Laura Bennett

Helping other women who aren't so lucky

💜 The start of 2025 was busy; February and March had brought a welcome influx of work, I was running regularly, had even achieved an all-time 5K PB at parkrun, and I was trying to find a sensible way forward for my elderly parents, who were beginning to need more structured care. In short, like many midlife women, I had plenty to juggle and I didn't give it a great deal of thought when my IBS, which I had been suffering from for a number of years, flared up in the early spring. 

💜 After a couple of weeks, I began to realise that I felt more bloated than usual. To cut a long story short, I ended up at the GP out-of-hours clinic at my local hospital on a Sunday afternoon before being referred to A&E. I felt well generally; I wasn't experiencing any real tiredness, pain or nausea, just discomfort and bloating. Later that night, I was given a CT scan and subsequently discovered that my right ovary was the size of a rugby ball and I would need surgery to remove it. What I had thought was IBS turned out to be early-stage ovarian cancer. Two weeks after that, I was told I would need a full abdominal hysterectomy, including the removal of my appendix for good measure. It was a lot to take in!! I had the surgery in late May and, thankfully, it went very smoothly. A month later, post-operative tests revealed that the enlarged ovary had been caused by a borderline tumour – all the abnormal cells had been contained within the ovary itself and hadn't spread to any of the surrounding organs, categorising it as stage 1A. Three months after that night in A&E, after what felt like a nightmarish whirlwind, I was officially cancer-free and told the chance of recurrence was less than 10%. I will be having regular check-ups over the next five years to promptly detect anything suspicious. 

💜 Six weeks after my surgery last summer, following the green light from my surgeon, I (very!) tentatively attempted five minutes of gentle jogging/walking intervals. When I got home, I checked my email to find I'd won a ballot place in this year's London Landmarks Half Marathon. The universe was clearly trying to tell me something! On 12 April, I will be running 13.1 miles through London in support of Target Ovarian Cancer. I have run a couple of half marathons before, so I know (hopefully) what I'm letting myself in for, but as my body adjusts to surgical menopause, this time around the training has been an entirely different matter. 

💜 Around 4,000 women in the UK lose their lives to ovarian cancer every year. Because the symptoms of the disease can be easily overlooked or confused with other issues, many women are not diagnosed until an advanced stage. Raising awareness of symptoms among women and healthcare professionals is a key part of the work done by Target Ovarian Cancer to help improve early detection rates. Put simply, if diagnosed at the earliest stage, nine out of ten women will survive.

💜 Any donations you make will help the charity ensure other women like me get lucky with early detection. Having said that, please don't feel any pressure to donate, comment, share or even react if that doesn't feel comfortable – just pay attention to your health, or that of the women in your lives, familiarise yourself with the symptoms and don't dismiss any concerns.