Ovarian Cancer Possible After Hysterectomy | HealthInfi

Did you know it’s possible to get ovarian cancer even after you’ve had a hysterectomy? I learned the hard way. My sister, who had a hysterectomy about 10 years ago, just received a diagnosis for a type of ovarian cancer. If you have a partial hysterectomy, which removes your uterus, or a total hysterectomy, which removes your uterus and cervix, your ovaries remain intact and you can still develop ovarian cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic.

If, like my sister, you have a total hysterectomy with salpingo-oophorectomy, in which your cervix, uterus and both ovaries and fallopian tubes are removed, ovarian cancer is less likely but still can occur.

The details are confusing surgeons talk fast and don’t like to slow down for patient explanations but my sister’s surgeon says she has primary serous carcinoma, which looks and acts much like ovarian cancer and likely originated from ovarian cells.

As he explained it, when a woman undergoes a hysterectomy and has her ovaries removed, some ovarian tissue may be left behind. Ovaries are not well-formed organs like our liver or kidneys. They are soft tissues that can (and do) come apart when you try to remove them.

When pieces are left behind, some cancerous or precancerous cells may grow from that tissue. In some women, the ovarian cells migrated to the peritoneal area during menstrual cycles before the ovaries were removed and became cancerous later on. It’s also difficult to tell whether the cancer is coming from ovarian or peritoneum cells and it doesn’t much matter. It is treated the same.

My sister’s cancer appeared suddenly, without warning. Two weeks ago, she started having severe abdominal pains. At first she thought it was a stomach virus or food poisoning. But, after two days of worsening symptoms, her internist sent her to the emergency room. The ER doctor wanted to send her home with a stool softener, but my sister, being the strong-willed woman that she is, refused to leave.

When a doctor examined her the next morning, he found a mass on her colon and decided to do an emergency colonoscopy. But, the mass was pressing down so hard on her colon that he couldn’t do a colonoscopy. The procedure suddenly became emergency removal of her entire colon because the mass had pinched off the tissue and killed it.

Once the surgeon got inside her abdominal cavity, he discovered cancer cells throughout her abdomen. As he described them, they were sticky blobs of cells that were gluing her organs together. He removed what he could in what was becoming a lengthy and complex emergency surgery. He was not sure she’d pull through the surgery, but, thankfully, she did. We’re still getting answers and are a long way from winning the battle against cancer. But we’re extremely glad that she’s lived to fight it. 

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