Health

Patient Pursues Cancer Cure

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 1, 1998 / 6:10 PM EDT / CBS

Her office is the corner office at Harper's Bazaar, and she is Liz Tilberis, Editor in chief.

But Tilberis has more on her agenda than hem lines and heel size. She is determined to find a cure for the cancer that almost killed her. CBS News Correspondent Paula Zahn has the interview.

"I didn't know at 45 there was such a thing as ovarian cancer," says Tilberis. "And I come from a medical family. Nobody understands it."

"Imagine you've had menopause, and you feel a little depressed," she says. "And you feel your stomach's a little bloated but it could've been something you ate, or it could be indigestion. Those are the signals of ovarian cancer and nobody is aware of it."

Those symptoms sent Liz for a check up. 10 days later, she had surgery.

"If you have a white wall and you spray a red paint brush on it, that's what ovarian cancer looks like in the stomach. Not in those color terms, but you have to get out every little bit of the spray," she says.

Although cancer researchers are still unsure of any link to fertility drugs, Tilberis believes her unsuccessful use of these drugs may be one cause of her ovarian cancer.

" I think it played quite a big role, because what we've now discovered is that ovulation itself is the cause of ovarian cancer," Tilberis explains. "The more you ovulate in your life the more likely you are to get ovarian cancer. If you superovulate yourself with these drugs, it's bound to lead to problems later on."

A year after her surgery, the cancer returned. Tilberis underwent an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant but for the past two years, she has controlled her cancer with a special chemo-cocktail.

"They're very tolerable. I mean, I can go back to work with them. I don't have to lie in bed or anything. And if I have to have it once a year and every so often, I'll do it. And that s how I live with it."

Testing techniques for ovarian cancer that are available today are inadequate for catching it early in many patients. So in Tilberis' role as head of the ovarian cancer research fund, her short-term goal is a reliable test for early stage ovarian cancer. In the long term, she wants a cure for the thousands that are diagnosed every year.