Ngunnawal, ACT
Diagnosed age 28
I was officially diagnosed on 28 August 2006. The next day I had a pregnancy test which was also positive.
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| Annie Robertson and her daughter Kendra |
My husband and I had been trying for our first baby since January 2006. In August that year I was in Hobart for a working trip and found a lump while in the shower. I was one month shy of my 28th birthday.
I went to the doctor the next day. The doctor took one feel of my lump and one look at my family history and spent the next ten minutes calling the imaging places for an immediate mammogram and ultrasound. I was officially diagnosed on 28 August 2006. The next day I had a pregnancy test which was also positive.
I'll save you the drama and histrionics, suffice to say that there were some. In the end because I was at that stage only 3 to 4 weeks pregnant, I was still able to have a sentinel node biopsy (in the 5th week) and a lumpectomy. My lump was 3 cm in diameter, and we had very clear margins all round. I had one positive node and thus had a further 11 nodes removed. (I still have the best tits in the family - if somewhat lopsided).
We had a hiatus between surgery and chemotherapy of 7 weeks, as there is a lot of research about people having FAC chemo during the second and third trimesters, but not much in the first. So at 13 weeks I began a course of Chemotherapy (6 cycles with 3 weeks a cycle). We then had a brief hiatus between Chemo and Radio, finishing Chemo at week 28 of the pregnancy. The baby was induced at 33 weeks 5 days, so that I could start Radio at what would have been 35 weeks.
Kendra was born a whopping 2.42Kg - apparently very big, not only for a chemo baby but a premmie baby too! She spent three weeks in the Special Care Nursery - mainly to get her weight up and to learn how to feed properly. Then we brought her home. Now she's around 4.5 kg, 4 months old and the cutest "patootie" you'll ever find! I was able to breastfeed with my ‘good' breast and express the other until Radio made it too painful. I continued breastfeeding with just the ‘good' one until about 3 months, at which point I supplemented and expressed the good breast to give her 1-2 good feeds a day of breast milk and the rest formula. I could have tried to re-lactate the cancer breast but decided it was more trouble than it was worth.
I think that the ‘higher power' or ‘god' or whatever was thinking s/he'd given me enough to deal with in cancer, so I didn't get morning sickness, nor Chemo sickness. The worst thing to deal with was the radiation burns. However since I got to have a ten minute lie down when I got my Radio shots, which was the only ‘non-baby' rest I was getting, even that was worth it.
Last Updated 7 December 2007
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