pregnancy.

My first pregnancy was in 2016 (36 years old) and I miscarried at 11 weeks.

My next pregnancy was soon after and while it started off well, by the third trimester I was having real difficulty with my breathing. I thought many of my complaints were normal for expectant mothers and that I was just being dramatic. I had gotten used to sleeping sitting up, and thought the majority of my problems were due to the complications of the disease. One week away from inducement, I had such a sharp pain when breathing it was no longer bearable. My midwife told me it wasn’t normal so I went into the Taupo emergency department to have it checked out. Originally, the doctor was going to send me home saying the baby was pushing on my diaphragm but her heart-rate was abnormally high and my midwife wouldn’t let me leave. I was transferred to Rotorua Hospital and as soon as I was admitted the baby’s heart rate went back to normal. I remember thinking at the time that maybe I was over-reacting but now I think she was just making sure her mama was safe. The next day I had an x-ray and I can still see the doctors faces of shock as they came in and described the ‘shadow’ they found throughout the left hand side of my chest.

It was arranged that I would have a caesarean but after further consultation the doctors decided I should be transferred to Waikato Hospital as they had larger specialist teams and the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

We expected to go straight into theatre but when we arrived were told the specialists wanted to assess the situation. I had a CT scan, and then was told it was tumours, by three doctors in white jackets. It was a surreal moment, I fainted. It was meant to be the most beautiful moment in my life and in a matter of days had turned into the most frightening.

We had about 15 people in the theatre for the caesarean. aneathesists, surgeons, nurses, a team on standby in case the tumour leaked, another team for my heart, and a team for our baby. The cesarean was great. We were blessed by incredibly gifted people and Pepe-Liliu Patricia Rameka was born at 2.22pm on the 5th May 2017. She was taken immediately to Newborn Intensive Care Unit with sticky lungs. That place was a sanctuary for me after the news and during my recovery.

I had a bit of a hard time that night with some pins and needles in my chest. Vernon was called as the on-call doctor thought something was happening with my heart. As it turned out I had a reaction to one of the painkillers. This was to become a common theme though – everyone always would get side-tracked by the tumours…

My pregnancy was a miracle. Pepe is a miracle. It still blows my mind to think of what she grew through.

After a few weeks in hospital we were discharged home with oncology appointments scheduled. A biopsy had revealed that the tumours were malignant, stage 4 cancer.

With a newborn at home this was overwhelming news and we had to find hope, and a plan, that I could survive the impossible.

See Treatments….