Obituary of Diana Lynn Austin

Austin, Diana Lynn

B.A., M.A., D,Phil.

1951-2024

 

 

Diana Austin was a professor of English at the University of New Brunswick.  She won local, regional and national awards for her teaching there.

Diana leaves behind to miss her a loving family (and her 2 sweet feline companions of the last 10 years). She also leaves behind a creative and loving husband: Tim challenged her after her diagnosis by making her a “Mission Impossible” Calendar, pushing her to make it to August 1, Swiss National Day, for their 50^th anniversary. And to the surprise of them both, she did.

But as someone who truly valued teaching, she also leaves behind, she hopes, her most important legacy of all: her efforts to challenge and inspire her students with their own “Mission Impossible” goals, to help them try to change the world for the better, through their own individual challenges and growth. Ever since she was given her surprise diagnosis of terminal ovarian cancer by an Emergency Room doctor in June 2023, she has done as much research as she could to find out about this silent killer, and since as a teacher, she has always believed that “knowledge is power”, she has been tirelessly advocating to spread the word about new Canadian research from the University of British Columbia that shows that other women do NOT need to fall victim to Diana’s silent killer.

If you want to honour Diana’s life, please honour her by carrying on her advocacy efforts to try to help save other women’s lives. Please read the information below and share it as much as possible.  Note also the CBC links you might want to check out to better understand her motivation:

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-25-information-morning-fredericton/clip/16064336-world-ovarian-cancer-day

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-83-shift-nb/clip/16064658-ovarian-cancer

CBC New Brunswick by Hannah Rudderham

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/fredericton-woman-ovarian-cancer-awareness-1.7199003

 

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Diana Austin         

Ovarian Cancer and The Power of KNOWLEDGE to give you choices        

August 2024

 

I’m dying from this sneaky disease, but I’m writing this so that other women realize that they don’t have to.

For more background information, please check https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/ovarian-cancer-surgery-1.6876190 (read the article by Stephanie Dubois, CBC journalist, and/or listen to the CBC interview on Brian Goldman’s radio show White Coat, Black Art).

Check https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/ovarian-cancer-signs-symptoms-1.6741822. Also, check the article that University of British Columbia doctors Gillian Hanley, Janice Kwon and colleagues published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (February 2022).                                                                    

THE GRIM FACTS:

--Every 3.5 hours a woman in Canada is diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  (Ovarian Cancer Canada, X, formerly Twitter, July 16, 2023)  Every 5 hours a woman in Canada dies from ovarian cancer. (Ovarian Cancer Canada 2023 budget submission)

--Ovarian Cancer is the most lethal gynecological cancer because it is usually only detected at a late stage.

--There is NO effective screening test for ovarian cancer (unlike breast cancer or colon cancer, etc.). See, for example, the disappointing results of a long British study involving over 200,000 women: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.6025264/ovarian-cancer-researchers-disappointed-after-trial-finds-regular-screenings-fail-to-reduce-deaths-1.6025268

--Like much else about this deadly, sneaky disease, ovarian cancer is deceptively named: As Dr. Janice Kwon, a gynecologic oncologist with Vancouver General Hospital and BC Cancer, and vice-head of University of British Columbia's obstetrics and gynecology department, says, “We now recognize that the majority of ovarian cancers are a specific subtype called high-grade serous carcinoma and the majority of these cancers actually arise in the fallopian tube, NOT the ovary.” This type of ovarian cancer “is responsible for about 90 per cent of the deaths.”

--Can doctors predict who will get ovarian cancer? NO: A small percentage of ovarian cancers can be linked to inherited genetic mutations, but the majority of cases are in individuals with no known genetic mutation.

BUT FINALLY, A RAY OF HOPE:

There is currently ONLY ONE known preventative strategy to stop more women from dying from ovarian cancer. A procedure known as opportunistic salpingectomy is a safe, straightforward short elective surgery that takes the opportunity to remove the fallopian tubes when a woman who considers herself done with child-bearing is having another pelvic procedure done, such as tubal ligation, a caesarian section, endometriosis treatment, etc. It leaves the ovaries intact and it does not cause early menopause. A long-running, continuing study by gynecologists in British Columbia has shown that of the nearly 26,000 women who underwent opportunistic salpingectomy for contraception instead of tubal ligation, NOT A SINGLE CASE of high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common type, was found among those who had their fallopian tubes removed.

--Opportunistic salpingectomy is now recommended in Canada, in various European countries, and by the global Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance and the US Society of Gynecologic Oncology.

 

So that’s my personal reason for preparing this: to try to help others save themselves.  A few years ago I seemed to be a reasonably healthy woman for my age, but suddenly I too became a statistic: one more Canadian woman caught off-guard when an Emergency Room visit for an apparent minor matter turned into the horrible news that I actually had terminal ovarian cancer. I had NO obvious symptoms, and my main risk factor was simply being female. It is now too late for me. But it does not have to be too late for the partners, daughters, sisters, nieces, etc. of others.

Please help spread the word about this new Canadian research so that other women and those who care about them know that women now have the power of choice to try to ensure a better outcome for their own futures. If they want to, women can now CHOOSE to act upon this new knowledge. At the appropriate stage of their own reproductive lives, when they consider themselves to have the family size they want, women can choose to have an opportunistic salpingectomy (= fallopian tube removal) and thus virtually eliminate the likelihood that ovarian cancer will start growing undetected in their own bodies before ending up claiming their lives, as it has done mine.

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 Please keep in mind the 2 facts below that even some medical professionals Diana encountered after her diagnosis did not know about because they had not read the UBC study:

-- opportunistic salpingectomy (= fallopian tube removal) will NOT cause early menopause: the ovaries remain and produce their normal hormones

--older methods of surgical contraception such as hysterectomy, etc. will NOT produce the protective effect this UBC research explains, because ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, NOT in the actual ovaries.