My mum is to have a hysterectomy in eleven days, her womb and ovaries are a mess. Any experience please?

[MegSophandEmma]

I am so scared this is going to be something sinister.

She has kept her fears hidden from myself and my brother. I saw something this evening about ovarian cancer. It was laying out the symproms etc.. and I called my mother to ask exactly what the doctor had told her during her pre op appointment. She eventually said she is scared it's Ovarian cancer. My mother had thyroid cancer at the age of 32 and she said she never doubted that she would okay, but she just said this evening she has a bad feeling.

The tests she has had so far are; Blood test, scan (a mass in her womb and ovaries were found, as well as a swollen fallopian tube). She then had some key hole surgery where a camera was inserted to have a look about. Following this she was informed that she had a huge cyst on her ovary and polps and fibroids all over the inside and outside of her womb.

So she is having her hysterectomy in eleven days and I am so f**king scared I'm 29 fgs but I don't think I can be without my mum. Please tell me she could be ok someone please.

Sorry ignore last post which was a US version here is UK one I think my mum had.

Afternoon.

Have just bought the book wonderstuff. Cheers for the link. I just hope she will read it, Blood and Stone are the words I use to describe the joys of getting my mother to read lol...

Shineon It really is good to have another talk about this with who has been there. Still scared and I know it will get worse until this whole thing is over with. Oh and wanting to know thw facts is exactly want I am like now. Although I have a tendency to predict the future outcome, already certain that it's going to be a bad outcome, but then I read the posts again on here, which bring me back to having a realistic vision (basically that I know nada lol). Last night I was looking for statistics on ovarian cancer survival rates at different stages and alsorts, getting myself into a right tiz arghhh. Thanks for your email address and your support

Guadalupe, so sorry I never saw anyoneelses posts lastnight, just carried on the message I started before my mum came round, then headed off to bed. Very glad you are ok now. Thanks for sharing your reasuring story.

Mummylin, to you also. Thanks for providing me with another reasurring post with a poitive outcome. Glad you are ok.

Wow, aBETAdad what an informative post. Thankyou. It just goes to show that cancer doesn't always end up beating you. Should be aware of this as my mum had thyroid cancer when she was 32 and has been fine in that department since) So chuffed that you and your DW went onto have children also and thank heavens the op was cancelled!!

ShineOn, my mum after having her thyroid removed and all looked well, had to have some kind of scan every year. Then once she was clear for five years, she moved onto a scan once every five years. She was made to drink something which would detect anything odd. She still has these now. Not sure if it is the same scan ABetaDad has talked about though as it was a completly different area.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.