Turn the Towns Teal campaign highlights ‘silent’ ovarian cancer

DANIEL CLIFTON • PICAYUNE EDITOR

MARBLE FALLS — All Angela Kleb knew was that her stomach bothered her. She noticed her navel had extended a bit, but it didn’t really worry her.

After all, the Marble Falls resident was a young and seemingly healthy 21-year-old animal science student at Texas A&M University with aims of veterinarian school. Besides stomach issues, something with which she had dealt for years, Angela wasn’t aware of any other health problems.

But on March 10, as a clinic technician looked over an ultrasound image, Angela began to have a few concerns.

“The technician really couldn’t tell me anything, but she said if she were me, I should call my doctor that afternoon or, at the latest, the next morning,” she said. “I still thought it was probably a hernia. Nothing really too bad.”

Two days later, her gynecologist went over the ultrasound with Angela and a new reality set in for the young woman.

A tumor had wrapped itself throughout most of Angela’s abdomen and pelvic area. The doctor couldn’t really find where the mass began or ended. And though the doctor thoroughly searched the ultrasound, she couldn’t find Angela’s right ovary.

The diagnosis was startling: ovarian cancer.

While the disease effects about 1 in 72 women, it unfortunately goes undetected many times.

Angela said looking back after the diagnosis, the signs were there but often were explained away by other things.

“I had symptoms of ovarian cancer, but I never knew they were signs of the disease,” she said. “At 13, I started having digestive issues but thought it was irritable bowel syndrome.”

She chalked up other signs of the disease to her weight or thyroid problem.

With her daughter’s diagnosis, Christina Kleb began researching ovarian cancer. She and Angela also wanted to increase awareness of the disease and its symptoms. Christina said ovarian cancer is called “the silent disease” because women don’t know the signs or the disease reveals itself when it’s reached stage 3 or 4.

But if caught early, the survival rate is about 93 percent.

September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month with its national awareness campaign of Turn the Towns Teal.

The program asks businesses, churches, towns and organizations to display teal-colored ribbons to raise awareness about ovarian cancer and the signs.

Angela said she caught her disease almost by chance. But she noted there is an effort growing among physicians to change their procedures when it comes to women complaining of chronic stomach issues and other symptoms.

“Unfortunately, there’s no real tool to use that diagnosis it,” she said.

On March 14, surgeons removed a huge mass from Angela’s stomach. Within a couple of weeks, she was back in class at Texas A&M, surprising her classmates with her quick turnaround.

Angela copes with the problem with plenty of optimism.

“Even though the mass was so large, it was a slow-growing one, so I was only in Stage 1A,” she said. “I never thought I was going to die.”

She even joked with her classmates that it was something else she could put on her vet school application.

Her mother, however, would wake some nights after a recurring nightmare in which she saw her daughter dead.

“I wasn’t so sure at first,” Christina said about her daughter’s future. “But she’s strong. And she’s tough. This was caught early enough, so she can beat it.”

Angela underwent another surgery in May to make sure remnants of the mass weren’t hanging on. She’ll go to follow-ups every three months for the next five years and then at least once a year after that.

One of the things Christina and Angela want to share is that if caught early enough, ovarian cancer is beatable.

“But you have to know what the symptoms are,” Angela said. “It just whispers at you. Some things you really don’t think about. It’s scary how subtle the symptoms are.”

Go to www.turnthetownsteal.org for more information on ovarian cancer.

daniel@thepicayune.com