- Jillian Breslin found out she had stage 4 cancer at 23 ½ weeks pregnant.
- The mom was diagnosed after developing extreme pain in her hip and back.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jillian Breslin. It has been edited for length and clarity.
After I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the doctors started the conversation about terminating my pregnancy.
It was a particularly fast-moving cancer. We should begin treatment immediately, they said.
At that point, I was 23 ½ weeks pregnant. I guess I was naive, but I'd read stories about women giving birth as early as 22 weeks and the baby being OK.
"There's still some kind of hope," I thought. "Why can't we just wait another few weeks and then begin the treatment?"
The radiology oncologist came into my room in the hospital.
"We have to make this decision very soon," she said. "In the state of New York, you can only have a termination at 24 weeks or less," she added.
My husband, James, and my parents were there.
"What would you do if this were your daughter?" my mom asked the doctor.
It was the hardest decision we'd ever made in our lives
She continued the theme that she "strongly suggested" we terminate so they could start radiation.
"I want to think about it," I told her.
Dad got very emotional and said, "No, this is your life, and I'm not going to let you throw your life away."
As a man, he couldn't possibly understand. I'd carried that baby for six months. But he was telling the truth.
It was the hardest decision that James and I had ever made. We went ahead with the procedure.
We found out about this pregnancy, my second, in January. We were ecstatic. We later found out it would be a baby girl — a little sister for our daughter, Emilia, who was 2 at the time.
Very early on in the pregnancy, I was horsing around with Emilia in her room. I did a little fake wrestling move and felt my back pop. It had never happened before. It was painful.
I brought it up with my obstetrician. He said the pain — which later extended to my left hip — was probably pregnancy-related. He said my muscles were stretching, my pelvis was shifting, and it could also be the extra weight of my uterus.
Of course, I Googled it and asked friends and family what they thought. I posted about it on Facebook groups for moms seeking advice.
I told myself that the pain and discomfort would end once I'd given birth
Everyone had a story, whether it was about other women or themselves. They said that certain relatives had a terrible time during their second pregnancy with hip and back problems. They suggested seeing a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, or a physical or massage therapist. I did all of that.
It gave me only temporary relief. I kept chalking it up to having a "difficult pregnancy." One Facebook mom said her pain didn't go away until after she'd given birth. I hunkered down. "It will all be over relatively soon," I thought.
Next, I had difficulty walking. James spoke up during an office visit to my obstetrician.
"Don't you remember you were crying in pain the other night?" he said, turning to me.
I told the doctor that it was pretty bad but that I took a bath and it felt better. I always dialed it back. I put on a brave face.
It got increasingly difficult to act, tough. I developed sciatica in my lower back. The pain shot down my legs. One of the veins in my arms seemed to be larger than usual. It was a weird red. I got tested for blood clots, but nothing came up.
We went to Disney World with James' family in early May. My hip was so bad that we rented a motorized scooter. Trying to sleep with the pain was almost impossible.
We decided to go home early. I was having trouble breathing. I couldn't make it to the bathroom and back without feeling winded. We called my obstetrician, who sent me to the emergency room. He was thinking of blood clots again because I'd just gotten off a plane.
I was in denial and thought it was impossible that I could have cancer
The people in the ER hooked me up with some oxygen. They did a sonogram on my chest to look at my lungs. They didn't share it with us right then, but they must have seen enough to do a CT scan, too.
Then, about four hours after we arrived, two doctors walked in as I lay on the stretcher bed. They brought in a chair for James.
"That's nice of them to get him somewhere to sit after all this time," I thought.
They pulled the curtain shut. I don't remember exactly what they said, but it was along the lines of, "We're very sorry. But the CT scan showed that you have cancer, and it looks like it's in your lungs, liver, and breast."
It was a short conversation. "We'll leave you alone," they said.
James was hysterical. I was actually nervously laughing.
"There's no possible way it's cancer." I thought. It wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind. I was in denial.
They extracted fluid from my lungs for analysis. The full report came back saying I had triple-negative breast cancer. I didn't have any lumps in my breast. But they were able to confirm that the cancer —stage 4 — originated from there.
We later found out that the disease had spread to my brain. I had a large tumor on my lower spine, which caused the sciatica.
I had radiation five days after the termination. They told me that I wouldn't be able to conceive again because of the places they needed to target. It was devastating.
Next, I began my first course of chemotherapy. I'm now on my second round after having radiation that focused on my brain.
James — who, like me, is 35 — has been amazing. It's not the most romantic or sexy thing to be going through as a couple. I can't do much with Emilia, so he's almost a single dad at this point. She's too young to understand, but we've told her that the doctors are "fixing Mommy." We shield her from a lot.
I comfort myself by thinking that the baby we lost helped to save my life
I beat myself up. I feel that if I'd pushed a lot harder, the cancer may have been uncovered earlier. I hope nobody ever has to go through this, but you have to be your own advocate. Don't feel that you have to be stoic.
My cancer had nothing to do with my pregnancy. But I like to think that the baby we lost — we named her Story Rose Breslin — helped save my life. The symptoms were brought to light because I was pregnant with her.
I'm not quite sure where to end my narrative. Like my treatment, it's ongoing. But I'm fighting to see my daughter grow up.
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