For several months the woman was reassured: they say, everything is in order with the child, and your symptoms are just features of the course of pregnancy.
24-year-old Poppy Stewart-Brown became pregnant by accident: they had just met her lover. It would be strange to plan children right in the early days of a relationship. But, as they say, the person assumes, and the pregnancy took and happened.
“I thought I had a cold or intestinal flu. I felt sick, I felt so tired, says Poppy. “I didn’t want my boyfriend to think I was boring, but I was so exhausted that I just wanted to lie down.”
Tommy, the girl’s boyfriend, jokingly suggested that she might be pregnant. The joke turned out to be true. Poppy was six weeks pregnant.
“The disease turned out to be a little Arabella, who was growing and developing vigorously,” the girl laughs.
During pregnancy, Poppy felt like a real failure. She felt overwhelmed all the time. “How do people manage to give birth to multiple children? I can’t bear pregnancy alone, I want to lie down all the time, ”she wondered. In addition, after only a month, she began to pester with nosebleeds and frequent migraines. However, the doctors said that this is normal – such are the side effects of the hormonal surge.
Poppy came to her doctor with headaches over and over again. He checked the condition of little Arabella, smiled and reassured the expectant mother: everything is in order, you have to be patient. Meanwhile, the girl was getting worse. She insisted in advance on a cesarean: she was afraid that since she was so bad now, she would not survive the birth at all. In addition, a strange speck appeared on the nose that did not go away. And then one day she was overtaken by an attack of such a hellish headache that Poppy could not even open her eyes: it hurt from the light. Breathing problems began, and she could breathe only with one half of her nose, on which there was no stain.
The girl was taken to the hospital, and then the doctors were alarmed. Finally, they decided to pay attention not only to the fetus, but also to the mother. The scans revealed that the stain on her nose was sepsis caused by a tumor. On Poppy’s jaw, a malignant tumor, 10 centimeters in size, has grown – Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and very aggressive form of cancer.
Two days later, the girl was given a caesarean. Her daughter was born 6 weeks ahead of schedule. And three days later, Poppy was sent for an operation to remove the tumor. The operation lasted five hours. The next months merged into one endless day: surgery, chemotherapy, hair loss.
“I missed so much in the development of Arabella. I was afraid that we would not be able to establish the very connection between mother and child as it should be. Anyway, will I live to see her first birthday? ” Poppy said.
But baby Arabella had a father – Tommy, despite the fact that by the time of pregnancy they had known each other for only a few weeks, he did not abandon the girl, the child too. He took care of both of them.
The treatment lasted longer than a year. And finally the good news: Poppy is healthy, not a trace of the tumor remains. She managed to celebrate her daughter’s birthday: in April, Arabella turned one year old. True, the parents could not arrange a noisy party – after all, a pandemic, quarantine. And Poppy believes that everything will be fine now:
“I’m so lucky to have Tommy. He, his family, my mother – they all supported me very much this whole year. Thanks to them, I could feel like a mother, and not a woman dying of cancer. “