The senior nurse on Mum’s ward arranged a meeting to help my family understand our devastating new reality. She introduced us to the strange new language of stages and grades, and told us there could be no prognosis until my mum had surgery to analyse the extent of the cancer. She was scheduled to have a hysterectomy, ileostomy (where they divert your bowel through a stoma), and removal of her omentum (a fatty pad that covers your stomach), appendix and any potentially affected stomach lining. The cancer had spread from her ovaries to her abdomen, and the procedures were to remove the affected areas and to maximise the chances of her healing. Mid-op, they took live biopsies of the various areas to check the extent of the cancer’s spread.