‘Our little miracle Mireya helped her daddy beat cancer’
WHEN Luis Richardson was told he had cancer, only one thing kept him going through his lifesaving treatment.
His wife, Beth, was six months pregnant with their daughter and Luis couldn’t wait to be a dad.
Then just 72 hours after the birth of his daughter, Mireya, he was given the all-clear.
Incredibly, the baby girl also beat all the odds to survive her mum’s complicated pregnancy issues.
Beth, 28, said: “Luis wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for Mireya. As soon as he was diagnosed, he said he needed to be better by the time she was born, and she was his reason to keep going.”
Luis, 29, was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin Lymphoma after he found a lump on his shoulder – just five days after the couple wed.
Beth said: “My stepdad Roy had also been diagnosed with cancer earlier that year and he said to him to get it checked out because of what he had been through.
“Initially they thought it was an infection, but after three days on antibiotics it still hadn’t got any better, and the lump was even bigger. We were devastated when the doctors told us.
“It was only five days after our wedding too.we had lost Roy to cancer a few months before and I had wanted him to walk me down the aisle but he didn’t make it.”
It had been a miracle time for the couple, who live in Church Gresley, South Derbyshire. Beth was rushed into hospital suffering a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.
She was taken for surgery to remove her left ovary and told she would never fall pregnant.
But two days later she went for post-surgery tests and doctors made a remarkable discovery
– she was still pregnant, with a second baby who was developing normally.
The baby girl was born in February last year.the couple named her Mireya – “miracle” in Spanish.
“She was truly a miracle,” said Beth. “She was conceived against the odds, and she also saved her daddy’s life too, as I don’t know if he could have done it without her.”