Pregnant women have so much to deal with. There’s the immense bodily changes, difficult hormone imbalances, morning sickness, labor pains, and the never-ending worries about whether the baby will be born totally happy and healthy.
For Jade Devis, 36, the situation was made far more stressful when her doctor revealed life-changing and heartbreaking news: she had breast cancer.
She was only in her first trimester of pregnancy when the news came through, and all of her joy and excitement about being a mom suddenly seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Ever since she’d discovered that she was pregnant, Devis started to feel pain and tenderness in her breasts. She assumed it was all down to the pregnancy, with family members and doctors reassuring her that it was quite common for pregnant women to experience that kind of symptom.
Things took a turn for the worse when Devis found a small lump on top of her left breast. She could only notice it when she was lying down, but it was hard and painful to the touch.
Her doctor and a radiologist both said it was nothing to worry about at first, but Devis was worried and demanded a biopsy.
I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t ask for that biopsy. Had I followed the doctor’s recommendations, I would be dead. It was such an aggressive tumor.
The doctor had assumed it was just a clogged milk duct, but it was actually stage 2 breast cancer, very rare and very aggressive. Devis had to go under the knife, with the tumor being successfully removed, but her treatment wasn’t over there. She needed chemotherapy, and doctors had more bad news.
They said that since her baby was still so young and not fully developed, it didn’t have a chance of surviving the treatment and that she needed to consider termination.
Devis, however, had no hesitation. She wanted to give her baby a fighting chance, and there was simply no way she’d give him up just like that.
I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me his fate. I was going to do everything I could to save the baby. I wasn’t going to let a disease take the baby from me.
So, chemotherapy began for Devis. She knew that it had a big chance of harming or even killing the child growing inside her, and felt helpless and trapped, but she didn’t have a choice.
The only way out was to do the one thing that I thought I wasn’t supposed to do, which is put my baby in harm’s way.
Devis had to undergo three cycles of chemotherapy before her due date arrived. Against the odds, she gave birth to a happy and healthy boy, Bradley. She had to carry on with chemo after the birth, but she’s now totally cancer free!
What’s more, Bradley has been developing perfectly, hitting all his milestones like any other baby and showing no negative effects from the chemo.
This incredible woman beat cancer and went through her first pregnancy at the very same time. It’s an inspiring story and one that can give a lot of hope to any other expectant moms out there who also have to deal with cancer.
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