Cancer Made Me A Single Dad

My story So some quite a few years ago I met my lovely wife, as time went on I knew she was definitely the lady for me.

 She had often said she wanted children, to me I wasn’t fussed either way.

Shortly before going on our holiday my girlfriend Stacey said she was going to the doctors as she has something weeping from her nipple. So she went to the doctors and was told not to worry it’s just an allergy, and to put some cream on it and perhaps change our washing powder.

 She had a sigh of relief and off we went on our holidays. On our return she without me knowing did a pregnancy test and found out she was pregnant. I wasn’t over fussed but she was happy. 

As the time went on she was having a number of issues, bad back pains, leg and hip pains and starting to hunch over a lot so went to the doctors, and we were told she’s just one of the unlucky ones who’s having a bad pregnancy, she was sent to physio etc.

A few weeks later a lump had formed on her left breast which again she had checked out by the doctor and was told it’s just a blocked milk duct you just won’t be able to breast feed. 

At the time I was working away a lot so she had to go to either her mums or sisters as she was struggling to do things on her own, I was helping her shower. 

We did all our scans as you should found out by the nurse blabbing that we were having a boy which I was a bit more excited about if I’m honest.

Then we were at home and she went to the toilet and saw some blood in it so went off to hospital, we were told that her waters had broken at 21 weeks. 

We were then told our hospital was not kitted out to deal with a baby that premature so she had to be moved to Luton hospital and monitored.

 There she was for 2 weeks constantly being monitored and checked, after the 2 weeks she was discharged and we were told that yes the waters had broken but only a small amount of fluid had escaped so all was ok.

I returned to work that weekend, to get a phone call from Stacey’s mum saying they had to take her back to hospital and the hospital think she has got pneumonia.

 I asked if I should leave work straight away but they said just come back in the morning as usual. The next morning I went to Stacey’s mums before going to the hospital, by this time she had been moved to intensive care ward. 

I came in and saw she had been put in to an induced coma and they had been doing tests on her. 

After a few hours a doctor and nurse came and saw me and said that they found Stacey had breast cancer, which had also spread to the glands under her arms her lungs, and all of her bones causing 2 vertebrae in her neck to collapse. This aggressive amount of cancer had spread so far because of her being pregnant.

They then told me that they need to give her chemotherapy there and then and needed my permission to continue. I was not sure what to say as we weren’t married at that time, but they said if I didn’t she would definitely be dead within a weekend, I asked about the baby and they said that they have done it before but as it stands Stacey was here and the baby wasn’t. I agreed and they gave her the treatment. 

After a few days she was still going down hill on a breathing machine, they said they wanted to try giving her a tracheotomy (putting a breathing pipe direct in to her wind pipe ).

This seemed to help and gradually she improved, all the time still pregnant.

Eventually the doctors were saying about delivering the baby at 30 weeks while she was still in a coma. But they ended up not doing that. 

She was then revived and we had to give her the news of what had been going on. 

After a few more weeks she was stable enough to be moved to the cancer ward.

They were also  saying that they wanted to deliver the baby and finally made the decision to do so on April the first, however my baby didn’t want to be born on April fool’s day so Stacey went in to labour on 28th march.

We were shortly moved to  a maternity ward and we were taken up to delivery at about 7am on march 29th. She was told she had to have a Caesarian as her body couldn’t deal with a normal birth. 

I was allowed in as Lind as the epidural worked which it did, so there we were and out came our little boy about 7 weeks early weighing 4lbs exactly. We chose his name Thomas and off he went to baby intensive care.

After Stacey was stitched up and sorted we went to see him, we were told he would be on a breathing machine for about 2 days but he was off after about 2 hours!!

As the weeks went on I would take Thomas from intensive care over to the cancer ward and also take Stacey over to see Thomas, eventually we were all allowed to go home on the same day. 

All was great Stacey had fought off all the cancer except for in her bones which was being managed by regular treatment. Thomas was growing and doing fine then after about a year Stacey started getting headaches so we went to see the doctor to be told that she had secondary cancer on the brain which they might not be able to do much with. 

We were managing but arguing a lot because of all the medications she was on. 

Rapidly approaching was our wedding day and Stacey was really upset she lost her hair again just before getting married. Then on the week before we were getting married I was mugged I had my head stamped on etc so had to wear make up to my wedding haha! 

It all went great, but over the next few months Stacey started having nose bleeds and fits etc..

Finally she was taken in to our local hospice for what I thought was rest bite but once she was there I found out they were stopping her medication as it wasn’t doing anything they would just be giving pain relief, they expected her to be there for just a few days. But after a few weeks I started to think they must be wrong, but I was, on the 9th week of her being there I arrived and I had been there for no longer than 10 minutes and she passed away 10 days before out 1st wedding anniversary. Thomas was 2. 

Thomas is now 8 it has been very hard for me especially when he’s upset about missing his mummy. But we get through it.

I’m not looking for sympathy. I just hope my story will educate people of some of the early signs of cancer