I had discomfort and I'm not talking pain I just had discomfort and I was a bit
tired and i thought I was menopausal.
I was on a strict diet for six weeks and I gained 10 pounds.
And I went to the doctors and they were treating me for
gallstones and then my doctor got me a scan and came back and says um
I think there's something wrong Lorraine.
When the news was given, I knew it was grave
because the way he spoke. Very nicely but I had that gut feeling that this wasn't going to be good.
I didn't have any obvious symptoms and I didn't feel unwell and I'm just thinking, as he's talking
to me and he's saying about sort of the ovarian mass, there's a node showing on the pancreas,
there's something in my lymph nodes but I couldn't stop shaking the it was just uncontrollable.
On the Friday they did the biopsy and the doctor woke me up and says Lorraine you've got a tumour,
we need to operate on you now and then when I came out of that operation seven days
they said you've got stage three ovarian cancer and it's been a roller coaster since and........
You know, I went in the morning of that day having been healthy my whole life
to jump to the straight stage 3c.
What kept me going is that ...
I don't want to to leave my daughter.
Each cancer is different. Each cancer affects people differently.
They sent me for a genetic test to see whether I was BRCA1, BRAC2.
That's part of the scenario as to why I am clear at this moment I believe.
So the personalised medicine aspect of it was quite important.
I felt everything was very specific to me. I had complete confidence in Dr Brenton and the team around and
when we talked about doing a trial or any of the studies that sort of got me to that point,
I was like yes please, I'll do it! You're offering it to me I'm fortunate to have it offered.
I think we at Cambridge are changing the story of ovarian cancer in several ways.
Integrated Cancer Medicine is our approach to dealing with very complex diseases like ovarian cancer .
So what we're trying to do is to bring together all the things we can measure in a patient; the
clinical features, the imaging, the molecular tests, the tumour at very high scale and resolution in one place.
And a big focus for us at the moment is taking the imaging and putting that together with
the molecular tests, the cancer gene tests that we're doing on patients and really trying to bring those
together in a way that's comprehensive and can be done for patients in the clinic.
And I just want to highlight how important patients have been in this journey and will be in the journey ahead.
Not just by participating in the research studies but also working with us to help frame
the questions, to tell us when we're not quite getting it right and by improving the patient
experience at every step along the way. And I think these factors are now changing the narrative
and moving the disease from something that hasn't really changed for over 25 years to a disease
where women can look forward to living longer and I hope being cured of what is a terrible disease.
This group has been wonderful ,absolutely wonderful. I don't know what would do without it to be honest,
I think they are so positive and it's such a boost of, I don't know, energy just happiness.
Seeing her today so fit and well, you just think it's fantastic.
I'm really glad that my, you know, small contribution will help
other people, potentially myself too.
I really think it's time that we
spent sufficient amount of research time and money trying to find the right diagnosis.
Whatever you do, if you've got even an inkling that something is not right in your body go and get it checked .
Well I'm really hoping that with all the research and the trials and that,
they can detect ovarian cancer early because every single one of us have been found advanced
and if they could find it early they could save a lot more women.