Teal Report August 2011

 
                                                                                                                                                                                         Photo courtesy of Dasha Daniels

Finding Strength With Those Who Understand Your Struggles - Alicia Dunn

On a beautiful August afternoon in 2010, twelve ovarian cancer survivors gathered together for an opportunity to share their stories and to meet others like them. It always seem that in a group this size, one person stands out, makes it a point to talk to each person and share her story. Alicia Dunn was that woman.

Alicia never could have dreamed she would be diagnosed with Stage 2 ovarian cancer at age 32.  Though her form of ovarian cancer was rare and would require three rounds of chemotherapy, she was determined to beat her illness.

Alicia has been living in the Central Ohio area for the past 23 years and prior to that lived in Pittsburgh, PA.  She has been married to Scott, a Fire Systems Specialist at OSU, for eight years.  Together they have four children, Ryan, 27, is Scott’s son and a Marine serving in Afghanistan, Tawney, 11 and Jack, 10 are Alicia’s children and together they have a five year old daughter Savannah (named after their honeymoon spot).   

"I enjoy singing and spending time with my family. I love sitting on the porch with my coffee in the morning and talking to God.  I love being home with my kids and doing the ‘homemaker’ thing,” she says when asked what she liked to do in her spare time.

Alicia was diagnosed with Stage 2 Immature Teratoma on September 10^th, 2007, three weeks after her surgery which removed a tumor the size of a Nerf football. "I was told it wasn’t cancer, because I was so young and the tumor was so big,” Alicia said, "I was 3 weeks, to the day, into my recovery when my GYN called me at home to tell me they found cancerous cells in the tumor. It was early in the morning. I was getting my older two children ready to leave for the bus, and getting cereal and chocolate milk for my youngest. My husband was at work. It was a seasonable, sunny day.  The doctor told me that the lab results came back showing cancerous cells in the tumor. I just stopped.”

Alicia’s husband was, and is, one of her biggest supporters.  "Scott is the most selfless, caring and good person I’ve ever known.  He took care of everything from the first moment. He shaved his head right after he shaved mine and we got through it all together.   There was always a plan. He had arranged for me not to be alone and he got me to all of my appointments and got all of my medications plus handled the bills and shopping. Not to mention three children and everything they needed. I don’t know how he did it.  He is my precious gift from God.”

"We were concerned about how they (the children) would react or process the information; they all did very well. We were honest with them, yet positive. We told them what they needed to know and answered their questions as honestly as possible. The only emotion they had was laughing hysterically at how 'funny' it would be to see me bald," Alicia said when asked how her young children handled her diagnosis.

Surviving is something that Alicia has done from a young age. Not only is she a cancer survivor, she is also a survivor of sexual and physical abuse.   "I endured sexual abuse as a child until I got the strength to stop it.   It was hard but somehow, I have survived and got stronger,” Alicia said of her experience.

Since her diagnosis and now in her remission, Alicia has relied on her faith and her family to keep her going.   She hopes that the OCAO is able to raise awareness among women of all ages and to have the cause be as prevalent as breast cancer.   Her involvement in the organization has taught her, "There is real strength in being with people who understand your struggles.”

"I had cancer. Then chemotherapy almost killed me. It changed my life in ways I never would have changed without it. I can't say I would change a thing."

-Amanda Miller

OCNA Conference 2011

"Women with a fault in the RAD51D gene have a one in 11 chance of developing ovarian cancer," said Nazneen Rahman of the Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden in London, who led the study and published its findings in the journal Nature Genetics.

Ovarian cancer can remain hidden for a long time and thus is often not discovered until it is advanced.

An estimated 230,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year. Most are not diagnosed before the cancer has spread, and up to 70 percent of them die within five years.

Because of this, Rahman said, women with the faulty gene may decide their best option is to have their ovaries removed after they have children -- particularly if they have already seen other family members die of the disease.

Speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview she said the identification of RAD51D pointed to PARP inhibitors as a new class of drugs that might offer fresh hope. Initial tests in the laboratory found that cells with faulty RAD51D were highly sensitive to this class of drugs.

"PARP inhibitors work because they were designed to target DNA repair pathways," she said. "They haven't been used in patients in that context yet but we would predict they would behave in the same way." (Editing by Sophie Walker)

Letter from the President

Easy Peach Cobbler

Summer is here and you know what that means...tree ripened peaches! Try this easy peach cobbler and enjoy the tastes of the summer season!

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar, divided
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup milk
• 4 cups fresh peach slices
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• Ground cinnamon and nutmeg (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. To easily peal the peaches, boil water in a stockpot and make an X at the bottom of each peach with a knife; prepare and ice bath and drop the beaches into the boiling water for one minute and immediately place them into the ice bath. Once cooled, the skin will easily peel off the peaches.

Melt butter in a 9 x 13 baking dish (I did this by placing it in the oven, but be sure to keep an eye on it). Combine flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt; add milk and stir until just combined and moist. Pour batter over butter but do not stir.

Bring remaining cup of sugar, peach slices and lemon juice to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. When peaches are slightly softened and all sugar is dissolved, pour over batter. Do not stir. Sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg if desired. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until top is browned slightly; serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

From Southern Living Magazine May 2011

- Amanda Miller

                                                                                                                                                       Photo courtesy of Liz Porter

"We Deal With Amazing Women" - Kori Fenner

One of the hopes of the Faces of Ovarian Cancer campaign is to showcase not only cancer survivors and their families, but also the medical personnel who care for them and become such integral part of their lives.   Kori Fenner, a nurse with the OSU Gynecological Oncology Group, is just one of many important people in the medical field caring for ovarian cancer patients.

Kori always knew she wanted to be a nurse and decided to attend Capital University for the nursing program and basketball team.   It wasn’t until her grandfather was diagnosed with a brain tumor her freshman year of college that she decided her specialization would be oncology. A rotation at The James Cancer Center strengthened that idea. It was something she enjoyed more than surgical nursing. "I wanted the care that I gave to be appreciated and to see the same patients all the time,” Kori said when we asked what else made her decide to focus on oncology.  

Oncology nurses spend a great deal of time with their patients imparting care and advice on dealing with side effects of treatment. They get to know them on a very personal level. They also learn from their patients. "We deal with amazing women.   They are given a diagnosis where they know the outcome isn’t good but a lot of them still maintain a positive outlook, it puts things in perspective for a lot of them.   You see their families come in with them and they are their biggest support system.   As their nurse, you learn to appreciate what you have but you also learn and feed off of the hope and desire and strength of the women you deal with every day.   There aren’t words to explain the type of women that we deal with they, they always say what great care we give but it is so easy to give them all that you have when they are giving you all that they have.”

When asked what the best part of her job was, Kori said that seeing the same women over and over again was very rewarding.   She is not only able to get to know the patient, but their entire family as well.   The hardest part of her job is, "loosing the patients I have known for years; getting a letter from their husbands saying how much they appreciated the care that was given and to provide the same care for other people.”

In her five years with OSU she has seen a common thread with women who are diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer.   "They all have a strong desire to live.   A lot of them get to the point where they are becoming weak (from the chemo), but they still don’t want to give up.   No matter how poor the prognosis might be, they don’t want to give up.”   Kori is also able witness first hand how important family support is for her patients.   "They love their families and there are many women here whose husbands come with them to every treatment.   You can just look at them and see how important it is for them to have someone they love by their side.”

After a long day at work, Kori likes to unwind by taking her dog on a long walk and listening to her iPod.   She also enjoys spending time with her husband and family.  

One thing wants all women to remember is how important it is to know their bodies.   "If something is wrong and you’re getting the run around, you need to be persistent and ask questions.   Don’t let too much time go by before you have it re-evaluated.”  

Summer Reading - Book Review

" Flash and Bones" by Kathy Reichs

Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is back in Kathy Reich’s 14^th novel featuring her main protagonist, "Flash and Bones”.

Tempe has been called to Charlotte, North Carolina when an old corpse is discovered in a barrel of asphalt in a landfill that borders the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The timing couldn’t be worse. 200,000 fans are pouring into the city for Race Week. As Tempe begins the work to try and identify the body and determine what happened under pressure to make a quick ID she receives a visit at the medical examiner’s office by a man with a heartbreaking story.

Wayne Gamble is hoping Brennan can help him. Twelve years ago his older sister Cindi was an aspiring NASCAR driver and a high school senior. Cindi disappeared in 1998 with her boyfriend Cale. The boyfriend had been involved with a right-wing extremist group. Could the body in the barrel be Cindi’s or Cale’s? The FBI had investigated the couple’s disappearance only to terminate within a few weeks.

Was there a cover up? Caught between two cops who can’t get along, Erskine, "Skinny” Slidell of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Dept. and Cotton Galimore, the speedway’s head of security, Brennan is having a hard time discovering the truth. When she finds a deadly substance in the barrel and a CDC employee goes missing it can’t be a coincidence. Was the CDC lab being used to make deadly chemicals on the side? What is going on in the racing world???