Christina was in her thirties when she noticed something was wrong: a dull, cramp-like pain seemed to keep attacking the right side of her pelvis.
But the situation of unrest was disconcerting. The agonizing cramps seemed to come from his right ovary, which was removed two years earlier.
Her lack of ovaries was the result of the hysterectomy she had undergone to resolve debilitating period symptoms related to a number of reproductive conditions.
But the lawyer was no stranger to pain, as she had a history of gynecological health problems. So, she ‘just dealt with it.’
But months later, a procedure that lasted almost 16 hours discovered a shock illness: Stage 3 ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer is a rare form of disease that develops in the ovaries, the female organs that produce eggs. It is often called a “silent killer” since symptoms do not occur until the later stages of the disease.
Cristina wrote for The cut: ‘I was in surgery for another 10 hours after they told Mark (her husband) what they had found.
‘That’s how long it took them to get it all out. When I woke up, the surgeon came to talk to me. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.’
The bad news was that Christina had ovarian cancer that had spread to surrounding organs. The good news was that the surgeons believed she had removed everything.
She wrote: ‘I couldn’t believe it. “I started crying, asked about my mom and my husband, and then I fainted again.”
Her doctors discovered that the disease had originated in a fraction of ovarian tissue that surgeons had failed to remove two years earlier.
Christina’s diagnosis came just weeks before a surrogate gave birth to her and her second daughter.
The couple were unable to conceive due to Christina’s long history of reproductive problems, including endometriosis, where the lining of the uterus grows into other pelvic organs.
She also suffered from a condition called adenomyosis, which causes the lining of the uterus to grow into the muscle.
The disease is said to affect one percent of American women and causes heavy bleeding and agonizing pain.
Some research has shown that both conditions can lead to fertility complications and the ability to carry a pregnancy to term.
For Christina and her husband Mark, these reproductive problems had made the search for a family exceptionally difficult.
About 18 months before her devastating diagnosis, she had given birth to a daughter, Sophie, who was born 18 weeks premature and only lived two hours.
Ovarian cancer is a rare form of disease that develops in the ovaries, the organs that produce eggs.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 19,700 women will be diagnosed with cancer and half of patients will not survive more than five years.
Many women have recently spoken publicly about their experience with the disease to warn others about the symptoms that often go unnoticed.
Katie Wylie, 33, from Perth, Australia, noticed tingling in her left leg. Although she was not worried about her health, she still went to see a doctor.
After multiple tests, she was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer, with tumors growing in both ovaries.
And Dr. Amy Fans shared her ovarian cancer story with her 45,000 followers on TikTok.
At only 30 years old, he was experiencing slight weight gain and “incessant heartburn.”
When she finally went to the doctor, she too was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer.
Christina’s illness had spread so much, she wrote, that it had caused intestinal blockages, which contributed to her intense pain.
To eliminate all the disease, doctors had to remove parts of his intestine and bladder.
He needed to receive nutrition through a PICC line, a tube inserted into a vein in the arm, and he had to have an ostomy bag (a plastic bag attached to the outside of the body and connected to the colon that collects urine and stool) that stayed for at least a year.
Due to her treatments, Christina was too ill to make it to Texas to attend the birth of her daughter, Lily.
He wrote for The Cut: “I knew there was no point in going to Dallas. Between the stress of traveling, dealing with the ostomy bag, and the bandages on my incisions, the PICC line, I knew I couldn’t. It was a difficult pill to swallow. It was also difficult for Mark (her husband).
Dr. Amy Fans shared her shocking ovarian cancer story with her 45,000 followers to warn others about the little-known signs.
Kate Wylie, 33, was also diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had to use an ostomy bag. While she was undergoing chemotherapy, her hair began to fall out.
After surgery, Christina underwent several grueling rounds of chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer cells.
But the treatment left her too exhausted to care for her newborn and caused her hair to fall out.
She said: “I wasn’t prepared for how emotional it would be to lose my hair,” she said. ‘I’m one of those girls: hair, face, skin, I like all those things. When my doctor told me I was going to lose my hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows, I lost them again.
‘You have removed my uterus, my ovaries, my tubes and now you are removing my hair and eyelashes? Everything that makes me a woman? What else can you take?
Christina wrote that she was extremely sick in the first months of Lily’s life, and that her mother and her husband did much of the work.
She said: ‘The first year of his life I felt super guilty. She couldn’t be a fun mom because she was sick and I was worried that she wouldn’t be happy. Looking back, I know she was happy.”
Finally, a year after surgery, her ostomy bag was removed and she “started to feel normal again.”
Christina added: “It was like night and day. By then, I also finished chemotherapy and started to feel normal again. That really changed things and helped me feel comfortable in my body again.
‘Lily and I became closer and closer. The first time she said “mom,” he was taking her on our first overnight trip together to see a friend of mine. She was changing her diaper and she looked at me and said, “Mommy!” I grabbed my phone to record it. “That was a great bonding moment.”
However, in February 2024, Christina’s cancer returned.
She said: “I wasn’t hot so I knew something was up.” Lily, now two, did too. In fact, one day she said, “Mommy is sick.” Literally out of nowhere. It hurt me to hear her say that.
Shortly after, Christina started chemotherapy again. Some days she feels better than others, but she “has accepted that I’m going to have problems with this for life.”
And she doesn’t like to broach the topic of prognosis with her doctor: “I guess I just accepted it: that women live with it and that I’m otherwise healthy and I should focus on that.”
‘I don’t feel like I’m going to die anytime soon. I can’t live that way, you know? There are so many things I want to do… and there are so many things I want to show Lily.
‘Sometimes I don’t know how Mark and I survived all this. Things were very, very dark.
‘I think Lily has helped us a lot to recover from the loss of our first child.
‘She is the light of our lives. And she makes me be proactive about my own health, because I want to be here for her as long as possible. We made it a reality and we owe it to her.”
