Facing Down an Insidious Monster

When the words “A Voice from the Past” are handwritten on an envelope addressed to me, I’m hooked. This one came from Skip Pedigo, who reminded me that, years ago, she’d written to implore me to get a better mug shot to run in the newspaper.

It’s all a blur to me, but she says we eventually got a better photo. Thankfully, a subsequent regime discontinued using photos to adorn columns.

That was then and this is now, Pedigo wrote. The subject on her mind today is ovarian cancer. And Pedigo noted that even if my instinct is that “it may not be a guy topic,” that doesn’t stop it from killing people close to guys.

That sent me online to the Physician’s Desk Reference Family Guide to Women’s Health and this sobering assessment: “Of all the cancers to which women are prey, this is the deadliest. Although odds of survival are good when the disease is discovered early, it usually goes undetected until the chance of a cure is slim.”

It’s an insidious little monster, because the symptoms are masked as discomforts that many women experience, including vague stomach discomfort, expanded abdomen, a sense of pressure in the pelvis and abnormal vaginal bleeding. Worse, there are no self-examinations, such as those women can perform on their breasts, nor any early diagnostic tests like mammograms or PAP smears.

While much rarer than breast cancer, ovarian cancer is also harder to detect in its early stages.

Laura Stecher is an ovarian cancer survivor and living proof of the vagaries of fate. In late 2000, a minor fender-bender sent her to an emergency room. A CAT scan revealed what doctors thought was an ovarian cyst and they scheduled surgery for after the holidays. Not until Stecher got out of surgery did she find out she had cancer.

The early detection put her in a high-survival category. Chances drop off markedly as the disease advances.

Stecher, 46, knows how lucky she is. After she finished her chemotherapy, she tracked down the driver who rear-ended her. The woman had been upset about causing the accident, but Stecher told her it probably saved her life. She sent her a small glass angel.

She did something else. With some other women she’d met in a support group, she started the Ovarian Cancer Orange County Alliance and is now its president. The alliance raises money and educates women about the disease.

“We can’t stop anyone from getting it,” Stecher says, “but we believe if women know the symptoms and know what to do, they can be diagnosed earlier.”

As a rule, Stecher says, experts advise women to notify their doctors if symptoms persist for more than three weeks or if they are unusual for them. The website I checked strongly advised that women get annual pelvic exams. Even though the exams by themselves don’t diagnose the cancer, they can point to abnormalities in the ovaries that warrant further tests.

I ask Stecher if she dwells on what might have been. “I don’t know that I’d say I dwell on it,” she says, “but I’m very aware of it. Of the eight of us who started about the same time, five ... have passed away. When I think of that, that really hits home for me.”

The women formed the group, Stecher says, because “none of us really knew anything about the disease before we were diagnosed. That was the common theme among us.”

Any cancer hits its victims and their circle of family and friends with a powerful wallop. In young women, ovarian cancer can mean a complete hysterectomy, with all the potential implications for the women and the men in their lives.

To this day, Stecher says, she spends a lot of time with newly diagnosed women who just want someone to talk to.

My voice from the past was quite correct. Since when is a disease that can kill mothers, sisters, nieces, aunts and friends not a guy topic?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.