Soon after Morgan Bellock turned 34, she decided to freeze her eggs. She wasn’t sure if she would be having children soon, and she thought it would be important to save them. As she went through the process, doctors discovered something surprising — Bellock had ovarian cancer.
“It was a big shock to me,” Bellock, now 40, from the Chicago area, tells TODAY.com. “I didn’t know there was a giant ovarian cyst just sitting on one of my ovaries.”
Egg freezing leads to a surprise
At the time Bellock pursued freezing her eggs in 2017, she was in a relationship with someone who took a job across the country, and she knew if they were to start a family, it wouldn’t be any time soon.
“I thought to myself, if this is my person, our timeline is going to be significantly pushed back. And for me, it just felt better looking into freezing my eggs,” she says. “I was worried that two or three years would pass.” Some of her friends and family felt wary about Bellock pursuing fertility preservation, though.
“I remember being met with a lot of skepticism,” she says. “I had a feeling in my gut, and ultimately I’m glad I did, and I feel like everyone questioning my position felt really bad about it.”
As part of the egg-freezing process, Bellock needed to undergo an ultrasound. During the scan, the doctor noticed she had a mass on her ovary. At first, doctors thought she had a simple ovarian cyst, which are fairly common, often associated with the menstrual cycle and normally harmless. An article in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine estimates as many as 20% of women will get one.
Testing, however, revealed that Bellock’s cyst was complex, meaning it was filled with blood or some solid material. Her doctors worried that if she began taking the medication to stimulate her ovaries in order to freeze her eggs, it could cause the cyst to grow or rupture, so he recommended surgery.
“The story became crazy and weird,” she says. “When they did the surgery, they removed the cyst. But then they also tested something that was hiding behind it, which was the cancerous tumor that none of the scans had shown.”
While the doctors had been worried about the cyst, they had no idea it covered “a very aggressive form of cancer," Bellock recalls. Luckily, doctors found it early. It was a stage 1 teratoma, a type of tumor "often made up of several different types of tissue, such as hair, muscle and bone,” according to the National Cancer Institute.
“It was good news in some ways that we had caught it so soon, and we could treat it,” Bellock says.
Doctors told her that if the cancer had not been found accidentally, she might not have experienced any symptoms for years. By that time, her cancer would have been advanced.
“There’s a very real way that I could have not been here today, which is wild to think about,” she says. “I didn’t have any symptoms.”
Doctors agreed that her ovary needed to be removed to treat the cancer. After surgery, she needed to recover before returning to egg freezing. It wasn’t until 2018, that doctors said she could begin again. By that point, she had broken up with her boyfriend, so she was pursuing it alone.
“I only had one ovary, so as you can imagine, my desire to do it increased even more,” Bellock says. “It also felt even more disheartening, in terms of what the results were going to be.”
She underwent several cycles to harvest eggs, ending up with 10.
“I stopped after a couple of cycles because I have had so many surgeries, so many drugs, and my body was done,” she says. “The mental state I was in was very different than when I thought I was going to be doing it.”
Ovarian cancer
In Bellock's case, preserving her fertility helped doctors find her ovarian cancer early, which is rare for this type of cancer.
“This was what you call an incidental finding, and it saved her life,” Dr. Natalie Azar, NBC News medical contributor, said in a Sept. 28 segment on TODAY. She added that there are currently no screening recommendations for women at average risk of ovarian cancer, even though this type of cancer is usually aggressive when it reaches later stages.
“You hear a story like this as a woman and as a medical provider, (and) you say, 'How is it possible that in this day and age we don’t have a reliable screening test?'” Azar said.
Of all gynecological cancers, ovarian causes the most deaths and is the second most common type, Dr. Zaid Al-Wahab, a gynecological oncologist at Corewell Hospital, in Royal Oak, Michigan, who did not treat Bellock, previously told TODAY.com.
That’s because, in about 80% of the cases, most ovarian cancers are not found until stage 3 or 4, he noted. Bellock, like most people with early-stage ovarian cancer, had no symptoms.
“Even when it’s stage 3 or 4, symptoms are very vague,” Al-Wahab said.
Ovarian cancer symptoms include:
- Bloating
- Change in bowel habits
- Back pain
The symptoms “are very generic,” Azar said. “So if you’re experiencing some of these symptoms, you don’t have to rush to the alarm button and say, ‘Oh my God (ovarian cancer) is what it is. But if you’re having these symptoms and they’re persistent and there’s not another explanation for them, you absolutely need to start researching and making sure it’s nothing serious.”
Many people think of ovarian cancer as occurring in older women, but that’s not always the case.
“It can happen in much younger women so more awareness of ovarian cancer (is needed),” Al-Wahab said.
Life as a survivor
For the first year following her cancer diagnosis, Bellock needed to undergo an ultrasound every three months because that period has the highest chance of the cancer recurring. Gradually, the number of ultrasounds she needed reduced. It’s been five years, so she’s considered in remission and doesn’t need additional surveillance.
“You feel like you’re never going to get (into remission),” she says. “I struggle a lot with survivorship. … There are many other women that I feel like are on the other side that have gone through way worse and way more.”
She’s became involved in The Breasties, a group for young people who had breast and gynecological cancers. That’s helped her grapple with her diagnosis and surviving cancer.
“It’s a nationwide organization of young women that are just very open and honest with the struggles and triumphs involved in this whole, crazy world ” she says. “That’s been such a blessing in terms of finding community and people who can really understand all the feelings that go on with cancer.”
She met someone new, and in 2021 they got married. They have pursued IVF to start a family, but it’s been “challenging.” Bellock says she has no regrets about freezing her eggs.
“I knew I had to go in and pursue freezing my eggs, and ultimately it led me down this path, which I’m super grateful for,” she says. “It’s just a really wild way of getting that diagnosis.”
She encourages others to speak up if they notice anything wrong with their body.
“Trust your gut and advocate for yourself,” she says.