or bloating as routine episodes, especially if there is a family history of female-specific cancer. By being forceful in pushing less-assertive patients to consider all possibilities for what seem like routine symptoms.
At least for a day, there's role reversal. Instead of doctors helping patients, these are former patients hoping to help future doctors.
Three of the women are ovarian cancer survivors; the fourth tells the story of a friend who died of the disease after being misdiagnosed for several months.
"Please be kind," Ellen Miller asks of the students, noting that women with "twinges in our stomachs" may be anxious when discussing symptoms. "We're not neurotic," she says. "Most of us are not histrionic."
The students, already putting in 70- to 80-hour workweeks, listen attentively. Afterward, Kelly Okazaki tells the speakers that she paid particular attention because her aunt was diagnosed several months ago with ovarian cancer.
