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On July 21, 2000. My baby brother, who I helped potty train and protect from bullies, got married.(to see pictures go here) A very sweet gal, she is. She graduated from high school with him June 2000.  

My brother's wife (my new sister!:o) got pregnant on the honeymoon, but they did not know it yet. She had had some swelling in her leg for months by that time, and sometimes it was painful to even walk. Finally a doctor decided to do tests on it. She went to the doctor and on Aug. 14 was told she had a tumor on her leg. And there was a 99% chance it was cancerous. My dad called me with the news and I drove up to her work that night (she worked at McD's) and talked with her awhile. She cried and was very upset. Aug. 16, she took a pregnancy test and it was positive. She had a biopsy scheduled Aug. 19, and was again given a 99% chance that it was cancer. She got the biopsy results Aug. 21. She had bone cancer. The oncologist told her that without immediate chemotherapy, she wouldn't live to December. If she remained pregnant, her chances of living were 20%. Everyone in her family and mine and all the doctors were telling her she needed to get an abortion. I stood by her decision to keep the baby. She felt that she could NOT have an abortion, it would be killing the only baby she will be able to have. (with the chemo probably making her sterile...) There was so much pressure on her to abort, and she would call me and we talked about it many times and for so long. She recently told me I was the only one who stood by her on that subject, even out of family members. She knew what she was doing, she understood the risks to both her and the baby.

The time before she even started her chemo was so stressful. Every phone call was bad news. They called me from every hospital they went to (imagine the collect call bills!), after every doctor's appointment, and it was all bad. And I cried every single time they called back then. I never cut myself off, cut my feelings off. For some reason I felt they both needed to know how much I cared and loved them, so I never hid my feelings or tears. I was so scared for her, and having been pregnant twice myself, I can just imagine the pain of deciding what to do.

So she started aggressive chemotherapy Sept. 24. 9 weeks pregnant. Her schedule was four 24-hour bags of chemo then stay a couple of more days to check on the chemo levels in her blood/urine, every 3-4 weeks, 4 times. Then she was to have surgery late December, be put to sleep, and have the tumor and surrounding bone removed and donor bone put there and leg reconstructed. After the surgery, she was to have 3 more sessions of the same thing. She had to stay in the hospital each session of chemo. My brother worked 3-11pm so she didn't want to be alone during that time he was away. Her mother, my father, and I took turns staying with her each night.

My nights resulted in more crying. It was a long way home. It was awful watching her being sick, throwing up, being doped up with nausea and pain medications. But I couldn't stay away. My heart told me to be there, constantly, and don't ever hold back. So I was. The first session, I stayed one night with her. The second session, one or two. The third session, 2, and the fourth session, almost every night. In between sessions, her immune system dropped and she'd have to go back into the hospital, for a week at a time. She would be dehydrated, have mouth infections, need blood and platelet transfusions, antibiotics,.... Towards the end before her surgery, I was there every time. Every night I brought my Pooh bag, notebooks, some quarters for food from the vending machines, and a large cup of tea from home. We watched TV all night, or she slept and we talked when she could. We got really close over all this time. She started telling the nurses that I was her sister. (btw- Greenville Memorial has the best nurses...) It was the strangest type of bonding. I mothered them both all the time. My house is between the hospital and where my brother works, so he would come by my house on his way to work every day and get a shower and eat the plate of leftovers I'd kept for him the night before. (and he'd excite the kids and get them all hyper before he left :o)

The first time they came over after her first session of chemo, she sat on my couch. She took her hat off to show me how her hair was falling out. When they left, I was straightening the living room up, and found a lock of her hair in the floor beside the couch. I cried hard that time. Everything rushed up and hit me square in the face then. She had called me crying a couple of days before because the hair was starting to fall out.

During her fourth session of chemotherapy, when my brother came for lunch, he asked me if I would adopt the baby if something happened to his wife. I said, "What about you?" and he said, "If she dies I'm going with her." So he is telling me if she dies, he will kill himself but he wants to make sure to have a will naming someone to take the baby. He had asked me already to come with them for her surgery but I couldn't decide, and babysitters are not easy to get, especially at 5am until late night. This made me decide to go with them, no matter what. I'd find a way. (thank you to my in-laws)

So now there's the surgery, Dec. 29, the day after my birthday. My husband and I dropped the kids off at my in-laws on the 28th, went out to eat and went home and I cried and went to bed. At 5am the 29th, my brother and his wife came to pick me up and we drove to Emory for her to have her surgery. My husband was to come pick up up that night after he was off work, and we'd get the girls the morning after. I sat with her until it was time to take her back, and we both cried. (I have this habit of preparing myself for the worst so I felt like it was the last time I'd see her again) A few times we joked about how I could hurry and sneak her out and go home. The nurse put her in the wheelchair at about 10:30, and she looked up at me, and I kissed her cheek and told her I loved her and would see her in a little bit.

My brother and I paced, played cards, walked outside, looked around at the little museum inside the hospital, walked more, smoked, walked, I called the in laws to check on the girls and then I cried, we walked some more. Finally at around 3 or 3:30 the receptionist called to check on the progress and we were given a room number to go to! NEWS!! I was thinking "Well if there's a room number for us to go to, then she's not dead!" and my brother made some comment along those lines. So we went and got all their stuff and carried it up to the room, and when we walked in, the phone was ringing. It was around 4. My brother answered it and it was the doctor. He said that she was out of surgery, everything went just as he wanted it to go, and they'd bring her up in an hour. So of course, I cried some more. Then we stacked up all our calling cards and started calling everyone on "The List".

They finally brought her up to the room, and I was standing in the hall trying not to be in the way. I kissed her forehead (last to kiss before and first to kiss after hehehe) and told her I love her.

She walked with a walker 4 days later, and walked up a few steps and back down.

The baby did perfectly through all of this, no problems whatsoever. He was even kicking and moving around when they were putting her to sleep. (fighting sleep already?)

The results of another biopsy on the removed tumor came back, and it showed that there were no live cancer cells left, in the tumor or the bone.

So then January 25 she started yet another session of chemo. The next day, the physical therapist worked with her and when I walked in her hospital room that night, she lifted her leg up for me! Using the leg muscles! She was so proud and I almost cried. (duh...) I stayed every night but one, and during that week she talked about how she doesn't want to do anymore chemo. We discussed it alot, and she's decided not to do any more chemo. So at this time, she is through with it. No more oncologists, nothing. (until May) She goes back in May to have x-rays and various tests on her chest to make sure she doesn't have it again anywhere else. I went with her the day she had to tell the oncologist she wasn't doing it anymore. She did very good, stuck with her decision. I was proud of her.

The baby is due April 22. It's a boy. It is very small for how far along it is, and the placenta is somewhat damaged from the chemotherapy so the baby is not getting all that it needs to grow as fast and big as it should. There is the possibility of having to take the baby early because of it not getting enough nutrition, oxygen, and blood. Then it may have hearing damaged because of the chemo.

But they both have made it this far. I will be in the delivery room when the baby is born and am very excited about it. February 21 I went to the ultrasound and saw it's little toes and feet and legs and arms. It is such a miracle.

The baby is trying to come early! It's ready to see me! March 6, my sister-in-law didn't feel the baby moving as much as usual, so she went to the hospital for a non-stress test, where they monitor the baby's heartbeats and contractions. It turned out she was in labor, dilated 1cm and almost fully effaced. She was given magnesium to stop the contractions, and steroids to help the baby's lungs mature faster. The magnesium worked, and she is no longer in labor. At this time she was 33.5 weeks along. Her obstetrician told her they will try to hold everything for a week, and after a week if the baby starts to come, they will let it. March 7 I heard and saw the baby having hiccups, and watched a few contractions on the monitor. March 8 she got to go home.

On to March 19, the baby's heartrate was dropping during contractions during one of the bi-weekly monitoring sessions. My sister-in-law was sent to a L&D room and given some medication to bring on more contractions to see if the heartrate kept dropping. If it was to keep dropping, she would have a c-section. But, it was not yet to happen. Baby's heart was normal.

Then comes March 26. I get a call from my sister-in-law around 1pm, saying she is to go to the hospital after 5:00pm and be induced! So frantically I get myself ready and my bags packed. My husband comes home from work eventually and is very excited. So I leave, and get at the hospital soon after my brother and his wife arrive. We wait and wait. She is given something to ripen her cervix. She starts having back pain, and I rub it for her to relieve some of the pressure. Then the doctors decide that it's working too well and takes it out. It was giving her hard contractions but not changing her cervix. Every couple of hours I start to go home, thinking nothing will happen until the next day. But when I pick my bags up to go, another nurse comes in and something else is done so I ended up staying. (My husband and I were prepared for me to stay overnight, anyway) My brother and I sleep on chairs in the L&D room. Her contractions stay strong, and she is dilating throughout the night. At 8am on the 27th she is given Pitocin to encourage labor, and BOY did it work. By 9am she was in active labor and in enough back pain to have an epidural. My back rubbing was no longer working by this point. Finally around 11am a whole crowd of medical people rush in and set everything up. After a few pushes the baby comes! It was 11:29am. I watched his head come out and looked at my sister-in-law and told her his head was out! Then his body just slid out. So tiny. He was 3pounds14ounces, 16.5" long. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I did not see my own children being born. In fact, this was the first time I've ever seen a baby born in real life. I cried and laughed.

The nurse let my sister-in-law hold him for exactly 1 minute then whisked him away to the NICU. For a few days, doctors had all these ideas about things that were wrong with him. His head was too small, his eyes too far apart, his nose too wide, his feet were not right, he will be blind...blahblahblah. I am now relieved to say that none of those things turned out to be right. The doctors seemed to just be searching for things wrong with my little nephew. He went home at one week of age. At his two-week checkup his development was advanced for his age. He is holding his head up, trying to turn over, following objects with his eyes. He was eating from a bottle on day 2. There was nothing wrong with him (excepting low birth-weight) He is indeed a miracle baby.

My sister-in-law goes to the oncologist in May to have chest x-rays to check if the cancer spread there. So hopefully it will all be over then.

I hope that my sister-in-law's experience will someday help another mother. Here, the doctors were telling her she needs to abort, the pregnancy was risking her life, the chemotherapy was a risk to the baby, etc. In the name of MEDICAL NECESSITY she was supposed to kill her unborn child. I wonder how many women have been pressured to do this by doctors. I think about how the tests for Down's Syndrome are often falsely positive, and how many mothers have aborted because of that?