Letter to the Editor: From here to there...

To the Editor:
Just over seven weeks ago I told my husband if I didn’t come home from Urgent Care, I would be at the bottom of Mother River.
Trust me, I am not bitter about the fact every time I saw a medical professional they told me my tests were fine. Despite the fact I always mentioned having a cystic ovary removed on my right side as a young woman, the pain I experienced on my left side was consistently attributed to minor digestive concerns.
Please take note, sisters: ultrasounds, pap-smears, blood tests and x-rays do not indicate the presence of ovarian cancer. Frequent complaints about back pain and bowel irregularities will also fail to yield a timely diagnosis. In my case only a CT skeptically ordered by an Urgent Care doctor, on what I thought was the last day of my life, confirmed abdominal irregularities consistent with ovarian cancer.
I have decided to use any energy that I may have wasted on bitterness to tell women and the men that love them this doesn’t need to happen. It didn’t have to happen to me, yet now it is part of my journey.
Please folks, do whatever you can to avoid taking this trip. Be well.

Ann Althoff Gallagher
a.k.a “Catfish Annie”
Waukon