What will actually happen? Here is what to expect.

You'll usually be asked to come in the evening before, or early on the morning of surgery, and to stop eating and drinking for a set number of hours beforehand^[5] — your team will tell you exactly how long. A nurse and an anaesthetist will see you first, going through your medicines and any allergies. Once you're in the operating theatre, you're given medicine that puts you fully to sleep^[5], so you won't feel or remember any of it. You wake up afterwards in a recovery area, where nurses keep a close eye on you until you're steady enough to go back to your room. Your family is usually updated on how the operation went as soon as it's over.

The medical term for this is —

The sleep you have during surgery is general anaesthesia, given by an anaesthetist (also called an anaesthesiologist). The check-up beforehand is often called a pre-anaesthetic check-up (PAC).

It depends on what kind of operation you have.^[5] After keyhole or robotic surgery, many women go home within a few days. Open surgery usually means a longer stay — often close to a week, sometimes more. Very extensive surgery, like the kind used for advanced ovarian cancer, can mean a longer stay still, occasionally with a night or two in intensive care simply so you can be watched more closely while you settle. You'll go home once you're eating, moving around, managing your pain with tablets, and your team is happy with how the wound is healing. If someone you know went home sooner than you, that isn't a sign anything's wrong — every operation, and every body, heals at its own pace.

The medical term for this is —

The specialist ward for close monitoring is called an ICU (intensive care unit) or HDU (high-dependency unit). The number of days you stay is your length of stay.

There will be some pain^[5], but you shouldn't feel you have to just endure it — keeping it under control is part of your care, not an inconvenience to your team. Most hospitals combine a few approaches: medicine through your drip for the first day or two, then tablets, and sometimes a numbing injection near the wound or in the spine given during surgery itself. Pain is usually at its worst in the first couple of days and eases from there; keyhole surgery tends to hurt less than open surgery. The one thing worth remembering: tell the nurse as soon as pain starts building, rather than waiting until it's severe — it's far easier to stay ahead of pain than to catch up with it once it's taken hold.

The medical term for this is —

Pain relief given through a thin tube placed in your back is an epidural. Pain-relief medicines in general are called analgesics.

Most women won't. A stoma is an opening made on the tummy wall so that bowel waste can pass into a small bag instead of the usual way, and it's only needed when part of the bowel has to be removed or given time to rest — something that comes up mainly with very extensive surgery, such as for advanced ovarian cancer or cancer that has spread to nearby organs. If it's a real possibility in your case, your surgeon should raise it with you before the operation, not after, and a specialist nurse can show you exactly how a bag works and how to care for it. Some stomas are only temporary and can be reversed later with a smaller operation; others stay permanent. It's worth asking directly which one applies to you.

The medical term for this is —

A stoma from the large bowel is a colostomy; from the small bowel, an ileostomy. A temporary one is sometimes called a defunctioning stoma. The specialist nurse who teaches stoma care is a stoma care nurse.

HIPEC comes up in some cases of ovarian cancer that has spread within the abdomen. Once the surgeon has removed all the cancer that can be seen, warmed chemotherapy liquid is circulated inside the abdomen for around an hour to an hour and a half before the operation is closed. The thinking behind it is straightforward: the medicine reaches cancer cells too small to see with the eye, and the warmth makes it work more effectively. It isn't offered to everyone — it's really only considered when the surgery has already removed the visible cancer as completely as possible, and when your general health can tolerate a longer operation and a longer hospital stay, both of which HIPEC adds. Your surgeon will tell you clearly whether it's something worth considering in your case.

The medical term for this is —

HIPEC stands for Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy. It's combined with cytoreductive surgery (CRS) — the operation to remove all visible tumour.

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You'll come in to the day-care unit or ward, usually after a quick blood test confirms your body is ready for the next dose. A nurse sets up a small line in a vein — or uses a port, if one was placed earlier^[1] — and the medicines run in slowly through a drip. Before the chemotherapy itself, you're given medicines to prevent nausea and any allergic reaction, so the whole visit can stretch to a few hours or most of a day. Nothing about it is painful beyond the initial needle prick, and plenty of women bring a book, or a family member to sit with. Most go home the same day. How often you come back depends entirely on your plan^[1] — commonly every one to three weeks.

The medical term for this is —

One treatment visit is an infusion; a full round of treatment plus its rest period is a cycle. A small device placed under the skin of the chest for repeated drips is a port (or chemoport).

Chemotherapy targets fast-dividing cells, and that's exactly why it also affects some healthy ones along the way. The common effects are tiredness, nausea or a reduced appetite, thinning or loss of hair, mouth sores^[1], and — with some drugs — tingling in the fingers and toes. You won't necessarily get all of these, and most can be eased with medicine, so it's worth telling your team rather than quietly putting up with them. There's also a less visible effect: for some days after each dose, chemotherapy lowers the cells that fight infection in your blood^[4]. If your temperature reaches 38°C (100.4°F) or higher, you get sudden chills, or you simply feel very unwell, contact your team or go to the hospital that same day^[4] — this genuinely can't wait for your next scheduled appointment. Hair almost always grows back once treatment is finished.

The medical term for this is —

Low infection-fighting cells is neutropenia; fever with it is febrile neutropenia, treated as a medical emergency. Tingling in hands and feet is peripheral neuropathy; hair loss is alopecia.

Radiation destroys cancer cells using carefully aimed high-energy rays, and it's given in two main ways. External radiation uses a machine outside your body to direct the rays at the treatment area^[2] — each session lasts only a few minutes on the table and doesn't hurt, and a full course usually runs on weekdays over several weeks. Brachytherapy, used often in cervical and some uterine cancers^[3], instead places a radiation source inside the body, right next to the cancer, for a short time under sedation or anaesthesia. With modern brachytherapy, once the session ends and the applicator is removed, you're not radioactive — you can be around your family, children included, straightaway^[3]. The most common side effects are tiredness, skin redness where you were treated, and some bowel or bladder irritation, such as looser stools or a burning feeling when passing urine, both of which your team has ways to manage.

The medical term for this is —

Radiation from outside is external beam radiotherapy (EBRT); radiation placed inside is brachytherapy, most often given today as high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy. Radiation combined with chemotherapy is chemoradiation.

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