38002.com
theview
theview
Page 14
September 2014
OVARIAN CANCER AWARENESS MONTH
How to Fight Like a Princess
By Terry Louderback
A week before her 21st birthday
on August 21, 2012, Lakeland
resident Kelsey Fortner learned that
she had a tumor on her right ovary
the size of a baseball.
“I got the best birthday present
ever,” Fortner said. “A tumor.”
She had had no idea, no
suspicion at all. Fortner had always
had irregular periods and she had
gone to her appointment that day by
herself, expecting that the doctor
would put her back on hormones to
regulate her cycle. A few months
before in March, she had undergone
a CT scan because of an ovarian
cyst and there had been no evidence
of a growth.
Fortner’s first question was
whether she would be able to have
kids. And her next concern was
being able to continue her studies at
the University of Memphis.
She had just come back from an
internship at Walt Disney World in
Florida, and wanted to stay on track
to finish her degree in Child
Development.
Although her gynecologist
suspected that the tumor would
most likely be a benign dermoid
tumor, she recommended that
Fortner see a gynecological
oncologist, Dr. Todd Tillmanns at
the West Clinic. Tillmanns would
be able to perform the surgery to
remove Fortner’s tumor robotically
and her recovery would only be 3-4
days, rather than six weeks.
So a week after she turned 21, on
Friday August 28, 2012, Fortner had
surgery at Baptist Women’s
Hospital to remove her the eggplantsized growth.
On the next Tuesday, she was
back in class.
On September 11, Fortner went
back to the West Clinic for a postsurgical check up. She learned that
although preliminary testing
indicated that the tumor was benign,
Fortner turned out to be in the 5% of
the population that had a false
negative. Tillmanns told her that she
had dysgerminoma. And at age 21,
Fortner was