Gary Brown

I write to you from my 37-year old wife’s bedside to thank you for the article in The Sunday Age.

As we entered our fourth year of battling ovarian cancer, we were told treatment was no longer of benefit. What hit me most from your article was the comment that often, in the last two years of ovarian cancer, patients are too sick to help raise the profile. How sadly true this is for my wife.

For three years we worked with the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation to raise the profile of this insidious disease. We have appeared in magazines, spoken at dinners and fund-raisers and appeared on television. But you are right — our activities of late have been limited.

When you consider that an Australian dies of ovarian cancer every 10 hours, you wonder why public funding is being encouraged towards more publicised forms of cancer.

Thankfully many of these other cancers already have a screening programs in place, while ovarian cancer does not. It is a very serious disease with a tragically high mortality rate due to late stage pick up. We need to detect this cancer early — to change the future of the 77 per cent of women diagnosed too late.

The palliative care nurse has just left and we’re hoping that people will read your story and next time they donate, they will consider where their money goes.

GARY BROWN, Carnegie

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