Kathleen Fallon

October 2022

Update to In Her Own Words dated March 2016. Read 2016’s here.

I wrote my story for “In Her Words” in 2016, after having survived stage IIIC ovarian cancer for six years.  When I wrote my story, I was optimistic, but I had no idea if I would be around in 2022 to write an update.  Yet here I am, 12 years out from my original diagnosis, six recurrences later.  I’m tired and worn out from many more treatments and surgeries, and at the same time, energized and full of gratefulness. If I were to say anything about these 12 years of dealing with cancer, it would be that my friends, my partner, and the medical people I’ve been lucky enough to work with are the most powerful medicine.  I feel like I have the best ‘board of directors’ on the planet.  Besides their emotional support, they have helped me to be proactive in my treatment and understand the choices that I am making in fighting the cancer.

When I first learned I had cancer, I thought that someone made a big mistake. I did not believe the diagnosis. That didn’t happen until after that initial surgery when the team staged the tumors, and even then, part of me didn’t believe that there was cancer inside of me. I vowed from the beginning to not let cancer define my life, but to live my best life all the time. The thing is that while cancer hasn’t defined ME, it certainly has laid some parameters around how I have been able to spend my time over these years. I am very lucky that my cancer has become a chronic condition. Guess it’s all relative, isn’t it.  But a chronic condition rather than an immediate death sentence is a good option. I’ve found that keeping cancer at bay has been like having a regular job with irregular hours. I guess it’s like having a job where you’re ‘on call.’ You never know when you’ll get that ‘call’, when the current treatment will stop working and you need to try something new. So, in order to live my best life, I’ve had to make friends with being flexible…which is a good lesson in this world. I do the things that I love doing and fit them around treatments and energy fluctuations.

Because of the advice from my brilliant “board of directors,’ in 2014 I got into a clinical trial for Olaparib when I had my first recurrence. They suggested that I have genetic testing, and we discovered that I was BRCA positive, which made me eligible for a trial designed specifically for my genetic mutation. So here I am, a person who not only is happy about having a chronic condition, now I’m happy about having a mutation! But I was happy about it because this treatment was lined up specifically for BRCA positive people with ovarian cancer. For one year, my partner and I flew to Boston for treatment. Then another branch of the trial opened in Los Angeles, and we flew down there. I hate to brag, but I was kind of their poster child for the drug. It worked so well that they fast-tracked the drug, and now it is a standard of care drug for women with BRCA positive ovarian cancer. I believe that being on this trial for my first recurrence rather than following the standard care protocol, turned my health life around. The trial drug appealed to me because of the limited side effects and non-invasive protocol involved—no infusions, just daily capsules. I was able to be in remission with this drug for 2 years. If you (or a friend of yours) is diagnosed with cancer, I so urge you to talk with your oncologist about getting genetic testing and tumor testing to learn what different agents will work for you.

Each of our cancer diagnosis lead us down different paths. I think what is most important is to find the joys in every day and grab on to them. Hold onto the moments that make our lives truly precious.