Whisper Walk for ovarian cancer sends a message loud and clear

At 6 a.m. with the sun barely rising, David Welsh, 58, of Blue Springs stood working outside in the square at Zona Rosa, unloading chairs and setting up tents and finding his thoughts drifting toward his late wife, Vicki.

Would she be proud of all that was being achieved here this Sunday? Would she be happy?

Five years have passed since Vicki Welsh, a designer at Hallmark Cards, died on Jan. 22, 2006, of ovarian cancer at age 52. Four months later, in April, Welsh would watch his mother, Lula Mae Welsh, die of the same disease. She was 88.

By 9 a.m., the Zona Rosa streets and square would teem with 2,000 people beneath a crisp blue sky dotted by balloons and filled with party music.

There would be men and children, but the vast majority would be women of every age. Nearly all would come dressed in sneakers and teal-blue T-shirts for the 2011 ovarian cancer awareness Whisper Walk. Started in 2005 by avid walker Joy Noyce of Leawood, the walk is named because ovarian cancer symptoms come at women like a whisper.

They're so silent and secretive and thoroughly common — back or pelvic pain, feeling full, unexplained bloating, frequent urination — that women often go months, receiving one misdiagnosis after another, before the disease is discovered. That's what happened to Noyce, who died of ovarian cancer in 2007. It's what happened to Vicki, too.

An athlete who was rarely sick, Welsh began to experience bloating. She got back pains and cramps. Doctors at first told her it was just part of getting older. Then, having recently traveled back from Mexico, she was treated for what doctors wrongly suspected was a parasite. Seven months passed before the pain became so bad that her husband rushed her to the emergency room. Surgeons found stage 4 aggressive ovarian cancer.

At the cancer walk, the air was a mixture of commemoration of those who had passed, resolve for those committed to fighting the disease and celebration for women like Melissa Angelokos, 41, of Kansas City.

"I finished chemo in March!" said Angelokos, who walked with her husband, children and friends. Like others, she never suspected she had cancer. She thought she was had just been gradually gaining weight until a physician ordered a CT scan and discovered a 10-pound tumor.

Not very long before Vicki Welsh died, she and her husband, a longtime employee of Missouri Gas Energy, set up a fund to raise awareness of the disease's symptoms. The Whisper Walk raises money for the Vicki Welsh Ovarian Cancer Fund. About $78,000 was raised this year.

"I've thought a lot about what she would think about all this," Welsh said. "Her last wishes were that women would learn and know the symptoms of ovarian cancer and they would catch it in time.

"I think she would be happy to know we're saving lives."