A question about Recurrence of Ovarian Cancer

Spooks 23 days ago

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I am really hoping for some advice. I am in remission from ovarian cancer, having had big surgery and 6 rounds of chemotherapy. I am now on PARPs - Niraporib to be precise. The drugs made me very sick, breathess and tired and I had insomnia, dry skin, exhaustion. So after a couple of months my PARP dose was halved by my oncologist. Now the side effects are reduced to poor sleep (but bearable), nausea and vomitting but only in the morning and fatigue which may be a hangover from all the chemo and operation. It is hard to get back to my normal old life and I am very tempted to just give up the PARPs completely.

My question is does anyone know by what percentage the return of cancer is reduced/delayed by the PARPs? I have heard that generally the cancer is 80% likely to come back in the case of ovarian cancer. But is that a huge generalisation and are there any more specifically targetted statistics? Ie by age or by other health factors? Does anyone know where I can get any more information to help me weigh up the odds?

Thank you for reading this and please reply if you know anything...

Spooks

GRANNY59 22 days ago

Hi Spooks welcome to the forum. That sounds like things have been really challenging for you. I don't know enough about your specific query to offer any answers but I feel sure that the lovely people on here will be along soon to help out. If you don't get any answers maybe give the Macmillan Line a call as they may be able to direct you to a source of information. Best Wishes and hope that you manage to get some answers.

gail

SarahH21 22 days ago

Hi Spooks

The best place to ask your questions would be to one of the nurse experts on the community and the link is here-

Ask a Nurse

As members here, we don’t have the relevant knowledge to be trying to answer medical questions so while you may get replies here, they will relate to peoples’ specific and personal experiences about using PARP inhibitors or stopping them. Specific information and statistics are best to be sought from your consultant/surgeon or from the medical experts here on the community via the link I’ve provided.

I hope you can get the answers you’re looking for.

Sarah xx

Cervical Cancer Forum

Macmillan Support Line - 0808 808 00 00, 7 days a week between 8am-8pm

Vixxx 19 days ago

Hi Spooks,

This doesn’t anewer your questions, but my aunt has recently been through a somewhat similar experience; 3 x chemo, debulking surgery, 3 x chemo. She was also put on Niraparib but reacted badly to it, felt awful, her platelets plummeted and she needed an emergency transfusion. She then came off the Niraparib rather than reduce the dose as she felt quality of life was more important. Her cancer responded very well to the chemo so her thinking is that when it comes back (she’s been told it will as she was stage 3b) she’d rather do the chemo route than continue with Niraparib in the meantime. She’s 76 and pretty active, almost back to her normal activities pre-diagnosis. Just wanted to share in case it might help in some way, I’m not sure how similar or not your situation is. Wishing you all the very best!

SarahO 17 days ago

I would speak to your oncologist about the benefits vs side effects. There may be other drugs you can take, another amendment to the dose or drugs to counter the side effects.

for general information regarding survival rates I always go to MacMillan,

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/ovarian-cancer/survival

wishing you the best.

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A question about Recurrence of Ovarian Cancer