By 19 weeks I was in a lot of pain in the lower right abdomen, which my obstetric team said was just scar tissue stretching from the two previous caesarean sections. So I continued to rest a lot during the pregnancy with the pain steadily increasing until it was very uncomfortable to move. I was fine while sitting or standing but actually getting from sitting to standing was very painful!
On 1st May 2000 my waters broke and we rushed to the hospital. Within 1 hour Chantel Liberty was born via c-setion as planned. This was no routine caesarean. After they delived Chantel, which seemed to take a lot more pulling and pushing than the other deliveries, I heard someone ring out asking for blood to be sent urgently to theatre one, while another nurse asked for someone to clean the floor before she slipped over. I had haemorrhaged. I lost at least one litre of blood maybe two and had a transfusion while still in theatre. With the loss of blood I was feeling faint and I remember wondering if I was going to die. I felt that I needed to stay awake.
But why was it taking so long to stitch me up? Why was all the pulling and pushing still going on? For an hour the surgeon and another specialist did a thorough examination of my abdominal cavity and surrounding organs. And I was awake for all this!
The reason - a large mass replacing the lower segment of the uterus! Samples were taken and sent for histology testing but we were assured that everything was OK and that it looked like it was "just fibroids". Another specialist told us later that my uterus "should have ruptured" during pregnancy because the surgeon just put his hand through this mass with no incision to deliver Chantel.
Well ..... four days later we were hit with "bad news". The surgeon arranged a time to meet my husband and I and told us, "there's no easy way to say this, but you've got cancer!" Shocked is an understatement; maybe devastated better describes how we felt! We were assured that it was "fully treatable" and "cureable in most cases" with Chemotherapy and a hysterectomy after treatment! They left the room leaving us to ponder this news.
The first thing we did was to ring two of our closest friends and ask them to start praying. While my husband was making these phone calls I opened my Bible and read: "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in Thee: Yea, in the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast." (Psalm 57:1) We knew we had to go through this experience and would come out the other side, but how and for how long we did not know.
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