Drescher Transforms Recovery Into Cancer Fight
Triumph over uterine cancer used to promote early diagnosis
May 21, 2009
As the star of television's The Nanny, Drescher was thought of as everyone's caregiver who wouldn't ever become seriously ill herself. But in the final year of her six-season CBS series, she began to experience fainting between periods, extreme pain in her left leg, a change in her stool, and hardening of her breasts. Before she was correctly diagnosed, Drescher received hormone replacement therapies for a benign perimenopausal condition she didn't have.
In June 2000, she was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after doctors discovered she had uterine cancer. Drescher had to undergo an immediate radical hysterectomy. “Had she been diagnosed earlier the problem would have been identified when it was a pre-cancer, her treatment would have been less invasive, and there would have been no risk of recurrence.” Dr. Jennifer Gunter, an obstetrician/gynecologist, wrote in “Fran Drescher and the cure for cancer,” in the May 4, 2009 San Francisco Sexual Health Examiner.
Book and Advocacy Group, Cancer Schmancer
Drescher, 51, first wrote about what happened in a book entitled Cancer Schmancer in 2003. That is now also the name of her two-year-old Reston, Virginia-based non-profit organization, which promotes women's health issues and seeks more money for clinical research. Its overall objective is the earliest possible diagnosis of women’s cancers. In 2008, she received a U.S. State Department appointment as a Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women’s Health Issues.
“Through education, prevention, and policy change, we are going to re-plant the landscape of heath in this country so the daughters and sons of tomorrow will live in a world where nobody, ever, would be diagnosed with a cancer beyond stage one,” Drescher said in a recent luncheon speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
She implored her audience to recognize early warning signs and know what tests are available because doctors face insurance company pressure to provide the least expensive route of diagnostic testing. “Very often, cancers, at their earliest and most curable stages, mimic far more benign illnesses like mine,” she told the Press Club. “But the woman with ovarian cancer, which is much more aggressive than uterine cancer, is often misdiagnosed for irritable bowel syndrome.”
Coretta Scott King’s Cancer
At Coretta Scott King’s funeral in 2006, speakers railed about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, but no one referred to King’s death resulting from late stage ovarian cancer, Drescher said.
All women should be offered the transvaginal ultrasound in the basic gynecological exam, not simply those who are pregnant, she noted. It’s necessary to look at more than the cervix in the PAP test, and also to examine the uterus and ovaries. “If it’s something resting inside your uterus, you can get an endometrial biopsy, which, again, is an in-office test. You can take a CA-125 blood test which can help indicate whether or not there’s an ovarian cancer.”
Weight Affecting Testing of Women
That test is not offered because of the 25% chance of a false positive, Drescher added, making insurance companies reluctant about that ratio and due to the need to take another test. Extra weight and body fat as well can affect how some women are examined. In addition, she urges men to have a transrectal ultrasound, not simply rely on a PSA blood test to search for prostate cancer.
Drescher’s group wants to know if risks could exist elsewhere. Among them are men wearing a Blackberry on their belts in terms of testicular or prostate cancer, whether flying in the daytime at 36,000 feet exposes passengers to radiation risks, and if diet soda contributes to pancreatic cancer.
Information on the Internet will tend not to advise against certain actions if some businesses will be hurt, she said. People should check their homes for unhealthy products and chemicals, in her view, and refrain from the continual use of GPS monitors in their cars if they already know where they are going. Drescher’s message, in short, is to challenge doctors more and ask enough questions.
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