During the spring of 2010, Baumann experienced weeks of abdominal bloating and discomfort. When those symptoms subsided, she put them out of her mind and busied herself planning the annual trip she and her husband took from Florida to Maine to spend the summer with her son and his family. Two months later, that uncomfortable feeling returned, this time accompanied by vaginal bleeding, an indication that something was very wrong. “I told my son, who’s a physician, and he said, ‘Mom, you need to see a doctor right away!’” Within a few days, Baumann was at the local hospital undergoing exams and tests. A cancer antigen (CA) 125 blood test didn’t find elevated levels of the biomarker protein that sometimes indicates the presence of tumor cells. Doctors ruled out cancer and posited that the problem was that her fallopian tubes were tangled. Surgeons removed them laparoscopically (using a minimally invasive surgical procedure done through a small incision), along with her ovaries. Baumann’s relief that the worst was over proved premature. Less than a week after the surgery, a biopsy contradicted the original findings and revealed that she had fallopian tube cancer, an extremely rare type of ovarian cancer diagnosed in approximately 300 to 400 women in the United States per year, according to University of California San Francisco Health. “I was like, holy crap! I thought I was finished with this stuff,” Baumann says. The cancer was advanced, stage 3. “I thought for sure I was a goner,” she says. Yet 10 years later she’s still playing golf, traveling, and seeing friends and family — positives that continue to amaze. RELATED: Seriously Bloated: Warning Signs You Shouldn’t Ignore
‘Keeping Women Going’ for 5, 10, 15, 20 Years
Treated early, before it has spread, ovarian cancer has a five-year relative survival rate of 92 percent or higher; for fallopian tube cancer, it’s 94 percent. These numbers mean that more than 9 in 10 women are still alive five years after diagnosis, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). But the vagueness of symptoms like abdominal bloating, which can be easy to ignore or blame on other maladies, often leads to delays in treatment. Like Baumann, about 75 percent of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed at stage 3 or 4, when the cancer has already advanced and the odds of a good outcome are lower. The five-year relative survival rate for all stages of epithelial ovarian cancer, by far the most prevalent kind, is only 47 percent, estimates the ACS; for fallopian tube cancer, it’s 59 percent. Still, a growing number of women like Baumann are living longer with ovarian cancer. Beth Karlan, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, believes the disease once known as the silent killer could become a chronic condition for many women in the not-too-distant future, as significant advances in research and new therapies continue to emerge. “We do have a number of different treatments that can keep women going for 5, 10, 15, 20 years,” says Dr. Karlan. These include immunotherapy (which harnesses the power of the body’s own immune system to fight disease) and anti-angiogenesis therapies (which block the growth of blood vessels that cancer cells need to live and grow), as well as newer and better intravenous chemotherapies to kill cancer cells; targeted therapies that lock in on cancer cells without harming normal ones; and combination treatment regimes. Baumann estimates she’s been through almost all of these new approaches over the past decade. “My son said to me, ‘Mom, you’re way past your expiration date!’ I told him, ‘I hope you don’t talk to your patients that way.” She knows that most women with her diagnosis would consider themselves lucky to be in her shoes. RELATED: Ovarian Cancer: Myths vs. Facts
Living Life Past Her Expiration Date
Surgery remains the first line treatment for most women with ovarian cancer. Once Baumann’s cancer was confirmed, she was readmitted to the hospital, where doctors performed a hysterectomy and removed as much of the cancerous tissue as possible, a procedure called debulking. Following a slow, painful recovery, Baumann began chemotherapy to target the cancer cells and tissues left behind. “I told them ‘Give me the worst one you have because I want this stuff out of me!’” Baumann recalls. “Boy, was it rough! My hair came out right away.” Despite the many side effects, the treatment stabilized Baumann and kept the cancer at bay for more than a year. Then she became one of the 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients that the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance estimates will face a recurrence. During Baumann’s years of facing off against ovarian cancer, a treatment pattern emerged. Regardless of the regime, it took about 12 to 18 months for her cancer to become unresponsive to the latest wonder drug, leaving her doctors to scramble for another potent pharmaceutical cocktail to slow the disease’s progression. Baumann has been prescribed Avastin (bevacizumab), a targeted therapy used in conjunction with standard chemotherapy because it has been shown to increase the average amount of time before a recurrence. She’s also taken Zejula (niraparib), a medication belonging to a new class of drugs called PARP (poly ADP ribose polymerase) inhibitors that have been shown to slow disease progression and increase the time between courses of chemotherapy when cancer returns. PARP inhibitors work by blocking the PARP enzyme’s ability to help repair damaged DNA, causing cancer cells to die. “In the past 10 years, I’ve had 10 different chemotherapies, sometimes in combination with another drug,” Baumann says. RELATED: Complications of Ovarian Cancer: How Does It Affect Your Body in the Short and Long Term?
Still Checking Items Off Her Bucket List
The ever-changing string of drug therapies has allowed Baumann to check items off her bucket list and maintain an active schedule of travel, mahjong, and time with friends. She took up golf after retirement and, dressed in one of her signature wigs or baseball caps, tries to hit the links two or three times a week. “I hate to toot my own horn but I’ve won the President’s Cup tournament five times,” she says. “Obviously, I’m not playing at that level anymore but I’m still president of the Ladies Golf League.” In March 2020, Baumann began yet another regime. Every third week, she receives Alimta (pemetrexed) intravenous chemotherapy (a medication initially approved for lung cancer that has recently shown promise in treating ovarian cancer), followed by an Avastin injection. The treatment is harsh and the side effects last a week. Her most recent PET scan showed the cancer in her stomach and liver and her last CA 125 blood test was around 800 — not an encouraging number. She wonders how long she will stay on this regime since it doesn’t appear to be working. Nonetheless, Baumann remains in remarkably good spirits and refuses to “sit here and feel sorry for myself,” she says. She is not living cancer-free and knows she probably won’t ever go into remission. But the treatments are keeping her alive until researchers come up with the next miracle drug that she hopes will extend her expiration date. For her, ovarian cancer is a disease she’s learned to live with, not one she’s waiting to die from.
