Well, I said I was going to keep writing, and I didn’t. Life 1, Diana 0.
Better late then never though, right? Maybe I just won’t commit to you guys this time and will just write when the universe aligns for me to put thoughts to paper. Sometimes it feels like that’s what it takes though. It’s hard to sit in front of a blank white page and know where to start after all the time that has gone by. I recall trying it a few times, only to have gotten distracted with online shopping or something else that drew my attention away. What a treat though to be so distracted that I’m not talking about my cancer anymore. To think that back when I wrote my blog posts about my experience through treatment, I longed for days like this and never knew if I’d be lucky enough to have them. The days where I can almost entirely forget and get caught up in regular daily life. (note that I didn’t say I can fully forget, because that’ll unfortunately never be the case). I still think about my cancer every day. Yes, EVERY DAY.
Here I was thinking that as more time went on, I could forget more and more until my cancer really became a blip in time that I could worry less and less about. What I’ve come to realize though is that I feel like I worry more now. The further away I have gotten from active treatment, and the more time that has gone by where I’ve filled my days with some “carcinogens” (as defined by the FDA, CDA, Health Canada, WHOEVER), I feel like I’m on borrowed time. It sounds silly, I know. For example, I recently was using a shampoo and condition that I later found out contained parabens. I was anxious for DAYS. Thoughts swimming in my head that this time was it, the cancer was coming back. I was helping it grow. Dumb.
Another example is whenever I dabble in a glass of wine. My anxiety spikes. But I love wine, so it’s been a dilemma. If I even have one glass (which is usually the max I have), I think about it for days afterwards. It eats at me and I need to go on a drinking hiatus just to rid myself of the guilt. It’s not even that I’m drinking “a lot”, but again, it makes me feel like I’m on borrowed time because of it all. Like “phew”, that glass didn’t bring it back, but who knows about the next one.
You’re probably like “well why don’t you just cut it out of your life and then you don’t have to worry so much about it”. easier said than done. I want to live and enjoy my life – so the question becomes: is it worth the risk to me? My answer will change on a day-to-day basis. I also tend to beat myself up about “yesterday Diana actions” and nag at myself at how reckless it all was, only to do it again the next week. Nothing with cancer is binary or black and white.
As most of you know I had a HUGE life milestone last fall and gave birth to my sweet sweet baby boy, Griffin.
I just had a big pause writing this because I’m trying to decide how to describe what it means to me to be blessed with such a special light in my life story. Being able to welcome Griffin into our world after what I’ve been through and especially thinking back to the dark days of going through cancer not knowing whether I’d even be able to have children of my own – I just kind of get put in a state of awe. I am eternally thankful that I was lucky enough to not only get pregnant, but also bring a healthy baby into the world!
I’ll get into the details of getting pregnant, but one thing that really got to me in the whole process was experiencing my body working properly. After cancer you lose trust in your own body. You can’t understand why it failed on you, and you’re constantly sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for it to fail again. For all you know, nothing is going to work properly going forward and the struggle will persist. I can’t describe the overwhelming feeling of relief in having had a really healthy pregnancy, no complications, a straightforward birth and most importantly, a healthy beautiful baby! Every time I had an appointment, I mentally and emotionally prepared myself to hear bad news. It felt so normal to me to be a small statistic. Any “risks” they outlined to me, I was convinced I would have them. But my body pulled through, and it gave me a new perspective on it. I experienced my relationship with my body changing since giving birth. I trust it more and I have more faith in its strength and abilities. Also, as a side note – women are superheros. It’s insane what we do. It blows my mind. But I digress…
But let’s take this back to September 2021 and I’ll give you a full run down of my journey to Griffin. Although I might also make a quick trip back further to April 2018 when I did my egg preservation prior to diving into chemotherapy.
When I found out I’d have to do chemo, I was presented with the option to go through egg/embryo preservation. At first I had turned it down. Felt like too much to go through physical-wise prior to going straight into chemotherapy. Too much stress on my body. I was barely taking in all the information at that point and was still in denial that I even had cancer (I was convinced the doctors had it all wrong for months and thought they’d call me up one day and apologize for the misdiagnosing – this lingers to this day). Anyways, I was overwhelmed to say the least. I got really lucky though and had received a second chance to think about it when they told me surgery was going to be first. This gave me time to consider it, and ultimately I figured I needed to do it as I felt the universe was telling me something.
We were offered the option to do embryos (which for everyone’s knowledge, have a much higher success rate of a baby because the additional structure to the embryos helps it de-thaw better), but after much debate, we decided not to. This was a hard time. at this point, I was three weeks into cancerland. Four weeks prior I was planning out my summer and thinking of rainbows and lollipops. Now all of a sudden I was having to deal with the risk of never being able to bear a child. So of course, I was invested in the embryos. It seemed the most logical, so obviously that’s what we should do. We were not on the same page though. It caused me so much stress that I think I broke out in a rash and it gave me back pain (which at the time I thought was the cancer spreading). I was resentful and angry.
Looking back though (and not from a view of having had a successful natural birth, but instead looking back and taking it all in), it was A LOT to ask of us. To create these embryos, these souls, that may or may not make it into our lives. It gets complicated really fast. Almost inconceivably complicated. It was too much, and in hindsight I’m glad we just did the egg preservation. I ended up freezing 9 eggs and they are still frozen, at the ripe age of 29, and free to be used if and whenever I need them. I may not have this statistic right, but the probability of one frozen egg becoming a full term baby is something like 10%. The percentages get diluted through each stage of the process (thawing, fertilizing, implantation, and then the usual stats for getting to a full-term baby). Don’t know if my math checks out here, but if I have 9 eggs, maybe that gives me a 90% chance of one full term baby?
That all being said - it’s important I address that if I was unsuccessful in getting pregnant at all, and none of my frozen eggs worked – would I be regretting not doing embryos? Yeah 100% - but would that be fair to us? No. The decision to do just eggs was the right one for us (in hindsight), but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be devastating and earth shattering if none of them worked.
THANKFULLY I didn’t have to worry about that. And I feel insanely lucky for that. I will never ever take for granted that I was able to get pregnant and have a healthy baby. even without cancer that is a blessing, but adding the layer of cancer just takes it up a level. To add infertility devastation to your life after having gone through cancer is something I just can’t imagine coping with. For this reason I was really nervous to dive into getting pregnant. It terrified me. Would I be able to live through another life heartbreak? Is this when my life, my soul, and my heart would fall apart? Unrepairable? Fertility issues can take down relationships, jobs, your soul. All this on top of cancer. It was a lot, so I tried my best to park all those thoughts deep in mind. What helped, is that early on in my egg preservation journey, I spoke to a fertility doctor who told me that because of my age, the odds of me getting pregnant naturally after treatment were pretty good. The issue I’d be facing relative to others who didn’t have cancer, is getting to the second child, as my body would go into menopause much earlier than the average women. So I did have some faith going into this.
I went off my drugs at the end of September 2021. I had been on Tamoxifen and Zoladex for three years at that point (oncologists recommend at least two years before taking a break to get pregnant, so I felt good about that timeframe). Tamoxifen stopped my cells from latching on to estrogen in my body (which is what my tumor grew from) and zoladex shut down my ovaries (the strongest estrogen that is released in your body is during ovulation). I had to go through a three month “wash” period, to wait for the Tamoxifen to get out of my body entirely. Getting pregnant while having Tamoxifen in your body can cause serious birth defects and complications, so the wash period is very important. It was scary going off my drugs. They safeguarded not only my body from the cancer returning, but also my mind from that fear. All of a sudden I felt bare, exposed, vulnerable. I was more conscious of what I was doing, eating, drinking. While I knew this was the right decision for me, it still had it’s baggage of risks.
I then also had to wait for my period to come back, which for all I knew could have taken 5 months or more. It’s all very uncertain. This is when you have to put all the faith in your body to pull through and can’t be in the driver’s seat. It’s very frustrating. On top of that uncertainty, I also had the unknown of getting pregnant. Would this take one month, three? Five? A year? At what point will I be off my drugs for too long and need to pivot? For that reason, I had lined up switching over to IVF at Mount Sinai in case we were unsuccessful and could dive into that on a dime, if needed. Time was precious.
Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long for my period to come back. Immediately after the three month “wash” my period returned. Experiencing its return made me thankful for the three years that I didn’t have a period at all (a weird silver lining maybe of all of this…). Periods SUCK and its kind of insane that we have to deal with them every month (I digress again). I got myself on one of those cycle tracker apps that help you know when you’re ovulating. The first question was inputting the history of your cycles for at least the last 3 months. Well for me it was one period, no cycle, and nothing since September 2018. So I was navigating in the dark. These little things are triggering to me though. The fact that I can’t answer such a straightforward normal question that any other women could easily answer. Thanks cancer.
Turns out I didn’t need it, because I got pregnant on my first cycle. It was crazy. who would have even guessed. Truly a miracle! I guess I’ll never know my cycle.
Mark and I had booked a trip to Chile to hike through Patagonia. We were going to be there pretty much directly in the tail end of my cycle, so I packed three pregnancy tests with me to check while we were there. The hike was extremely strenuous and pushed us to the edge physically (essentially everything they tell you not to do when you’re trying to get pregnant). We hiked ~130km in 8 days with some days hiking as much as 25km. On Feb 2nd I took my first pregnancy test, but it came back negative. I was shooting in the dark on timing though because the box says “accurate 7 days before period”, but I had NO idea what my cycle was, so I just guessed. After that negative test, I figured there was still a chance, so I decided to give it at least 5 more days.
On Feb 7th (these dates are important by the way - you'll find out why shortly) , I took the second test. I was so eager to take it though that I chugged a bottle of water just to make myself go to the washroom in order to do it. the test came back negative. At this point I was pretty convinced that it wasn’t going to be this month. I parked the feelings, and tried to enjoy the rest of our few days in Chile.
On Feb 9th, we were flying home. At this point I had decided I wasn’t pregnant. I was nearing what would have been day 30 of my “cycle” (based on when my period had started on Jan 10th), so I had lost hope. Right before flying home, I set up shop in abathroom stall in the Santiago airport to refresh before getting on the plane. I had to take almost all of my stuff out of my bag to get to my fresh clothes, so everything was a scattered mess. In that mess I saw the final pregnancy test that I had brought with me. I was about to throw it in the garbage, but thought maybe I’ll just do the test so as not to waste it (but already setting the expectation that it was going to be negative). I did the test and placed it on top of the toilet paper box, and forgot about it.
Fast forward 10 minutes or so, as I’m almost done packing up, I glanced and saw that the test was still there. I leaned over andalmost fell over. Two pink lines. WHAT!
I couldn’t believe it. HOW! So wait, this whole time I was hiking in Patagonia, I was pregnant? The thought was so wild to me. What a memory that would be, and how incredible that I was pregnant on our first try. It was a euphoric moment. I have a picture of me in the bathroom stall holding the positive test. I’m a sweaty mess and my hair is a gross ball of straw. I would attach the photo here, but I don’t want to scare you with my appearance. The moment had to be captured though, so I will cherish the photo for myself.
The other thought that SO surreal, was that this was EXACTLY 4 years from when I heard the words “you have cancer”. I say exactly, because while this positive test was on Feb 9th, it was Feb 7th that I took the second test, but the water bottle would have diluted my hormones too much for the test to work. So if I hadn’t chugged that water bottle, that test would have been positive and Feb 7th is exactly TO THE DAY that I was diagnosed back in 2018. CRAZY. sometimes you lose trust in the universe, but other times it makes you believe again.
So long story short, I got pregnant. When I went to my first midwife appointment, I told them my health history (which is SO long now – very underrated annoying aspect of having cancer). The midwife put her pen down after probably getting a seizure in her hand from all the writing, and without saying anything prompted me for a high-five. I’ll never forget it. she then said “way to go, you did it!”. I think she was tearing up too, but can’t be sure.
I’ll find some time soon to write more on my pregnancy, post-partum and further thoughts on how my cancer weaves its way through it all (because it is forever present).
While this story is positive and hopeful, I know not all stories are like this and I am very conscious of that. Hope is really important though, so I want others to know that chemotherapy is not necessarily the end of the road for them in having a family. Iknow it’s always easy to talk in “hindsight” though, and I don’t want to forget what it feels like to be in the depths of treatment and the anxiety surrounding the astronomical amount of uncertainty that lies ahead in your life because of your cancer diagnosis. At one point (or many points along the way) I too was grappling with picturing my future without a family of my own and it was a dark time.
Griffin is such a light in my life story and I am forever and ever thankful for being lucky enough to have him.
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