Interview OV20  

Interview OV20

Age at Interview: 41
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 38
Background: Mother, married, one child.

Brief outline:Ovarian cancer diagnosed in 2000 following abdominal pain and bloating, painful sex and bleeding afterwards. Treated by surgical removal of tumour, chemotherapy, then removal of ovaries and womb and more chemotherapy. Further surgery to repair a hernia.


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Felt the baldness, weight gain, scars and hernia after her treatment combined to form a 'comedy body'.

 



So on top of being bald, overweight, oh at my worst I was fifteen stone so I was charming, and it's taken forever to lose any weight since. I also had this enormous bulge. I have intestines that had just escaped through the muscle wall, so it wasn't particularly attractive and I wasn't either. 

As far as the surgery goes, I mean that's such a big issue, that's quite a difficult issue. I looked grimly fiendish with my clothes off, and the fact that, you know, I was left with this hernia for such a long time that got bigger and bigger, that this comedy steroid body looked even more bizarre, you know, not being able to wear any clothes. And I thought “blow me I'm not going to go and buy enormous clothes”, you know, because somewhere in the back of your mind, you know, “I'm going to have an operation, I'm going to look at lot thinner”. Well the reality is not as such, you know, because you've got the effects of the steroids and also, you know, it's a long time before your body recovers from the surgery, to get back to a more normal size. I mean I'm still a very big size but that's something I'm working on. 

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