In 2016, I was "diagnosed" with ovarian cancer, and my brain went blank, leaving only fear in my mind.
In 2020, I was in a good mood, going to Hainan in winter and deep in the mountains in summer, smelling the fresh air and seeing the vast ocean. To sum it up in two words, it is comfortable!
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01. Eat fat, or ascites?
I am an internist.
As an internist, I don't know much about gynecological diseases. So after I found out that I had a big belly, my first reaction was like everyone else, thinking that I was fat.
I found out that something was wrong when I was swimming—why did I suddenly swim so hard that my body was still sinking?
I decisively went to the hospital, and the director of the gastroenterology department looked at me and said, "Mr. Wang, you seem to have a bit of a big belly."
I said that I might have eaten fat recently, but the head of the gastroenterology department said: This should be ascites.
I was stunned for a moment, remembering that I had a major physical examination in the hospital at the end of August, and I had done all the ultrasound and other examinations at that time, but the results were quite normal. It's only November now, and it stands to reason that in more than two months, the belly really shouldn't be so big.
The head of the gastroenterology department knocked on my stomach and confirmed that I had ascites in my abdomen, so he asked me, "You are a teacher, what do you think is your disease?" ”
As soon as I heard that it was ascites, I already had results in my heart. I analyzed: "My ascites should not be exudate, but exudate, because first, I don't have heart disease, second, I don't have malnutrition, and third, my liver and kidneys are normal. So this ascites must be an exudate, so...... It's a malignant tumor."
My mind went blank.
He asked, "Then what do you think is the disease?" ”
I instinctively said, "I don't know what the disease is, but I think it's a gynecological disease." ”
I guessed right. The director of the gastroenterology department confirmed my guess and told me that it should be ovarian cancer!
He explained to me that 80% of the ovarian cancer was sent to the gynecology department by his gastroenterology department, and most of these patients had symptoms such as indigestion, bloating, abdominal pain, and ascites, which was very similar to my situation.
So I had ovarian cancer.
I am an ordinary person, even if I have been a doctor for most of my life, and I can analyze that I am suffering from a malignant tumor, it does not make me not afraid when facing life and death.
I remembered that my goddaughter also had ovarian cancer 15 years ago and passed away a year and a half after surgery at Peking Union Medical College. She was only 30 years old at the time, and she lived for a year and a half at 30, what about me? How long do I have left?
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02. My time can be very long
I don't know anything about gynecology, but I trust the doctors in our hospital. After having a B-ultrasound, various laboratory tests, and PET-CT, I was hospitalized. After I was hospitalized, I said to the director of the gynecology department: My life will be handed over to you, and I will treat it as I want.
The director was also very decisive and operated on me three days after I was admitted to the hospital, and I was diagnosed with high-grade serous tubal cancer stage 3C.
After the surgery, I had three hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy and six intravenous chemotherapy treatments, for a total of nine sessions. The first chemotherapy was so painful that I couldn't eat a mouthful of food and couldn't smell the oil. It's hard to look at the window and want to jump down.
But my desire to survive made me endure it.
I drank the noodle soup for as long as I had chemotherapy, but the noodle soup couldn't support the body's consumption at all, and my weight was so hard that I lost more than a dozen pounds. But who wouldn't want to be alive? Not only do I want to live, but I want to allow myself to live longer.
I knew the importance of knowledge, and I started learning about ovarian cancer during chemotherapy. I searched everywhere for authoritative treatment guidelines for ovarian cancer, and my classmates helped me find, download, and organize them.
I don't want to leave after a year and a half like my goddaughter, but after consulting the guidelines, I learned that ovarian cancer is prone to recurrence, and the recurrence time is shorter and shorter, and platinum resistance will appear after about three times, and it will be difficult to find an effective treatment after platinum resistance.
How can this cycle of recurrence be stopped?
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I kept searching for relevant information and finally found a PARP inhibitor. Because there was no BRCA mutation in the postoperative genetic testing, I chose niraparib for myself.
But another problem came again, at that time, there was no genuine niraparib in China, and it would cost 120,000 a month to buy it in Hong Kong.
What to do? I think of the clinical trial group. However, niraparib has been marketed in United States in 2017, and there is no need for a test group, only domestic ones have a test group.
After learning more that most of the gynecology-related trials in China came from Dr. Wu Lingying, I went to Beijing to find Professor Wu and ask her about niraparib.
At that time, few people in China knew about niraparib, and even the gynecologists in our provincial cancer hospital did not know. So Professor Wu was surprised.
After I explained that I had learned about this drug through constant inquiries and studies, she gave me a reassurance: niraparib will have it, and if there is one, she will tell me.
Thank you very much!
03. Enter the test group
Later, about a year after the treatment, in February 2018, my cancer returned.
After the recurrence, chemotherapy was not as difficult as the first time, so there was a lot more leeway in diet - since I could eat it, I tried my best. Probably because of the nutritional aspect to keep up, during the entire second-line chemotherapy period, in addition to the long-acting whitening injection, I only took a platelet-raising injection for seven days because of one platelet lowering.
Compared with this chemotherapy, it is more difficult to endure after entering the clinical trial group-
When I was in the second line of chemotherapy, the clinical trial team finally got the news, so I went to Beijing to find Professor Wu again. Professor Wu told me that some indicators were assigned to Henan, and I signed in the neraparib clinical trial group in Henan without hesitation.
At that time, many people thought that joining the clinical trial group would be regarded as a white rabbit and gave up enrollment, but I would not think so, I was the first patient to strongly request enrollment, and the number 001 in the trial group in Henan.
In October, I started taking the medication distributed by the trial group. The first month of medication was very difficult, and the side effects were not as strong as those of first-line chemotherapy, but it was an endless torture. In addition to the headache all day long, I was also nauseous, didn't want to eat, was weak, and my blood cells were constantly falling.
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But this is a cure! The side effects didn't get to the point where I had to stop taking the drug, and I was able to hold on. When I can't sleep at night, I take sleeping pills, and when constipation is severe, I open Selu. Because of my poor appetite, in order to supplement enough nutrients so that my body does not collapse, I also used Neng Vegan and Ruine, I can't eat whole eggs, so I steam them and eat them slowly, and if I can't eat vegetables, I blanch them with boiling water and beat them into juice and drink them.
In the first month of medication, I survived, in the second month, the symptoms were mild, in the third month, there were basically no symptoms, and in the fourth month, my blood picture also went up, leaving only mild anemia.
04. Turn cancer into a chronic disease
In addition to studying, another thing I stick to is supplementing nutrition. After all, in the face of cancer, a wasting disease, the body is the biggest capital.
Although I only lost more than a dozen pounds of soup during the first-line chemotherapy, after the chemotherapy, my weight slowly recovered to more than 100 pounds because of my focus on nutritional supplementation.
After the symptoms of maintenance therapy were reduced, I began the process of strengthening my nutrition and exercising properly. I gained another 10 pounds while eating niraparib - I measured my body fat, and I grew muscle.
After my appetite was restored, I ate chicken, duck, fish, meat, eggs, milk, all of them, two bottles of plain yogurt and two to three eggs a day. After going home from exercise in the evening, I supplemented protein and ate steamed fish almost the size of a palm, which really achieved a high-nutrition diet.
In addition, I also eat a large amount of vegetables, for example, sometimes I put a little bit of each of the six or seven kinds of vegetables and stir-fry them into a plate. I still drink a glass of vegetable juice in the morning, because fresh vegetable juice contains folic acid, which is very good for anemia.
Outside of diet is exercise, and I still work out in the gym, swimming or dancing. In the past two years of medication, due to strengthening exercise and high nutrition, I have never had a cold, and until now I am still in good condition, radiant and energetic every day.
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Finally, I have one more sentence to say, that is, we must treat cancer scientifically, listen to the doctor's words, treat it seriously, prolong our lives without limit, and turn the terrible cancer into a chronic disease.
As long as people are on the road, new drugs are always being developed, and we have hope.
Warm reminder: The information involved in this article is intended to convey the cutting-edge medical information and research progress, and does not involve the recommendation of diagnosis and treatment plans.
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Editor in charge: Mijian Kepujun