In 2011, Erynn Williamson booked an appointment to see a doctor after experiencing severe menstrual bleeding, lower back pain and unexplained bloating. When the doctor pushed down on her lower abdomen, he said he felt a baby's head. He told her she was pregnant, and he booked her for an ultrasound.
Doctors found something very different when they performed the medical test.
"It was a tumour the size of a grapefruit that was encompassing my entire left ovary," Williamson said. "I had gone home to my one-year spouse to tell him I thought we might be pregnant ... but it wasn't a baby."
Instead of planning for a family at the age of 26, Williamson was diagnosed with Stage 1C ovarian cancer. Now almost 10 years in remission, the St. Albert resident is telling her story with the hope of raising awareness about ovarian cancer and the importance of advocating for your own health.
According to Ovarian Cancer Canada, ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer for women, often referred to as a "silent killer" because symptoms are usually mistaken for another condition. The cancer mainly develops in older women, but the risk increases if there's a family history of breast cancer or ovarian cancer.
Symptoms are usually left unchecked until it's too late. In Alberta alone, 70 per cent of the 240 women diagnosed died from ovarian cancer last year. Despite this, there is no reliable screening test for ovarian cancer. Pap smears are only used to screen for cervical cancer.
"I didn't have the telltale symptoms that would lead a woman to go and get checked. I had a heavy period – no one's going to think anything of it. There's adenomyosis and endometreosis, and that's what it usually would be chalked up to. But it wasn't that," Williamson said.
"Be your own advocate. Don't give up. You know your body better than anyone else. To sit there and have a doctor say, 'It could be this, but don't worry about it' ... It's my body, it's my life. I need to know what's going on, and it was a struggle to get the information that I needed."
A new life
After the ultrasound, Williamson was sent to get a blood test called the CA 125, which screens for how many cancer cells are in the body. The doctor had ruptured the 25-centimetre wide tumour during the pelvic exam, releasing cancer cells throughout Williamson's body. She said she had to push doctors to give her access to her medical file.
"I believe normal ranges under 30 (cancer cells). My numbers were 9,000."
She went in for a seven-hour emergency surgery to completely remove her left ovary three days later. On the day she got home from the hospital, doctors called to tell her it was ovarian cancer.
"I was advised to make a living will at 26. That was very hard to grasp. Then I was also told that I would never be able to have children," she said. "I went from being pregnant to starting chemotherapy within the span of three weeks."
On Oct. 31, she started 21-day cycles of chemotherapy treatment. She was surrounded by others who were going through chemotherapy as well. "It seemed that there was always someone there at each of my four cycles."
But that knowledge, however comforting, was also "heartbreaking" to see others suffer, she said. To this day, she remembers an older woman who came to comfort her during her first day of treatment. One of her friends was also diagnosed with ovarian cancer around the same time Williamson was going through chemotherapy treatment. Unfortunately, her friend's diagnosis had progressed to Stage 3 by the time it was caught. She did not survive.
"I live every day for her and for the woman who held my hand in that room," she said.
After completing four cycles of chemotherapy, Williamson was declared cancer free on Jan. 24, 2012. She said she felt immense relief, and disbelief that she had beaten it.
"It was like being given a completely new life," she said. "I stopped taking things for granted. Waking up in the morning and having a coffee was new. I'm sitting here, and I'm enjoying every single moment that I have."
Miracle children
Doctors told Williamson she would not have children given the effects of chemotherapy. Freezing her eggs would have cost upwards of $10,000, and adoption seemed to be the only option. But Williamson said she wasn't willing to take 'no' for an answer.
"We actively tried for a year even with the guise of knowing that it's not going to happen. Three days after having my surgery, I actually got my menstrual cycle again, which they were not expecting at all," she said.
One day, Williamson started experiencing pregnancy-like symptoms. She took 13 pregnancy tests, all of them positive. A doctor's appointment confirmed she was pregnant with her first child.
"He was born on Nov. 1, two years after I started chemo to the day," she said of her now 7-year-old son, Benjamin. "He is a culmination of every emotion I've ever felt going through the entire experience. He is laughter and light and love."
Two years later, Williamson had gotten pregnant again with her second son, Hunter, who is becoming quite the inquisitive chatterbox, she said. She describes giving birth after ovarian cancer as nothing short of a miracle, a chance at a second life.
Three years ago, Williamson had a complete hysterectomy to reduce the risk of the cancer returning. Now she said she wants her story to be an example to other women to listen to their bodies, no matter what.
"You know your body better than anyone else. If you're not feeling right, don't give up. Keep asking questions. Book more appointments, seek second opinions, third opinions, 15 opinions. It doesn't matter. You know your body," she said. "I knew something wasn't right, and I wasn't about to let the doctor let me go home. And I'm so thankful that I did push forward, and I didn't give up at the first answer, because I might not be here today."
