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“I’m not afraid,” Nadia Chaudhri recently reassured her subscribers on social networks. “I am surrounded by love and ready for the pain to end.”
The 44-year-old psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Que., Receives palliative care at a local medical center after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer in June 2020 – symptoms her doctors initially confused with a urinary tract infection, she wrote.
The cancer has spread and she will not return from that hospital visit, Chaudhri said on Twitter last week, one of several remarkable messages she sent from her hospital room. She has been recounting her ordeal for months, including the day in May when she told her 6 year old son she was dying.
The neuroscientist is now neutral on her realities: she can no longer get out of bed without help and is prescribed morphine every four hours.
She shares “precious hugs” with his son, who started freshman last month, welcomes family, friends and colleagues to his bedside, reflects on his next life, and paints. One of them drawings Depicts her as “Sun and Moon” – her son and husband – placing her ashes at the base of a serviceberry tree to help her boy visualize his wishes, she wrote.
Chaudhri did not respond when TODAY requested an interview. A spokesperson for Concordia University said she does very few interviews these days, but confirmed she wants to share her story publicly.
Chaudhri recently tweeted details of the “serious story” that led to his terminal diagnosis, in hopes of raising awareness about ovarian cancer:
She started feeling unwell in January 2020 with symptoms such as fatigue, vague abdominal pain, severe lower back pain and a slight increase in the frequency of urinating. She was treated with antibiotics for a UTI and had a pelvic ultrasound, which showed free fluid in her abdomen and the possibility of a ruptured ovarian cyst. When her symptoms returned in February, her doctor ordered her to take another course of antibiotics.
As of March, Chaudhri’s abdomen was swollen and she was in moderate pain, but was unable to see her doctor due to the coronavirus crisis. She felt “incredibly tired” but blamed the realities of the pandemic.
In April, she was put on a third course of antibiotics. In May, a second pelvic ultrasound showed her ovaries were enlarged and had moved towards the middle of her abdomen.
The radiologist suggested endometriosis as the cause, but when Chaudhri shared the report with an uncle gynecologist, he advised her to take a blood test to check for markers of cancer. One of those tests, CA-125, has normal levels of 35 or less – Chaudhri’s result was 925.
She had a laparotomy two weeks later. “They opened my sternum to my pubic bone. Indeed, I had cancer, ”Chaudhri wrote. Surgeons removed the visible tumor during this procedure. It was June 2020, six months after he started to experience symptoms.
She received chemotherapy, which initially worked, but in December her cancer markers started to rise again, indicating that her disease had learned to evade treatment. Chaudhri’s official diagnosis: high-grade serous epithelial cancer, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, she wrote. This led to several intestinal obstructions, the last one preventing Chaudhri from digesting normally. She cannot eat, so she has been taking intravenous fluids for three weeks.
Chaudhri urged other women to know their bodies.
“Watch out for fatigue and changes in stool and urinary tract. Make sure you understand all the words in a medical report. Don’t dismiss your pain or discomfort. Find the expert doctors, ”she wrote.
Stay alert for symptoms
September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. According to the American Cancer Society, only about 20% of ovarian cancers are detected early, mainly because symptoms can be exasperatingly flowing.
Dr Jason Wright, chief of the gynecologic oncology department at Columbia University in New York City, said the warning signs include:
- gastrointestinal disturbances
- nausea
- vomiting
- bloat
- feeling full and unable to finish eating meals
- genitourinary symptoms, such as burning when urinating, changes in frequency of urination, and pelvic pain.
“Often times, women do not see their doctor when they have these types of symptoms for an extended period of time, and so in the majority of women with ovarian cancer, the cancer has already spread outside of their home. ovary at the time of diagnosis, Wright, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance, said TODAY.
It usually spreads inside the abdominal cavity, with nodules developing on the intestines, he noted. They often spread to the lining of the abdomen and produce fluid inside the belly.
There is no systematic screening for ovarian cancer or early detection testing. The CA-125 test Chaudhri eventually received is not ordered during routine exams for women because it is very non-specific, Wright said.
“Any kind of inflammation, any kind of infection, things like fibroids, endometriosis, all of those things can cause CA-125 levels to rise,” he noted.
Regular pelvic exams can help detection because an OB-GYN can feel a lump on an ovary, but often the cancer has already spread at this point, Wright said. Another tool for finding tumors is a transvaginal ultrasound.
More than 21,000 women will be re-diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year and nearly 14,000 will die from it – the fifth deadliest cancer in women, according to the American Cancer Society. Black patients don’t survive as long as white women, with studies suggesting that access to health care and other factors play a role, the National Cancer Institute noted.
Because the warning signs are “very vague,” women need to be their own advocates, Wright advised. If symptoms persist, worsen, or do not improve with other treatments, women should definitely discuss the possibility of ovarian cancer with their doctor, he noted.
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