YOUR BABY... OR YOUR LIFE
It’s an agonising choice no expectant mother should have to make. But when her cancer came back, Tasha’s doctor told her it’s...
LIKE any expectant firsttime mother, Tasha Trafford is making excited preparations for the birth of her baby. The pram has been bought and the spare room transformed into a nursery, with one wall painted blue in anticipation of a boy.
Her delight is obvious. Yet every time she feels the baby kick, it is a reminder not just of the joy of his imminent arrival, but of the terrible cost at which this is likely to come.
Tasha, 33, has a rare form of bone cancer which returned when she was 16 weeks pregnant after a period of remission. She was given the agonising choice of either terminating the pregnancy and starting a course of chemotherapy immediately, or losing her life.
For Tasha, ending her pregnancy was an option she could not countenance. She felt she had to give her longed-for baby a chance of life, even if it meant the possibility of him growing up without a mother.
‘Doctors were blunt. They said, “What are you going to do? It’s you or your baby”,’ says Tasha, an A&E nurse, who is now five months pregnant. ‘But living a life without ever knowing the joy of becoming a mum wasn’t an option for me. And while I know refusing chemo until the baby is born is a big risk, doing anything that might harm my unborn baby would be unthinkable.’
Throughout the past two-anda-half bleak years since she was first diagnosed with cancer, Tasha’s longing for a baby was what kept her hope alive. ‘All I ever wanted was to be a mum,’ she says simply.
‘The thought of having a baby kept me going, so there was never any question I wouldn’t carry on with the pregnancy.’
Tasha was first diagnosed with cancer soon after her wedding to husband Jon, 34, in December 2012. A strong-willed, determined woman, she began trying to conceive immediately after the couple married in Koh Samui, Thailand.
Tasha had already started suffering an unexplained backache, which was relieved when she took up Pilates classes and swimming.
However, the pain returned the following month. ‘By now I’d started to get a terrible pain in my right shoulder too,’ Tasha says. ‘My GP prescribed painkillers but I was in constant agony.’
After two months, she paid to see a private consultant who ordered an MRI scan. To Tasha’s shock, it revealed that she had one tumour in her spine and one on her shoulder.
EVEN worse, she had multiple tumours throughout her body, which were diagnosed as extra-skeletal Ewing sarcoma – a highly aggressive form of cancer where the tumours grow in soft tissue outside the bone.
It is so rare that only about 40 cases are diagnosed in the UK each year. Tasha was told she had just a ten per cent chance of surviving for five years.
‘I could barely take in what was happening to me,’ she admits. ‘The cancer was so aggressive it had fractured a vertebrae in my back, which was why I’d been in such agony. Had it not been discovered then, I could have been paralysed.
‘I needed an urgent operation to fix my shattered back, and to stand any chance of beating the cancer, I needed very aggressive treatment. When I realised it could leave me infertile, I was devastated.’
After surgery to repair Tasha’s back, she and her husband created and froze embryos so that they could still try for children through IVF if she recovered.
Over the next 12 months she underwent gruelling rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. ‘The thought of the embryos waiting for us to give them life kept me going,’ says Tasha. ‘I knew if I could beat the cancer I could then try for a family.’ In autumn 2014, Tasha received the news she longed for: scans showed no active signs of the cancer in her body.
Further tests in January this year also came back clear, and Tasha returned to work. ‘Doctors told me they couldn’t give me any guarantees that the cancer wouldn’t come back but I should go and live my life as normal,’ she says.
Tasha discussed resuming attempts to try for a baby with Jon, and they decided to go ahead: ‘At 33 I felt my biological clock was ticking and I didn’t want to wait any longer.
‘I can imagine some people might think it unfair, selfish even, to try to conceive after having cancer. But if I had lived the rest of my life without trying for a baby, never knowing the joy of holding one in my arms, I would always regret it.
‘Of course I thought about what would happen if the cancer returned and I died. But I felt if the worst happened, then Jon would be a wonderful dad. We also have very supportive families.’
In April, one of the embryos was placed in Tasha’s uterus. To the couple’s delight, a pregnancy test two weeks later showed a positive result.
Tasha says: ‘When at seven weeks we saw a tiny heartbeat on an ultrasound scan we were overjoyed.’
But when she was ten weeks preg- nant, she woke up with a pain ain in her shoulder: ‘I went to work that morning trying to tell myself it was where I’d slept awkwardly but inside I was terrified.’
Tasha faced an agonising wait for an MRI scan, as they are not recommended during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. At 16 weeks, a scan confirmed the devastating news that the cancer had returned.
SHE says: ‘It was the news I’d dreaded and I was a blubbering mess. However, there was no doubt in my mind I was going to continue with the pregnancy. All I’ve ever wanted is to be a mum.
‘After going through gruelling cancer treatment, I feel incredibly lucky to be expecting a baby at all. I know how dangerous my decision could be, but I can’t ignore my overwhelming desire to be a mother.’
Jon, a custody officer, is understandably terrified for his wife but has been unfailing in his support. ‘He has been my rock,’ Tasha says.
‘It’s been so incredibly hard for him – I know his immediate thought was the possibility that he could lose both of us. I also know my chances of beating this cancer a second time are likely to be slim, so it is never far from my mind that I could die, leaving him to bring up our son alone.
‘It gives me comfort to know if I do die, I will be leaving a little piece of myself – a little part of us – behind for Jon. But I try not to think too far into the future right now – I’m just concentrating on the baby we’re having.’
Tasha has refused chemotherapy and radiotherapy throughout her pregnancy despite her medical team’s attempts to find a compromise. ‘ Doctors have suggested I could have halfdose chemo or some chemo that might not affect the baby,’ she says.
‘But I would only consider treatment if there is absolutely no risk to him and it is unlikely they could guarantee that. So they are now hoping I can deliver him early – probably around 32 weeks – and then once he is safely born, they’ll give this cancer the most aggressive treatment they can.’
Remarkably, despite everything, Tasha’s positivity is unwavering. ‘ As far as my doctors can tell, the cancer hasn’t spread,’ she says.
‘And feeling our baby moving about is giving me the strength to carry on.
‘I can’t wait to give my little boy his first cuddle. I’m so looking forward to telling him just how precious he is.’