CLINICAL CARE: PATIENT

Ovarian cancer doesn't stop 29-year-old from living for the moment

By Mary Lemma

Elizabeth Corless. Diagnosis: Ovarian Cancer. Physician:
Monique Spillman, MD, PhD

It’s fitting—and sweetly ironic—that Elizabeth Corless has made a career helping others. In college in North Carolina she majored in human services; she now helps young single mothers set new direction in their lives. Elizabeth, who is 29, was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer in June 2008. She cried then, but laughs now as she describes her attitude.

“I’m a walking cliché! I live for the moment. I don’t take things for granted. I’m doing things I want to do, not that I have to do.”

One of the things she wants to do is work, which she does at Hope House of Colorado. She’s the learning lab GED coordinator, teaching prep courses in math, reading and social science, and day-to-day life skills such as how to balance a checkbook.

“I love the girls. They don’t have to be there,” she said. “They’re just single moms working really hard to make something of  themselves.”

Elizabeth always wanted to teach, “but not in a mainstream school.” Before her diagnosis, Elizabeth went to the ER near her home, “looking five months pregnant.” She was told it was probably irritable bowel syndrome, so she tried to remedy herself by adjusting her diet. When that didn’t help, she underwent a CT scan and an ultrasound, and was referred to the University of Colorado Cancer Center, where she met Dr. Monique Spillman, who diagnosed and treated her.

“She was amazing,” Elizabeth recalled. “When she told me I had cancer, she sat on my bed and held my hand. She was always honest but positive. She said, ‘I treat all my patients as individuals, not as research experiments.’ She knows what she’s doing.”

Elizabeth underwent surgery and withstood many grueling rounds of chemotherapy. Five recent clinical trials have showed that ovarian cancer patients have better outcomes with “belly wash” chemotherapy, also known as interperitoneal chemotherapy. Instead of injecting chemotherapy into Elizabeth’s bloodstream, Spillman injected a mixture of drugs and saline through a port into her abdominal cavity.

“The idea is that the medicine gets to all the nooks and crannies where microscopic cancer cells may be hiding,” Spillman said.

Dr. Spillman and Elizabeth also made the decision to leave her uterus behind—an unusual move, but one that will allow the young woman to carry a child conceived using donor eggs in the future.

“We usually see advanced ovarian cancer in post-menopausal women, so fertility isn’t an issue for them,” Spillman said. “Because Elizabeth is so young, we wanted to do everything we could to keep pregnancy in her future. And that meant saving her uterus.”

After sporting a collection of various bandanas, Elizabeth is enjoying remission, curly hair and a return to activity.

“For some people exercise is a chore, but it’s something I really enjoy,” she said. Her slew of outdoor activities includes running, hiking, which she does with her beloved German Shepherd, Ruby, and snowshoeing— “anything outside.”

She feels “extremely blessed” with parents who are still married. Her brother, whom she describes as “an amazing man” and one of her best friends, and sister-in-law shaved their heads when she was undergoing treatment. “Even though the treatment was unbearable,” she said, ”Dr. Spillman saved my life.”

While family, friends and physical activity sustain Elizabeth’s positive outlook, so too, she said, does spirituality. “I pray a lot, I go to church. I went a lot when I was young, and it recently became a way of life for me. God and being positive are important in my recovery.”