SM: What do want to see happen in the future for women like you with ovarian cancer?
Diem Brown: What’s crazy is one out of every 50 women will have ovarian cancer, yet there’s no real push for research. There’s no health test when you go to the gynecologist. More and more young women are getting diagnosed with this. [It used to be that] the early onset was 35, now it keeps going lower and lower. It’s called “the disease that whispers” and I think it needs a megaphone. I’m hoping that it gets as much attention as breast cancer. Breast cancer [research has grown] leaps and bounds after people have really put it in the forefront.

I’m hoping that ovarian cancer will one day be considered something you need to pretest for, because if you catch it early you can survive. The only thing you can do [right now to detect ovarian cancer] is get internal ultrasounds and a CA125 blood test. There are other things being researched, but there’s lack of funding. I’m hoping that through the website and through talking about it, someone somewhere will find the funding for it. I know that the only reason I’m alive right now is because of the funding and the research people did before me. So, I have to be really grateful and realize somebody helped me stay alive, and now I need to help somebody in the future stay alive.