Jane Sarluis was pregnant with her second child when she was was told her cancer was back.
She was just 15 weeks pregnant when her doctor about the diagnosis. Jane says she felt chilled. “But at that moment, in the doctor’s surgery, I couldn’t have imagined what my precious baby and I would have to endure to give us both the best chance of survival,” she writes in the Daily Mail.
This brave mum decided she and her unborn baby would fight the cancer together. She was determined they’d both survive.
She writes:
But now, while my belly swelled with coveted new life, another deadly form was growing inside me, threatening to consume my child and destroy our family. I felt as though I’d accidentally tripped from my own life’s path into someone else’s, so absurd seemed this episode, so incongruous the two parallel conditions.
Weighing up the life of our unborn child against the value and quality of my own became a revisited theme during the early weeks of my cancer diagnosis. Pivotal to every choice we made was the future of our two-year-old daughter and my duty to her as a mother. It had been relatively easy to tell the surgeon to take the breast below the affected lymph nodes in lieu of the baby. Although it appeared to be cancer-free, no one could be certain because pregnancy ruled out a mammogram. The breast was my loss. But to choose to take drugs that would cause side effects so severe I would be hospitalised was counterintuitive.
Not only would Jane have to endure chemotherapy, she’d have to live with the thought her unborn child may be affected. “How could an unborn, developing baby possibly survive exposure to toxic doses of poison,” she writes in the Daily Mail. “I couldn’t even have a glass of wine without feeling guilt, or take a paracetamol without seriously assessing the need.”
There has been quite a bit of research on the effect of chemotherapy on unborn children and it was found that some drugs cross the placenta to the baby and some don’t but further investigation is still needed.
Jane began treatment and would hold her pregnant belly as the chemotherapy drugs entered her system. “With one arm cradling my belly, I swallowed waves of terror while I watched the toxic red fluid seeping from its bag and flowing down the tube; I felt it tingling with a burning sweep as it entered my veins.”rounded belly protruded, a sign that within my ravaged body, the miracle of new life still prospered.”Her daughter was born prematurely at 36 weeks. She seemed to be unaffected by the treatment but was closely monitored. “They seemed almost as surprised by the safe arrival of our healthy daughter as we were relieved,” she writes. “Only the oncologist offered an understated and knowing congratulations, nodding confidently that a healthy baby was no surprise to him, although he couldn’t really explain it.” It’s been three years and Jane still can’t believe she and her baby survived her second bout of cancer. While her daughter is perfectly well, Jane continues her struggle for survival.Read more at Jane’s blog at mylifeonaknifeedge.blogspot.co.uk.
Image credit: Provided
Have you had any health struggles during pregnancy?
