Canterbury woman works to raise awareness about ovarian cancer

To accomplish a simple goal, to tell other women that someone with ovarian cancer is still alive, Madonna Kilcollum would only have to show her face.

But Kilcollum is determined to do much more than that.

And she's tough enough to do it. So tough that, while in pain six years ago, she tried to put off the fateful trip to the emergency room by playing a game of Scrabble with her husband. Kilcollum jokes, "I don't get sick, I get cancer."

The Canterbury resident, who has already dedicated her time to fellow survivors at Women & Infants in Providence, is now resurrecting the Connecticut chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition.

"I had never met a single person with ovarian cancer," she said, before her diagnosis.

She was just 45, her four children grown, and had just received a clean bill of health from her doctor when she started to feel ill. She was told she'd have to wait a month to schedule an ultrasound.

She suddenly looked like she was pregnant, though she knew she wasn't. When she finally agreed to go to the ER at The William W. Backus Hospital, she told them, "I'm a really tough stick, but I don't want to leave until I know what's wrong with me."

She was given a CA-125 blood test for ovarian cancer, but it was inconclusive. Finally, after a CT scan, she learned about a "suspicious mass."

Kilcollum joked with the young OB-GYN, referring to the con artist in the movie "Catch Me If You Can."

"Are you sure you're old enough to be a doctor?" she asked.

A week later, she had surgery to remove a 17-centimeter tumor, which she dubbed "Elvira." Doctors took her ovaries, Cruella and Deville, and her uterus, Ursula, putting her back together with 34 staples.

"If you're gonna do it, kick it up," she explains: "If you can't laugh, you're just going to cry."

Through the chemotherapy, she quit running a day care from her home, and her husband, an insurance agent, took on a second job cleaning banks to pay the bills.

Now, working at the Dress Barn in Norwich while getting the state chapter off the ground, Kilcollum is working to make people aware of the disease, the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women ages 35 to 74.

In 2009, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be 21,550 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed, and 14,600 women will die of the disease.

If treated early, as in Kilcollum's case, when the cancer is confined to the ovary, the five-year survival rate is more than 90 percent. But because of the cancer's non-specific symptoms, only 19 percent of all cases are found at that stage.

If it's caught at stage III or higher, the survival rate can be as low as 29 percent.

Awareness, Kilcollum said, is "so crucial to our survival."

She feels it's a constant battle to get the word out amid the more common cancers, especially breast cancer. Kilcollum's mother is a breast cancer survivor, but she says, "I'm sick and tired of pink." She has lobbied for more teal, representing ovarian cancer, and colors representing other types of cancer in the women's oncology building where her doctor is.

"You just don't feel validated," she said.

She brings a friend, Pat, who is on her third recurrence, to treatments in Providence. Another patient, Margaret, lived with Kilcollum and her husband so Kilcollum could care for her during her last weeks until she died.

Margaret was 60 years old and lived for just five months after her diagnosis. Kilcollum recalls crawling into bed with her and being able to answer her question: "Did you ever feel this way when you thought you were dying?"

And though Kilcollum has lost six friends in the past year, she says, "I feel very blessed and privileged to be a part of specific women's lives."

She says the disease is not really as silent at people think, and tells women, "Know your body and the symptoms. If your doctor is not listening to you, find one that will."

www.ovarian.org

k.warchut@theday.com