Empowering women to protect their health first.^TM

Alice Wendt was a vivacious, loving and dynamic woman who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 42, and lost her life to the disease just months shy of her 45th birthday. Alice was a wonderful and dedicated wife, mother and businessperson who co-founded Wendt Partners, a business consulting firm, with her husband Doug. Together, they built their business while simultaneously raising a family.

In 2016, Alice attended her first appointment with a dedicated OB/GYN in years, having previously limited her physicals and examinations to care under a family practitioner or internist (other than for pregnancy and childbirth). During this appointment, an ovarian mass was identified which was ultimately discovered to be cancerous during surgery. Thanks to the skill of her surgical team consisting of both a gynecological surgeon and a gynecological oncology specialist, she emerged from surgery with Stage 1C and strong chances of overcoming the disease.
Alice sailed through her initial treatment, working full-time through her chemotherapy program and staying focused on a positive outcome. After her first-round treatment she was declared NED (No Evidence of Disease), but unfortunately an unrelated CT scan a few months later indicated abnormally enlarged lymph nodes in her pelvis, and a biopsy confirmed that the cancer was again present and spreading.

Alice and her husband, Doug found the Clearity Foundation through an online search and completed the tumor profiling process. They then worked closely with the Clearity scientific
team to develop a strategic plan for each step in her recurrent care. Alice tolerated some of the most difficult medicines available in the medical arsenal, including Doxorubicin (nicknamed the ‘red devil’ because of its color and the excruciating pain many patients experience while on it). Even when Alice was on both medicine and radiation therapy together, she came to work every day, smiled at everyone and pushed forward with hope and a fierce will to live.

In the spring of 2018, her primary care doctor performed an assessment of her medication therapy focused on reducing side effects, during which a head CT scan was ordered ‘out of an abundance of caution’. Astoundingly, four tumors were identified in her brain, one causing massive displacement of her left frontal lobe. The discovery proved that Alice’s quiet heroism was extraordinary, for she had been working and functioning normally despite this unknown presence literally overtaking her brain.

Emergency surgery and post-surgical treatment was intended to slow the cancer’s spread in her brain, but the metastatic disease was unceasing and Alice lost her life to ovarian cancer just weeks after the cranial tumors had been discovered.

Alice possessed a truly fierce and unceasing will to live, and felt passionately that women need to protect their own health first. She recognized that, having been raised in a culture of religious beliefs and learned behaviors that ignored women’s health and sexuality in favor of matrimonial purity and a sacrificial commitment to motherhood, Alice had missed warning signs for years that could have made a difference in her quality of life, and potentially to her long-term health and ultimate prognosis.

As a result, she dedicated her two years of living with the disease passionately to encouraging the women around her to protect their health first, above all other beliefs, commitments and priorities.