Dysgerminoma is the name of the cancer that grew in my young body more than 25 years ago. It is a rare germ cell tumor that develops mostly in adolescent girls and young women. It is also a form of ovarian cancer.

When I was diagnosed with of “dysgerminoma of the ovary” I barely knew what my ovaries were. It was halfway through my 9th grade year and I felt like I was gaining weight in my belly. I started wearing my shirts untucked and eventually realized my “pot belly” was hard. That didn’t seem right so I brought it to my mom’s attention and from the look on her face I realized it was a problem.

The first Friday of January 1990 my mom took me to our local doctor to see what was going on. I was about to turn 15 — and the doctor wanted to do a pelvic exam. If that wasn’t traumatic enough, it was inconclusive and she needed to get an ultrasound to know more. Because we lived in a small, rural town we had to go to the next town over for the test; our small town doctor’s office did not have an ultrasound machine. It had to wait until Monday.

The ultrasound on that Monday — my 15th birthday — showed a large mass on my right ovary but the test was still relatively inconclusive. They wanted me to see a specialist in Little Rock the next day. We made the two hour drive to see the gynecological oncologist and upon examination he decided I needed to have surgery to remove the mass. Immediately.

The next morning I was at UAMS in Little Rock having a major operation to remove a yet unclassified mass that may or may not be malignant. This was no neat little laser or scope surgery; the tumor was so large, they probably couldn’t have used that technology even if it had existed then. The tumor was the size of a football and was growing on my right ovary. They removed my right ovary, my right fallopian tube, my appendix, and several lymph nodes.

The tumor was malignant, so I started my first round of chemo at the end of January 1990. I had six rounds, mostly of the BEP regimen. 

I’ve been cancer free since 1990, though I’ve had some health issues likely related to my treatment and surgeries. Twenty-five years later, I have yet to meet anyone else who has been treated for dysgerminoma.

I went on to graduate high school with honors, graduate college with honors, get married, and give birth to two healthy children. To celebrate my 40th birthday and 25 years since my diagnosis, I ran my first half marathon, the Aramco Houston Half Marathon, in Houston in January 2015.

My ovarian cancer story is unusual, but the gift of my story is that people remember it and listen a little harder because it is unusual. My hope is that sharing my story will spark an awareness of the disease that helps someone else catch their symptoms early and gives them a greater chance of survival.