There is a good chance that your surgeon will be able to remove a sizable portion of your tumour after successful chemotherapy.

Most women with ovarian cancer are not diagnosed until the tumour is 'advanced' and has spread throughout the abdomen. Ovarian cancer spreads in a unique way, forming new tumours over the surface of the bowel and other organs in the abdomen. This method of spread can make things difficult for the surgeon, in that the tumour masses can be large, widespread and in awkward places. In a proportion of women, like you, the tumour is too large or stuck down to make safe removal possible at the time of initial operation.

In these circumstances, chemotherapy is usually recommended to shrink the tumour to enable its surgical removal, as it is known that the outlook for women with ovarian cancer can be improved by removing as much tumour as possible.

The likelihood of the cancer being removed depends on several things. The first is how bulky the tumours were before chemotherapy. More importantly however, is the response you have to chemotherapy. Most women respond to chemotherapy for ovarian cancer (which means their tumours are reduced in size by more than a half). Obviously, the more the tumour shrinks away, the more likely the surgeon will be to remove it all. A final thing that decides how much tumour is likely to be removed, is the location of your tumour masses. For example some places, like deep in the pelvis, are harder for a surgeon to reach than others are. However, even if the surgeon is unable to remove the entire tumour if the chemotherapy has been able to reduce the tumour in size, this will still improve your outlook.