It's me again, the cataract question person, with a question about elective oophorectomy [View all]

Or having your ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed to eliminate the possibility of cancer. There, anyway.

I'm considering it, and I wonder if anyone else here has had it done.

The pros are that it eliminates the possibility of cancer there, and cancer there gives no symptoms until it's pretty advanced. There is no, repeat no, useful test for ovarian cancer. The cons are, that it's surgery, of course, and that it doesn't appear either Medicare or Tricare for life will pay for it. There's also the con of losing a body part, although I'm assured that at my age, 72, my ovaries are doing absolutely nothing. I'm not completely convinced of that, but that is what I am told. I know they don't produce eggs, of course, but I just have this sneaking suspicion they may be making a small contribution to something, totally without any actual evidence.

So as with cataract surgery per my previous question, I'm wondering if anybody has had this done, what it cost, and what you thought of it.

The reason I'm even considering it is that my new gynecologist wanted me to have the BRCA test since all my mom's sisters had some kind of female cancer, although my mother did not. The test came back clean, and I thought that was that, but she's still kind of pushing it, and the more I picture those things sitting there that will not show any symptoms if something does go wrong until it's gone very far wrong, the more I think about it.

Thanks.

Edited to throw in a piece of information that was rather hard to find. I looked for a while before I made this post, and I just now hit on the correct search terms, apparently. The cost I'd be looking at would be about $15,000, if I can trust the web search.

Edited again to add that the above I think now is just the cost for the surgeon. So I'm guessing I could double or triple that. That's a lot of money, but this new gynecologist has got me thinking about these things sitting there that won't show any symptoms until things are very badly wrong