'Before, I worried about my mortality - now I’m too busy being a mom': Mother who fought breast cancer while pregnant has healthy baby girl
Lisa Bender was 11 weeks' pregnant when she found the malignant lump - but thanks to a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, she was able to carry daughter Alice Virginia to full term.
By TAMARA ABRAHAM
Last updated at 7:22 PM on 7th April 2011
Last updated at 7:22 PM on 7th April 2011
Like most new mothers, Lisa Bender is sleep-deprived.
But tiredness is of little concern for the 32-year-old, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who has been battling breast cancer since the early stages of her pregnancy.
For her and husband Ryan, also 32, the birth of healthy baby daughter Alice Virginia, who weighed 7lb, 7oz when she arrived earlier this month, is nothing short of a miracle.
New mother: Lisa Bender, who was fighting cancer for most of her pregnancy, is thrilled and relieved after giving birth to a healthy baby girl
Mrs Bender, who discovered she had Stage Two breast cancer 11 weeks into her pregnancy, had been forced to forgo a more aggressive course of treatment in favour of one that would enable her to carry her unborn child to term.
Surgery, followed by four sessions of chemotherapy kept the disease under control until the birth on March 13.
She told the Today show: 'I didn’t even realise how stressed out I was during my pregnancy until now.'
Now she is undergoing a new course of treatment that, her doctors hope, will completely kill off the cancer.
Healthy: Alice Virginia weighed 7lb, 7oz when she was born on March 13
Precaution: Mrs Bender must breastfeed her daughter in case traces of the aggressive drugs she has been taking since the birth enter her milk
But use of the drug Herceptin means that Mrs Bender is unable to continue breastfeeding her newborn child in case traces end up in her milk.
Support: Ryan Bender admitted that his wife's diagnosis was hard to accept
She revealed: Today's an emotional day. I had to stop breast-feeding today. It feels like the cancer is taking it away from me.'
Her oncologist, Dr Douglas Yee, of the Masonic Cancer Center explained: 'We're trying to push all the buttons we can push to kill the cancer cells.'
He added that treatment would also include a six-week course of daily radiation and hormone therapy.
Even then, she is unlikely to be declared completely cancer-free for five years.
In the meantime, Mrs Bender says that being a mother to Alice Virginia is keeping her mind off her treatment.
'Our paediatrician says she’s perfectly healthy,' she said.
'We talked about her diaper rash. We talked about the normal newborn things.
'Before, I worried about my mortality. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about cancer now. I’m too busy being a mom.'
Survivor: Mrs Bender was thrilled to see that her baby, here in the 3D ultrasound scan, had hair, given that she had lost hers in the cancer treatment
The couple first told their story on the Today show last month, a week before the due date.
Mrs Bender was shown heavily-pregnant with a scarf around her head masking the hair-loss caused by her courses of chemotherapy.
She said: 'Cancer treatment is very disempowering. It's very invasive. It's very visible. Surgery changed my body. My hair has fallen out...
Careful approach: Mrs Bender, pictured early in her pregnancy before she lost her hair, and after, at eight months, was treated with surgery and chemotherapy
She revealed how the sight of her unborn child's hair in her final scan filled her with relief.
'[It] was the last check after chemo to see how her growth was doing.
CANCER IN PREGNANCY
Though cancer in pregnancy is rare, it is a growing problem, affecting nearly one in every 1,000 pregnant woman in the U.S.
There are new 3,500 new cases diagnosed each year, with between seven and 15 per cent of pre-menopausal breast cancer sufferers expecting a child.
The rising numbers are blamed on the fact that more women are delaying motherhood until their thirties and forties.
A Swedish study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology revealed that the incidence of cancer in pregnancy had more than doubled between 1963 and 2002.
Research has found that certain chemotherapy drugs, such as Cytoxan and Ardriamycin, which were used in Mrs Bender's treatment, are safer during pregnancy because the drug molecules are too large to pass through the placenta, thus less likely to affect the unborn child.
'We got to see her hair. For me, it just symbolised that she had been protected from the chemo, because I lost most of my hair in treatment.
'The fact that she had hair made me feel like she was OK. That my body had done its job and protected her... I'm just so excited. I just feel like she's such a survivor already.'
The couple admitted in the interview that the diagnosis had been hard to accept.
Mr Bender, a software engineer, said: 'I had a bad feeling about the lump in her breast the moment I felt it.
'I remember that pause - that moment of pause that was just like... really? No, this can't be...'
Mrs Bender, a city planner, who is a keen marathon-runner and cyclist and advocates a healthy, organic lifestyle, found the cancer treatment a hard concept to accept.
'It's really a matter of my health, my life,' she explained. 'But emotionally it was so hard to think about putting poisonous chemicals in my body.
'I had given up caffeine, I was trying to eat really organic food and then I was going to do chemo?
'The purpose of chemotherapy is to stop cells from growing.'
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