“I'll go bald again”: How I live with ovarian cancer

Cancer has been studied much better.than before, and the understanding of many of them has changed completely. For example, breast cancer is a whole group of different diseases that require special treatment. And even in cases where uniform protocols are followed in different clinics, there is still room for subjective judgment by the doctor, and for some questions there is simply no unambiguous data. Polina Gerasimova told how evidence-based medicine helped her survive ovarian cancer with several relapses.

I have been engaged in interior design for ten years now, for the last couple of years I have been professionally trained, that is, I have received an appropriate education. I used to work in public relations in charity foundations, but by my first education I am a journalist. I have two daughters, they are now 8 and 9 years old. In 2011, having stopped breastfeeding my youngest daughter, I returned to the ideal form for myself - we traveled a lot, lived very actively, and in the summer, being in Pyatigorsk, where we have a home, I played sports five times a week with a coach. A year later in the summer we arrived there again, I tried to enter the same regime, but suddenly it became hard - shortness of breath, discomfort. I laughed and blamed it on the "age" - how, a whole year has passed.

A month before that, we had a rest in Crete, and for some reason I began to have nightmares every night. I don’t know if it coincided or the body was desperately trying to signal something. In general, when training was particularly uncomfortable, and then suddenly fell ill side, I went to the ultrasound. An ovarian cyst was found, and they recommended that I remove it when I return to Moscow. I love a solid approach to everything, so I studied the question in detail, found the best laparoscopist and agreed on an operation. At the same time, I for some reason decided to donate blood for tumor markers - and their level was five times higher. This is not critical (usually with such a diagnosis, which was later confirmed by me, they do not rise fivefold, but a thousand). The doctor looked at the results of the analysis and suggested that it was endometriosis - and then he, apparently, “missed” something, and he suggested that I go to the gynecological oncologist.

So I got to see Dr. Nosov, a gynecological oncologist who worked in Los Angeles and, for example, operated on Angelina Jolie’s mother. He directed me to an MRI and it turned out that there was no cyst in the ovary, but also lymph nodes and metastases were spread to the peritoneum. I was 35 years old, my daughters were three and four, and I was diagnosed with stage IIIC ovarian cancer. At first I was shocked. How so - I'm not taking children to school? But I grieved for a couple of days - I cried, sat on the Patriarchs, looking at the golden autumn. And the next day I set up: I will be treated.

I chose an excellent clinic - expensive, but with advanced doctors practicing according to the most modern standards. At first, I even had a thought to persuade them to give me the opportunity to have a third child, but I was well explained that my priorities now should be different - and if not delayed, you can get an excellent result. The first operation lasted three and a half hours - and it was not possible to completely remove the metastases, a large conglomerate was soldered to the inferior vena cava, this is too risky. They explained to me that there is no surgeon in the world who could do this, so I’ll have to undergo chemotherapy, and after that we’ll watch, the rest of the tumor may shrink and it may be possible to remove it.

At first I was shocked. How so - I'm not taking children to school? She cried, sat on the Patriarch's, looking at the golden autumn. And the next day I set up: I will be treated

And then a miracle happened: Philip, my laparoscopist doctor, almost accidentally met Igor Ivanovich Ushakov, a surgeon and chief oncologist of the Ministry of Defense. For some reason, Ushakov performed an operation in their clinic just for a patient with a relapse of ovarian cancer, and the operation lasted about twelve hours. Philip went for surgery to watch. And then he called me and said that I should meet this surgeon.

And in December 2012, I met Ushakov - this is an amazing personality and an amazing doctor. He performs operations that literally take two more surgeons in the world. If the average survival rate for metastatic ovarian cancer is 9-11 months, then it is 58 months among my doctor's patients, and 56-60 for the other two best specialists in the world. There are also patients who have lived for ten years without a relapse. I trust Igor Ivanovich very much, there is a lot in his hands - even though he says that no one knows how the disease will continue.

He operated on me in January 2013, deleted the same conglomerate and lymph nodes. By the end of the year, a mini-relapse occurred in one lymph node, it was coagulated. In the spring of 2014, there was a relapse again, and again in places that were difficult of access for most surgeons, even at the Kashirka Oncology Center, they were told that this could not be removed. Ushakov again undertook and operated on me - and I lived quietly for three years, until September 2017. This summer again revealed a metastasis in the lymph node, with germination in the pancreas, not the most favorable picture - but my surgeon again removed everything. After each operation, I received four cycles of chemotherapy. In general, I have a very aggressive type of tumor - Müller's adenocarcinoma, about 450 cases have been detected all over the world. But at the same time I was lucky, and cancer is perfectly amenable to chemotherapy - although, of course, radical operations also played a role. Remission lasting three years, like mine, is something unheard of with such a diagnosis.

In parallel with the whole treatment, I learned to become an art historian, all the time I went somewhere, either to Rome, then to Bruges or London. She led and continue to lead a very active lifestyle. After the first operation, she was discharged on the third day, after ten o'clock - on the seventh day (although under the protocol hospitalization should last 21 days). After a recent operation (this year), I didn’t come to my senses so easily - I wouldn’t have removed half of my pancreas, spleen and other tissues, but I still went to St. Petersburg, took pictures of objects for AD magazine, and I’ve been working on the design of Oksana Fandera’s apartment with Yankovsky (this is a project for Channel One). I communicate with very interesting, inspiring people.

Now there will be four cycles of chemotherapy again, I’ll go bald again - but my children are already in the second and third grade. Five years ago, I thought that I would not see how they were going to school, but now I want to see how they create families. When they were young, I didn’t tell anything about the disease and I don’t dare to say directly. She warned me that I would soon shave my head again, that the doctor said "this is necessary." The older one teases me: “And if the doctor says to jump from the eighth floor?” But seriously, I still explained that a healthy mother without hair is better than a mother who is sick. As for the hair, I do not worry - well, I look like again in a wig. At the beginning of the disease, many friends did not know about her, but they said about the wig that I had a cool new haircut.

At first, communicating with my surgeon, I did not understand why he had no students. And he explained that no one wants to stand for twelve hours in the operating room for meager wages. Now I understand that I got the only one, a rare exception. Unfortunately, there are not enough such doctors for all, and I am very sorry that people have a different attitude. Cancer patients are one of the most vulnerable groups, they are nailed by both their diagnosis and their attitude, and they often cannot fight back. I remember that on the chemotherapy in the district oncologic dispensary, the nurses treated very dismissively, refused to let me go to the toilet - and the dropper lasts six hours. Or, for example, at the reception at Ushakov I stayed in the office to wait a few minutes and fell asleep - and it turned out that I had slept for four hours, and all this time he had been waiting for me. The next day - the exact opposite situation: the doctor on duty urged me on, arguing that he needed to get on the train soon and go to the country.

On the other hand, the behavior of many patients also surprises me - they are not interested in what they are doing with them, on what basis the treatment is chosen, they always believe that "the doctor knows better." They may suffer from vomiting after chemotherapy and do not even guess to ask if there are any means to alleviate the condition, but they exist and work well. But most of all I was shocked when women in the ward were discussing whether to tell my husband that you had "removed everything." Someone asked if my husband left me. But my husband - my main support and support, he took over, gave me the opportunity to ride around the world, come to life after operations, get an education. People tell scary things: friends turn away from them, do not allow children, are afraid to get infected. Fortunately, I have not encountered anything like this.

As for the reassessment of values ​​after the diagnosis - I became much calmer, despite serious changes in hormonal levels. You no longer want to spend time on people who are not needed - not in terms of benefits, but in terms of comfort in communication. I stopped maintaining contacts because of inconvenience to people. There was less communication with my mother, but it was of high quality, we stopped proving something to each other. In general, I do not like pity, I always count only on myself and do not expect sympathy from anyone - except for the closest ones, my family.

Now there will be four cycles of chemotherapy again, I will go bald again - but my children are already in the second and third grade

During the time of illness, I managed to get two educations: art criticism and design, the second at the Details-school, which is one of the five strongest in the world. This has long been a dream of mine, and at first I put it off — the first time after the diagnosis I planned something maximum for a month ahead. But still I went and unlearned, defended one of the best, and now we are aiming for publication in AD. When I think about my life, I understand that I would not give up everything that happened to me. No matter how scary and hard it is, I appreciate everything positively. The depth and quality of life, the rethinking, the people I learned, everything became better. This is such a test, when you do not know how much you have been released, but you should always hope for the best.

Ovarian cancer is now considered an incurable chronic disease; most likely, it will return, and I will have to fight again, but that does not frighten me. Sometimes I remember how I wanted new impressions and new knowledge, and I say "be afraid of your desires" - after the diagnosis of impressions it became even more than enough. And even joking that I once wanted to do "chemistry" - though, I thought about chemical perm, but I received chemotherapy. Sometimes it is very hard; Because of the removal of the ovaries, I had a surgical menopause, and with it, depression. She began to take hormone replacement therapy - developed toxic hepatitis. After that, I switched to a local hormonal drug. You can always do something, even when it seems that nothing is left.

Many acquaintances and friends want to participate, with something to help - I was advised by bioenergetics, white magicians, repair of biofields, endless lotions, diets, buckwheat with water and rubbing salt in the hair. But I am for evidence-based medicine. There are treatment protocols, they include optimal surgery and the gold standard of chemotherapy. Probably, if a person is treated according to the standard, then let him, if he wants, sit on diets and repair the biofield, if only he would not replace this with a normal treatment. Many lose precious time, and those who advise such "methods" are just criminals. People who talked with doctor Steve Jobs told me that he should have come for an operation, not go to Tibet. The same thing happened with Abdulov - he went to Tyva to some shaman, and returned with a tumor that was not subject to surgery.

Unfortunately, there is very little good information available about cancer treatment, and this makes people even more afraid. Someone closes his eyes to his diagnosis, pretends that he is not, and does not begin to be treated. If you have been diagnosed with an oncological diagnosis, do not panic and do not give up, start treating your disease like any other. If it seems to you that dangerous diseases only occur in others, but you will not be affected - still think about regular medical screenings. It is very important to educate people, give access to information - even now many people say that it’s worth writing a book, but I don’t know how to choose the time for this. A week after receiving the diagnosis, I found everything that exists in the world on this topic, including some of the latest dissertations. It is interesting for me to live, there are a lot of things waiting for me, I have many plans - by the way, they call me to teach “Details” to the school, which I graduated from. I will continue to fully live, love, learn new things. Everything will be cool.