Still thanking the heavens I started this thread now. I feel alot calmer that the night I wrote the first post. Mind you goodness knows what I will be like the night before or the day she goes in, but will deal with that then.

It was the local BBC news who were saying that survial rates in the UK were terrible, through late diagnosis etc.. Thats why I freaked out, then came the researching online (big mistake).

Thankyou for sharing all your positive stories it really has helped over the last couple of days.

Thanks for sharing that Abetadad. I remember thinking at the time of my mum's diagnosis that she would definitely not survive as all I knew about ovarian cancer was that it was dubbed ' the silent killer. '

I now know that that is not the case, but obviously, like you say, it depends on a reasonably early diagnosis.

shineoncrazydiamond/MegSophandEmma

I hope the story of my DW will give you lots of reassurance. She survived and has now been in remission 10 years and had two children since.

My wife was diagnosed at a mid stage but reasonably advanced state with hundreds of ovarian cancer tumour plaques seeding all over her abdominal organs and massive tumours on both ovaries. She was diagnosed by a complete fluke as we had been TTC and could not figure out why we could not conceive. She had aggresive surgery to remove the plaques and 2 rounds of chemo. She was quite ill and her reproductive system had shut down because of the cancer.

The consultants were very pesimistic. There is no doubt they expected her to die. I mentally planned my wife's funeral. I will not deny it was the most frightening thing I (and DW) have ever lived through. I really do know how you both feel. But it all came out well even though it seemed the blackest of nights and the prognosis was awful.

The '5 year survival rate' is the percentage of people that survive at least 5 years after the initial diagnosis. The truth is that some survival rates look truely awful because the patients in those stages are already very very ill. Anyone caught early or even at a mid stage like DW has a very high probability of surviving - especially as treatment continues to advance all the time.

Looking at raw survival rates can be very misleading indeed. Each case is very unique. Ovarian cancer tumours all grow at different rates, some are more or less invasive, some are more or less responsive to chemotherapy.

Hope it goes well, MS&E. I can also tell you that she could be OK, because my Mum had a hysterectomy five years ago (aged 74) with similar symptoms. Contrary to our expectations, no cancer was found. The problem had been caused by cysts and fibroids, one of which was very large indeed.

I have to say that, due to her age and other complications, her recovery was a difficult time. Your Mum will need to guard against infections, and constipation (which sounds benign enough but can be extremely painful) can be a problem, especially if she gets morphine for the pain. But we got through all those things, in the knowledge that her life wasn't in danger . It's natural to worry but I hope that your Mum's fears - and your own - will soon be shown to have been unfounded.

I was also confused at first regarding talk of ' 5 year survival rates.'

I needed it explaining to me that it didn't mean that the day after the 5 years were up you dropped down dead.

It is true what ABETADAD says- there are many nuances and stages and grades.

Can I ask ABETADAD - what stage was your wife's at? It was obviously caught early and contained.

MegSophandEmma when i first went to my doctor,he felt that i had a tumour and myself and my dd were in the position you are in now,i was in hospital within two weeks, and hey presto was a large fibroid attached to ovaries and womb !we were both petrified and thought the worst,but luckily it turned out fine as i have already told you.It is scary but is something your mum has to have done for now, im sure they will look after her just fine.As i said previously,I had no pain when i awoke,but did have a morphine drip for the first 24 hrs,but even when that was taken out i still had no pain at all.the worst thing i had after the op was i kept being sick so had to have daily injections for that,but that was purely the anesthetics. when i got home each day i had to walk a little bit for example on day one to my neighbours front gate, and gradually increase the distance.I used to think i was never going to be upright again and envied people who were walking normally ,but of course I was just feeling sorry for myself and got back to normal very soon.

ShineOn, My mum did that yesterday (bless her) She called the Macmillan helpline. It's a crazy, worrying time. Just glad you are all here, as I want to be strong and not put anymore of my worries onto her.

ABetaDad, I am usually the first to tell people not to google as it is a surefire way of scaring the crap out you, but now this is here it's so hard not to. I research many random things out of habit online, but I vow that I won't look at anything else. Especially not until we know for sure what is going on.

MegSophandEmma - please be very careful when looking at survival rate data. It is terribly easy to convince yourself of awful outcomes.

"Last night I was looking for statistics on ovarian cancer survival rates at different stages and alsorts, getting myself into a right tiz arghhh."

I did that too and especially if you look at US websites they have very detailed survival rate data and statistics. I spent 48 hours of solid searching and analysing that data and convinced myself (and after a lot of talking to DW) to pick up the phone and ask the consultant to hold the hysterectomy and get a second opinion. The reason being that I was not convinced of the accuracy of the diagnosis or the potential risk DW faced. It was worth waiting a few weeks to get a real expert to take a look at the samples.

That US data has horrificly low survival rates for some types of ovarian cancer and extremely high rates for other types.

Classfying ovarian cancer types is an extremely uncertain science as we eventually discovered. The spread of possible outcomes is huge even within each ovarian cancer type as it is highly dependent on individual case circumstances. Also DO remember your Mum has not even been diagnosed properly yet.

I know it is difficult not to look and of course you are very worried but do try not to do too much internet searching until you know more.

All the best and fingers crossed it is all a false alarm. It most often is.

I went one better that just googling the survival rates! I rang one of the cancer bacup nurses and demanded to know how likely it was that she would die, and if so, when! They must have thought I was completely barking... I just became obsessed with wanting to know the worst case scenario and then thinking I would then at least know and be able to prepare myself.

Looking back, it all seems a little mad now, but at the time I was desperate.

Have to say though, there is every chance in the world that your mum has fibroids and scar tissue. They found out when my mum had the op that she had terrible adhesions from endemetriosis- she didn't even know that she had suffered from that! And an ovarian cyst in very unlikely to be cancerous anyway- so keep these thoughts in mind!

I had a radical hysterectomy and the recovery really wasn't that bad. I was mobile within a 3 days, discharged on day 6 post op and then just pottered about at home. I got very tired for the first week or so but after that I was just building up my energy.

DH had 4 weeks off work but that was because I had 3 and 15 month old ds's to look after. I was lifting ds2 by the 5th week and on my own with them from week 6.

Mine was done because of cervical cancer and they did a biopsy on the tissue they removed to check it hadn't spread.

I really hope your mums ok and it doesn't turn out to be anything sinister.