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Georgia woman survives rare ovarian cancer
It wasn't a typical symptom, but a Coweta County woman believes leg pain helped doctors catch her cancer early on. Jaclyn Cardell was just 25 when she developed pain that radiated down her leg. Today, she's a 14-year survivor of a rare type of ovarian cancer.
Sharpsburg, GA - Today, at 39, Jaclyn Cardell of Sharpsburg is an ovarian cancer survivor and a mother of two boys. Nolan is 11 and Declan is five.
"Knowing what I know now, I'm shocked that we found it as early as we did," says Cardell.
At 25, when Cardell, then an EMT, started experiencing leg pain, her doctor found a cyst on her ovary, something she'd had before that had been benign.
So, they decided to keep an eye on it.
"A lot of times, like, you have cysts that go away on their own, no big deal. That sounds reasonable. You know, we'll take it out surgically if we have to,"says Cardell. " Then the week before I was supposed to have surgery, it started hurting so bad."
She went to the the E.R. and learned the cyst had gone from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a football within less than a month's time.
After undergoing emergency surgery to remove the mass, doctors told Cardell she had ovarian cancer.
"I'd only been dating my husband, like 6 months when we when I found all this out," recalled Cardell.
Dr. Natalie Godbee , a gynecologic oncologist with City of Hope Atlanta, did not treat Cardell, but she is familiar with her case.
"When these ovarian masses pop up, usually patients will have pelvic pressure. And I believe she noticed pain that she was having that was different from normal pain," says Dr. Godbee. So, she had a rare cancer type. It's called ovarian germ cell cancer. "
Dr. Godbee says about 5% of ovarian cancers are ovarian germ cell tumors, and they're typically found in younger women.
Because both men and women can develop germ cell tumors -- that begin in the reproductive cells --the chemotherapy treatments for germ cell ovarian and testicular cancers are often the same.
["When you find tumors with similar cell types, then they can be treated with similar chemo regimens and have very similar outcomes," says Dr. Godbee.
Before Cardell started chemo, she underwent fertility treatment by harvesting 8 eggs and freezing them.
The chemotherapy was tough.
"Most patients have quite a few side effects from it, but if they can tolerate it, usually it's only about 3 to 4 cycles of the chemotherapy," says Dr. Godbee.
"I did lose my hair," recalls Cardell.
In the end, the chemotherapy worked. Cardell has been cancer-free more than a decade, and those fertility treatments?
Turns out, she and her now husband Dallas, didn't need them. Cardell says they had their two boys naturally without the frozen eggs.
"It's a big blessing. You know, I certainly wasn't sure at the time if that was even going to be an option."