Making Decisions About Your Ovarian Cancer Treatment Options

Making decisions when faced with options that you never heard of is difficult enough. When trying to do that while scared and confused after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer is mind-boggling. How does one decide?

Risk versus Benefit: A Useful Decision Tool

Consider using a tool based on something called Risk versus Benefit or Risk/Benefit Ratio. This simple approach may help you make informed decisions. What it boils down to is asking yourself the following question. How much benefit am I going to get for any decision I make compared to the risks from the treatment that I will agree to? You might find it helpful to use this tool to frame every major treatment decision you make.

How Do You Use This Tool?

Here's how you do it. Simply list all the positive things you and your doctors can think of regarding a treatment choice in one column called 'benefits'. Right next to that, in another column called 'risks', list all of the negative things or problems you or your doctors anticipate. Then compare the columns.

You might be thinking, what exactly are 'risks' and 'benefits'? Everyone hopes and prays for a "cure" and that is the ultimate benefit; the ultimate prize. However, other benefits might include how fast you can achieve a better quality of life or how long that might last. Another benefit might be to get back on your feet quickly after treatment. On the risk side there may be things like pain, infection, death from treatment, or nerve damage.

Here's an example. If a doctor tells you that a cure is 90-100% likely with a given treatment but that you might risk a moderate amount of permanent nerve damage and a week in the intensive care unit, it might be worth the trouble. If, on the other hand, the doctor tells you a cure is not possible but with the treatment being proposed you might live one or two months longer, at the risk of a severe infection and the possibility of spending the rest of your life in the hospital, you might not be as anxious to undergo that treatment. There is a lot of ground in between these extremes regarding risk vs. benefit, but hopefully you are getting the idea.

There is always a trade-off and you should always consider what positive benefits you might get after the pain and side effects go away. You have to personally decide what you are willing to go through to get to a certain benefit. What is important to you? This requires some careful quiet-time and introspection. No one can do this part for you.

Are the Risks or Benefits Significant?

Don't forget to take into account what risks and benefits are actually significant. In other words, are they only likely to happen 2% of the time or 50% or 75% or more? Are they rare or are they common? For example, some people will not accept even a 1% chance of colostomy, which means wearing a bag on your abdomen to collect stool. Others will do whatever it takes, no matter what. It is important for YOU to decide what matters and what YOU will accept at every point in your treatment plan.

Don't Look Back

Whatever happens, it is very important to look forward and not second guess your decisions. You can't fix what has already happened, but you CAN influence the future. Choose wisely and don't look back. You CAN beat ovarian cancer and there are a lot of surgical and chemotherapy treatment options to consider!