I’ve been rabbitting on in this blog for many weeks now, and I realize I haven’t explained my diagnosis.

As I walked out of the office, the radiologist said “I hope we’re wrong”. Perhaps she was trying to cheer me up.

The main symptom I had was abdominal bloating. The GP was suspicious and said she could feel “masses” (a euphemism for “big nasty lumps”) in my pelvis. She sent me to get an ultrasound scan. By then a bit of googling told me that what the GP suspected was ovarian cancer. The radiologist and sonologist discussed the imaging with me immediately after the scan. They said they found masses near the ovaries. As I walked out of the office, the radiologist said “I hope we’re wrong”. Perhaps she was trying to cheer me up.

Back to the GP, then off to a gynaecological oncologist who, having looked at the scans, says there’s a 90% chance that these “masses” are cancer. By then I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear this.

But what kind of cancer did I have?

We all know that cancer spreads (“metastasizes“). What I didn’t realize before all this ghastliness is that, if cancer starts in, say, the liver and spreads to the lungs, you don’t have lung cancer. You have secondary liver cancer. The cancer in the liver is the primary; the cancer in the lungs is the secondary.

My understanding of this is that a cancer starts when cells start to behave abnormally, grow too rapidly, and thus create a tumour. Some of those cells may break off from the tumour, or find their way through the blood or lymphatic systems and lodge somewhere else. So (eg) abnormal liver cells are now lodged in the lung. So you don’t have lung cancer. You have secondary liver cancer. At least that’s my understanding of how it works.

Anyway, the gynaecological oncologist is even more suspicious than the GP. So she sends me off to a breast surgeon for core biopsies, which are the most painful things I’ve ever endured. The results say ‘breast cancer’. Two cancers, actually. Of different kinds. That is, two primary cancers.

But what about these masses on the ovaries? What are they?

The breast surgeon suspected that the cancers started in the breasts and spread to the ovaries. If that were the case, I’d have secondary breast cancer. The alternative was that I had three primary cancers. Not unheard of, not impossible, but very unlikely. Like being hit by a bus and lightning and a meteorite at the same instant.

We didn’t know the answer until after surgery. Only then did the pathologists have something to examine. And, yes, the meteorite struck: it was ovarian cancer, which means I have three primary cancers.