Cranberry resident channels ovarian cancer experience into action
Every day, Cranberry resident Margarita Hornung realizes how lucky she is to be alive to be with her husband, Mike, and her two children, 15-year-old Noah and 9-year-old Paulina.
Just five years ago, Hornung was in the battle for her life against the “whispering killer” known as ovarian cancer, a battle she ultimately won. However, thousands of women per year are not so fortunate.
To raise awareness of one of the rarer forms of cancer, Hornung is hosting the second annual Teal City Pittsburgh event on Saturday, Sept. 30, in Mars.
“It's an event to not only bring awareness about ovarian cancer, but to also raise funds for research,” said Hornung.
It was the middle of 2018 when Hornung noticed that she was experiencing excruciating pain in her abdomen for a prolonged period of time.
“If you would rank it from a one to 10, it was probably a 20. That’s how severe it was,” Hornung said. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t walk.”
One day, Hornung made the fateful drive to West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh to find out what was wrong. It turned out that the source of her pain was a cyst in her right ovary which had started to hemorrhage.
After an emergency operation to remove the ovary, Hornung was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, one of the rarer and harder-to-detect forms of cancer. The National Cancer Institute estimates that there were 19,880 new ovarian cancer cases in 2022, making up 1% of all cancer cases.
According to Dr. Thomas Krivak, director of the Ovarian Cancer Center of Excellence, ovarian cancer is difficult to detect until it reaches its advanced stages due to its relative rarity and lack of early detection methods compared to other forms of cancer. For this reason, it is often called the “whispering killer.”
“It's rare, so that makes it difficult for us to screen for,” said Krivak. “So when you diagnose somebody with advanced stage disease, it's more complex and more difficult to treat them.”
For the next six months, Hornung went through what Krivak described as an “aggressive” treatment of chemotherapy, as well as more surgical operations.
“The way I could best describe (chemotherapy), it’s as if there is a dead animal trying to crawl out of the body,” Hornung said. “It depletes your mind, your body and your soul, and it’s just beyond painful.”
Finally, by December 2018, Hornung learned that her ovarian cancer had gone into remission. However, this was far from the end of her story.
Just over a year ago, Chelsea Thomas, director of development at the Allegheny Health Network, pitched the idea of hosting an event to raise funds for Krivak’s ovarian cancer research.
“I was taught as a young child that you always turn pain into purpose,” Hornung said. “My husband and I both agreed that this is what we had been praying for … something to give back to the community, but more importantly, to advocate for women who are going through cancer or will go through cancer at some point.”
Thus was born the first Teal City Pittsburgh event to raise awareness for ovarian cancer. While October is the month of breast cancer awareness, September is the month of ovarian cancer awareness, which is marked by the color teal. Hence why Hornung’s event, which is now in its second year, goes by the name Teal City Pittsburgh — a play on Pittsburgh’s nickname of “Steel City.”
The inaugural event, held on Aug. 15, 2022, pulled in $20,000 for early detection research. Hornung promises that this year’s event will be even bigger.
The price of admission is $125 per ticket, with all proceeds going toward the AHN Women's Institute and the Division of Gynecologic Oncology. Other proceeds will come from a raffle featuring items such as a Chanel purse and a vacation package to the Nemacolin Woodlands resort in Farmington.
The event kicks off at 6:30 p.m., and only people age 21 and older can enter. This year, the admission price is all-inclusive.
But most importantly, the event also will serve as a tribute to two other ovarian cancer sufferers, Cathy Peoples and Beth Fedisin. While Peoples eventually recovered from her cancer, Fedisin died in September 2022 at the age of 49.
