Diagnosed With Cancer While Pregnant

No one expects cancer to enter their lives in their 30s. But that’s exactly what happened to me and here is my story.

My husband Josh and I were married May 21, 2015. Two years after we started dating and eight months after we had our first son Ronin. Two months after we got married, I got off birth control and we were going to try for another baby. Ronin was such a happy baby and we were going to just stop with him, but we knew he needed a sibling. It took us a year but finally, Alakai was conceived in June 2016. I took a blue dye test and as it kept getting darker and darker, I couldn’t believe it. I expected a pregnancy exactly like the one I had with Ronin. But every pregnancy is different and this one ended up being different than most.

At exactly six weeks pregnant on July 4, I started experiencing morning sickness. I had to wait for my first appointment at eight weeks to get any relief. I was prescribed Zofran which is an anti-nausea medication for people going through chemo but also works for pregnant women. My morning sickness finally subsided at 20 weeks pregnant. I also found out that Alakai was a boy. If he would have been a girl, the name we had picked out was Faylyn.

In December, I noticed some lumps on my right breast. They were hard and very new. I had been leaking colostrum, so I figured I had clogged milk ducts. Since I didn’t have a baby born yet, I couldn’t nurse to get rid of the clog, so I massaged it in a warm bath or shower for a week. On Friday, December 16, on my lunch, I went to my Ob/Gyn to get the lumps checked because they were starting to burn. My doctor was concerned and thought they might be swollen lymph nodes in my collar bone. She set up a mammogram to check for breast center at Evergreen Hospital on Monday, December 19. I had the mammogram, which showed some concerning things about my lumps. So, they did an ultrasound which also showed some concerning things. They decided to do a biopsy right then and there. I was told I would get a call at 2 PM on Wednesday, December 21 with the results. I ended up getting a call from my doctor's office at around ten. I had to call back and she told me to sit down.

I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma grade 3. At that time, we didn’t know the stage yet (later I found out it was Stage 2). Here I was, 29 weeks pregnant and I had breast cancer. The only thing I could think about was that I was going to die. I wouldn’t see my babies grow up. I wouldn’t grow old with Josh. I panicked and had to leave work. I needed to go to the hospital and figure everything out. Josh came with me and it was explained that I had it before I was pregnant but that since it was hormone positive, the pregnancy accelerated the tumor growth. They got me connected with an oncologist, radiologist and breast surgeon ASAP. Also, I was moved from my primary Ob/Gyn to high risk Ob/Gyn. Within a week I knew what my plan was and I wanted to fight. I wasn’t waiting for my son to be born to start treatment. I wanted to get at this cancer as quick as possible. Two weeks after I was diagnosed, I had surgery to put a port a cath (direct line to the heart, instead of using an IV) in and to have one lymph node taken out to check to see if it had spread. Luckily, the cancer had only spread to my breast tissue. Which meant 16 rounds of chemo and a mastectomy. I didn’t have to have a double but I chose to from the beginning because I didn’t want to worry about it happening again in my healthy breast.

Chemo started two days after surgery on January 6th, 2017. Happy New Year. On Saturday, I woke up with cramps and when I went to the bathroom in the morning I was bleeding. My parents rushed over and we dropped Ronin off at his nanny’s house. My husband worked on Saturdays, So I gave him a call to let him know. I was in labor and only 32 weeks. They put me on magnesium which wore me out. I couldn’t even pick up my phone or walk to the bathroom on my own. It stops labor and helps mature the baby’s brain in case he came anyway. I had to stay in the hospital until Monday, January 9. Everything was fine but I was in nesting mode. I knew Alakai was going to come early so I started preparing when I should have been in bed on bedrest. On Wednesday, I put together the swing and started getting cramps again. All night long I had cramps. These were worse than the ones before. Josh asked in the morning if he was going to work or taking me to the hospital. I said hospital. We get there and they deduce that I am in labor again. They put me on magnesium to stop labor again but my high-risk Ob gave me the option of stopping or proceeding with delivery, I proceeded. She even said I could have him vaginally which would have been a first because Ronin was born via C-section because he was breech. They had to check me via ultrasound to make sure there wasn’t anything causing labor. They couldn’t see anything on the ultrasound. The pain was horrible and morphine didn’t cut it.

Finally, I got my epidural but it only numbed half of my body, so it had to be done again. Finally, it worked. I was five centimeters but my water hadn’t broken yet. They decided to break it and that’s when all hell broke loose. Alakai’s stats dropped really low. They flipped me left and right to get his stats back up but it wasn’t working. So, they rushed me to the ER. They were going to put me under anesthesia because of pain but the epidural was enough and I was able to stay awake. During delivery though I started getting sleepy. After he was born, I heard him cry but just wanted to sleep. Josh was with me and told me to just sleep but I knew something wrong and didn’t want to not wake up. Two things were going on, I was bleeding out because the reason I went in to labor was because I had a partial placental abruption. And in their rush to get to Alakai, they thought they nicked the line from my kidneys to my bladder. They hadn’t but they had to check. After they closed me up, I kept bleeding. I ended up shaking so bad and feeling so cold they needed to cover me with three heated blankets. They finally got the bleeding to stop and I needed a blood transfusion.

Alakai was doing great for being born at 33 weeks and going through one session of chemo with me. He was breathing on his own, and was four lbs. two oz. I ended up staying in the hospital for four days. Alakai had to stay in the NICU. I didn’t mind because the last thing I wanted was a newborn at home going through chemo which makes you tired all the time. I had my second chemo on Jan 31. I didn’t really feel the effects the first time. But I did the second time. Also, my hair was gone. It just started coming out when I pulled or brushed. Like completely bald coming out from the root. Josh shaved it and we had fun making different styles before he shaved it all off. I was sad because when I was five, I wanted my parents to cut my hair. I was done sitting and having it done. It took over 25 years to get long again and now it was gone.

Alakai ended up coming home three weeks after he was born and it was hard. I had no energy from chemo and just wanted to sleep. But I had to get up and feed him, or stay up all night because he was not a sleeper. I finally had to have him go to the nanny’s house with Ronin so I could sleep all day. Alakai’s first year was completely different than Ronin’s. I still feel like I haven’t bonded enough with him like I did with Ronin. On my fourth chemo, I almost gave up. I was so tired and so sick. Food tasted like dirt, and I would get headaches and nausea. But I finished that fourth chemo like a rockstar. The next chemo was different. It’s called Taxol, and I had it every week for 12 weeks. It was much easier and I got my taste buds back. I had a little bit more energy and didn’t get completely wiped out four days after I got it. Little wisps of hair grew back on Taxol but with that I lost my eyelashes and eyebrows. I attempted to do a snapchat filter, that in order for it to work it told you “to raise your eyebrows” I had to manually lift the skin above my eyes to get the filter to work.

My last chemo was postponed. I started having really bad cramps and pain in my back. The day before my last chemo I ended up in the ER with a kidney infection. My last chemo ended up happening a week later. But that didn’t change my mastectomy date. My mastectomy was three weeks later and it was an amazing three weeks feeling somewhat normal. I took the kids and went to visit my grandma in eastern Washington. I went on the river with Josh. It was a really great three weeks, and then I had my mastectomy with reconstruction. Besides my C-sections, that was the most invasive surgery I ever went through. It was also the most painful and hard to get over. But a month in, I was able to lift Ronin and also finally lift Alakai again. That month was hard. The first week I had to deal with drains and movement that was normally easy but could hurt me. Also sleeping up right in a recliner was not ideal.

For my reconstruction, they put in expanders to expand the skin so implants could fit under my pectoral muscles. It took two months to be comfortable with those things. They are like having bones in your chest instead of soft breasts. On September 8, three days after my 33rd birthday, I got the expanders taken out and implants put in. I also started my anti estrogen medication Tamoxifen to prevent the cancer from coming back and Ativan to help me sleep and help anxiety that the Tamoxifen causes. As of June 21, 2017, I have been in remission and hope beyond hope and know I will stay that way.

I am a different person now though. I am not that carefree girl I was before cancer. The Tamoxifen has side effects which include memory loss and loss of concentration along with fatigue. You get tired when you are pregnant but once you have the baby, your energy comes back. I haven’t had energy since before I got pregnant with Alakai. I am always tired and miss sleep being enough. I wish I could be that girl and go back. I wish cancer never would happen.