Katie’s Pregnancy at 42 After Breast Cancer and Denial of Her Embryos

On episode 83, Katie is from northern West Yorkshire in the UK and has almost a two-year old with her husband. Katie works as a sales director in the aerospace industry full time. Katie’s journey started when she was 34 when she found out that she had breast cancer and recently gotten back together with an ex-boyfriend who she had been with for two years. Her Australian boyfriend looked after her while she went through her cancer treatments before she started her treatment. Knowing that chemotherapy was going to affect her fertility, they said she could do one round of IVF. Then she could decide whether or not to freeze eggs or make them embryos. Having cancer was secondary to the fact that she thought she was never going to be able to have a child. Saving her fertility was priority and the hospital didn’t want her to have an extensive amount of hormonal treatment. They retrieved five eggs and had no idea it was a low egg count for her age. She had discussed with her boyfriend, to freeze half of the eggs and make embryos with the rest. Katie envisioned retrieving 20 eggs. When she woke from the sedation with only five eggs, her and her boyfriend made the joint decision to use all of the eggs to make embryos. They ended up with two frozen embryos. Her boyfriend told her no matter what happened, whether they were together or no, he wanted her to have the embryos. He had counseling to make sure he fully understood what he was committing to do. Unknowing to her, he knew they weren’t going to continue to be together. For Katie, she thought they would be together and felt protected that if they weren’t together, she was still going to have the chance of children. After all of her treatment, he went to Canada and never came back. Even thought they split up, she never had any reason to believe she wouldn’t be able to use the embryos when the time was right for Katie. 

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Because of her cancer treatment, she had to go on Tamoxifen for five years.  Her oncologist said that whatever happens, she can’t even attempt pregnancy on Tamoxifen because it will affect the fetus. Katie started chemotherapy in February 2013 and then they split up in October, 2013. 13:42 It took quite a long time for her to get over him and pick herself back up after having the cancer treatment. Katie moved with her job. She wanted a fresh start and she went to the South of the UK and built herself back up. She started doing a lot of fitness things. She went to Machu Picchu. She did a 450 kilometer ride around Vietnam, climbed Everest base to Everest base camp. She was getting to know herself, healthy and good mentally to where she wanted to be as the five years were ticking on. Then she went to the fertility clinic for a checkup. The same one where she had the IVF treatment. She was told that at that point, that she wouldn’t be able to use the embryos without the consent of my ex-partner. That was going to be difficult because we haven’t spoken in four or five years. Katie was still single at this point and getting close to the five year mark and still single. She has embryos, so she doesn’t need a man.

In the UK, in certain areas, if you are under 40, you can get funded IVF treatment through the NHS. So, she went to her local clinic and she asked them whether it would be possible and they said yes, as long as you start the treatment before you’re 40, it would be funded. Katie told her she’s already done part of it because she already has two embryos. The nurse said as long as your partner hasn’t got any other children, but Katie didn’t know because he wasn’t her partner any more and it might be difficult to find out. Even though she’s doing it by herself, he is the father. Katie wouldn’t qualify if he’s now had other children. She thought that was really strange. She had an appointment at the fertility clinic where she had the IVF  back in Manchester. The doctor said she would need to get his permission, but I told him that he’s already given his permission. The doctor says, yes, but he needs to give it again. He needs to consent for  you to be able to use these embryos. Now, she needed to find a way to contact him. Luckily she knew his English auntie and Katie got in contact with her and got his mother’s number.  Then she contacted his mother and told her the situation and asked for his number. His aunt said that he was engaged, living in Canada and had a child. His mother replied to Katie and said he won’t let you contact him directly, but what do you want? Katie replied to her and told she just needs him to consent. She didn’t want anything else from him. She is not expecting him to pay for this child, if there is one. She just wants him to get in contact with the hospital and give them the consent. It was days and days before she got back to Katie. Unfortunately, Clint says no. It’s a decision that he’s jointly made with himself and his partner. His partner doesn’t want a sibling of their, child being brought up somewhere else in the world, or a sibling somewhere else a half sibling somewhere else, regardless of the fact that he would never bump into that child. It’s not something that he would be willing to do. Then, she replied back to his mother and said, well, that not you said at the time. He promised that nothing would change. In that respect, that he would  make sure she was able to have a child and went through all of the things that he’s said and then she replied back again and said he said that he was only willing to have a child with you at the time if you’d stayed together, but it was never part of his plan to have a child if he wasn’t going to be the father, which it totally okay.

Katie says not true. But, then, obviously there was another person in the mix at this point, because, obviously, he was engaged to be married and obviously the partner would have had something to say about it. She wondered if she was in her situation, how she would handle it.

How much did she know of her situation and scenario?  He probably had never mentioned Katie to her at all, and then all of a sudden hi mom’s saying, ”Oh, by the way, these embryos that you’ve got with this other woman that you’ve probably never mentioned to  your wife to be, wants to know if you’ll consent to the child. It was probably was a difficult conversation for him to have. But, obviously, Katie was devastated. This was happening just at the time she was moving back to the north with her job.  Just at the time that Katie and her now husband, Frankie, we’re starting committing to a relationship because we’ve known each other for 12 years at this stage. We’ve been friends and been part of the same social circle growing up and hanging out in our twenties. He’s Irish and lived in Manchester and Katie lived in Manchester after university.  Nothing more than friendship and then something happened  when Katie went over in 2018 on a trip and we started talking about him coming to visit and then he did. Then we became again and then it started to become a regular thing and that was 2019.

In one of our conversations, Katie, obviously, told him all about these embryos and he couldn’t understand why anyone would not do that. Frankie said that maybe they should just look at his fertility. In Katie’s head, she felt there was no point. She said it’s done.  When she went to the fertility clinic the doctor said 5 eggs is rubbish. If you only have five when you were 34, now I’m 40, I’m not going to get any. There’s little to no chance, so why bother. She didn’t want to go back to her. She wants to start somewhere with someone else. Frankie asked her why don’t you come of Tamoxifen? We can try. You never know.

They know they want to be together, so he moved over to the UK and they moved int together in February 2020, just before lockdown. At this point, Katie would have been 41 in September. Then they got locked down.  They couldn’t do anything else, so they just gave it a try. She came of Tamoxifen, waited the three months to get out of her system. The breast cancer that Katie had was hormone positive, so she had high levels of progesterone and estrogen in her body that was making the cancer grow. Then she had another thing called HER2 positive, which makes it grow and even quadruple the rate that it would do ordinarily. So, she had it removed, the lumps removed and had radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Tamoxifen is something that’s given to positive, receptive, positive cancer which should, if there’s any lingering left of any little bits of cancer, it should then keep it at bay because it keeps your hormone levels down. So, basically, it strips you of all your female hormones. So if you were to get pregnant, a fetus wouldn’t get the female/male hormones, it would only have testosterone, so there would be a very high risk of deformity because it’s not getting the correct ratio of hormones. It’s the female hormones that helps it settle and grow and it would have any because tamoxifen does is kind of like puts you in a menopausal state.  It makes your body believe you’re in the menopause, so  you go through the hot flashes and night sweats.

When you go on that medication, you go through all of that, achy joints, but Katie was still having periods. So, not everybody that takes it still has regular cycles, but Katie had them. She thought she was fertile because the two go hand-in-hand, but they don’t. It’s easy to think that if you’re having a regular period, they you’ve got a chance of getting pregnant.

So, let’s come off the Tamoxifen and we’ll just try. We tried through 2020, then moved into our new house that we live in now in October 2020. Now they were in their new house starting a new life. They got in contact and started researching the clinics and what she was looking for. A clinic that doesn’t use a high level of hormones in it’s treatments plans because of the things I spoke of. She went to see her oncologist for her cancer check up and said that she had come off the Moxford and he said she shouldn’t have done that without speaking to him first.

Well, she did and they have tried to get pregnant and nothing has happened for three months. Now they want to go further and she need him to say that it was okay. He said yes because Tamoxifen and pregnancy are the opposites of the graph.

If  you’re pregnant, your hormone levels are up here and cancer kind of grows somewhere in the middle. So, being pregnant is actually as good as being on Tamoxifen. That how he explained it. Obviously, the journey to get pregnant is probably where you’re in the danger zone. But, what he said to Katie, as well, is that he does it on percentages of reoccurrence. That if you’ve done Tamoxifen for five  years, the results suggest that you have reduced your chance of cancer by so much percent and that being on Tamoxifen for another five year is only going to get  you an extra 2%. So you have to think about what you want for your future. You haven’t had any reoccurrence in about seven years now. That’s good. You’re not harming yourself by coming off Tamoxifen because that’s also something that she had to consider. It’s no good me selfishly wanting a family and get cancer and die again and leave a young child with my husband to bring up alone. So, there was a lot to think about. She did a lot of research and then we had a meeting in December 2020 with a clinic in Manchester, a private clinic.  At this point, she was well over the threshold for HGS funded IVF. So, there was a financial question about the cost.

She had the appointment and had the tests. They said she was a woman in her 40’s and your egg reserve is exactly as it would be for a woman in their 40”s. No better, not worse. There’s nothing to suggest that your treatment has made it any worse, but, obviously, you have a 10% chance. She would advise any woman in their 40’s to use their own eggs.  They were afraid the chemo affected the eggs and quality might not be good enough. There is one more option if she would consider it. And that is donor eggs. Her womb and everything would be safe and carrying a child would be absolutely no problem for you. You’re fit and healthy and everything is intact down there. It’s all working. If you were to look at that option, also the drugs that you have to take, because all you have to have is implantation. So, you don’t have to have the drugs leading up to the egg retrieval and then all of that. Your cycles just has to readjust. Being at the right time to have the implantation and then, and go from there.  She said ok, but it’s obviously something that you have to go away and talk about with your husband/boyfriend.

It was difficult because she had gone through a period of grieving for a child that I was never going to have of my own biologically because I wasn’t allowed to use the embryos. During lockdown, we would suddenly get lucky and things would happen naturally and we’re going to spend our life together. He is also 40, so we’re living our lives doing everything we want to do. We want to have a family.

Is it selfish of her to do that just because of biology, when she could go down the route of donor eggs, which, obviously, has a higher chance and she still can carry the baby, still give birth and the baby is mine. Her oncologist told her she needed to be careful what drugs she put in her body. That’s why he sent her on a path of trying to find the best clinic that uses the least amount. So, we went away for a break from work and everything to think about it. She also wanted to talk about it with her closest friend because she went through her chemo with her.

So, in late January, she said no. So, let’s make another appointment. Katie thinks we should go down the donor route. We made the appointment and go told we needed to go on the donor list and give their requirements. There is also eggshare. Somebody’s coming to go through their IVF treatment. And, because of the cost, which is about 11-12,000 pounds, they can half that cost by sharing their eggs. It takes about ½ the price off.

She wanted to be matched to a donor by hair color, height, eye color, hobbies, interests and go through a full medical screening. Frankie had to have a cyctic fibrosis test and then there is the waiting list, because there are limited donors. They went in January and they were matched with somebody, April, and she was an egg sharer. They tell you about their age. She was 31 or 32 and said they would send out the drugs that Katie would need to start taking in line with when she’s going to be scheduled to come in for her egg retrieval.  Then we’ll call you.  Obviously, Frankie went in and gave his Sam, his sperm, and wait for a call.

She finally got a call and the lady had gone for the egg retrieval but there were only so may eggs, not enough to share. Therefore, the egg share was off. So that donor was gone. Then you’re obviously back on the list and back waiting for the next donor. We decided that we don’t care what their hobbies are, we don’t care about their education, blonde hair or anything. They just want to get matched to somebody. Now it was May and they received a call. There was somebody coming in and to give them 3-4 four weeks and they should be able to proceed. The time came and no call, so Katie called and asked what was going on. She hasn’t signed the paperwork. She says she’ll sign it and come in for her assessment. So, another couple of weeks go by and it’s June. We didn’t expect it to take this long. She’ll be turning 43 in September. She called and talked to the lady at the clinic.  She told Katie that if she goes to Europe they would have a much high chance because they have anonymity and they get paid to do it. The same in Spain or Croatia or Cyprus.  You will have loads of donors in their twenties. They didn’t know what to do. She was talking to an employee about fresh vs. frozen. Katie wanted to know more about frozen. The lady had a bag of frozen embryos and Katie said she’d take them. The lady said she didn’t know anything about them.  Katie didn’t care. She didn’t look like her sister. This was early July. She got another load of medication and then Frankie proposed, then engaged and went back to Ireland and had a big party to celebrate. This was the end of July.  She had the implantation August 3. They got a call on the first day to say that three had started the process as embryos. Two were looking good, one not so good.  Then on the third day, Katie got told one hasn’t gone any further, now you have two, and one is looking really good. She wanted her to come in and get implanted, so she rushed to the hospital. That donor had seven eggs and they got all seven. They guarantee a minimum of six eggs. Frankie had to give his fresh sperm. Katie went in for the implantation and the lady that did it was shaking. She said she didn’t think she could do this. This is a nine cell. Katie didn’t know what that meant. Apparently, the nine cell is the best embryo level that you can get on day three. She was so nervous she had to call her senior in and he had to come in and talk her through the process of doing it and put the camera on and was looking at the camera to make sure that it was going in and, obviously, you know, you see it go all the way in, and go up and then it’s like a little, picture of a little dot. The told her good luck. Katie couldn’t figure out why everyone was so excited. They said they would contact us on day five. Two days later to say, unfortunately, that embryo never continued past a three. It wasn’t going to be a viable embryo. They have no more embryos. They have no other chances. This is our only chance now without having to start the whole process again and fork out a lot of money.  Both of her sisters had children in their twenties, mid twenties. And I, there was a big gap and the gap was only increasing. Then you start calculating the age that you’re going to be when they’re at a certain age doing all that crazy stuff. She always felt the time pressure, but as it turned out, we waited and she did. She was very proud of her self. She waited and went in on the Monday and the blood test was the following Friday, so it wasn’t two whole weeks. It was only 11 days.  The one thing that she found really hard is not to do anything.  They waited the two weeks and went in on the Friday morning for the blood test first thing. They said they would call them before the end of the day.  She picked up her husband at 4 o’clock from work.  She sat on the sofa worrying about am pregnant? Do I feel pregnant? I don’t feel any different. Her husband was driving up as the hospital was calling. She wanted them to call back in 10 minutes to give her husband enough time to get in the house and be there when they told them. She called back in 30 minutes and said she was happy to tell us that we were pregnant. The nurse wasn’t surprised—it was a 9 cell. Katie went straight up to the bathroom where she kept her pregnancy tests and took one. In fact, she took one almost every day. They only told Frankie’s mom. If she had told her mom, she would be taking her wedding dress shopping. She also told Frankie that if she was pregnant, they would have to get married.  Then they started discussing wedding plans. Katie was about 8 weeks along and she had a bit of nausea. Nothing horrific. All she wanted was beef burgers and she hadn’t eaten beef since she was 12. Then she didn’t want them any more.

Katie was very tired in  her first trimester. That’s the one that you also can’t tell work, isn’t it?  Luckily though for her, she worked from home, so they didn’t necessarily know that I used to sneak off and have a little half an hour nap. The only thing she really had in the first trimester was nausea. What  her main concern was acid reflux. Heartburn and not sleeping because of it and being sick. When she laid down at night, she couldn’t get to sleep and then it would all come up and then she would be sick and then she be back in bed and up and down. She took medication for it and it helped, but it didn’t get rid of it.   She think her legs or something was always under her rib, so it always felt like she  couldn’t breathe sometimes.  One time she didn’t move for the longest and she panicked and range the hospital and they told her to come on down and then get her hooked up. Everything was fine.

She found out it was a girl and she told everyone. Katie always wanted a boy.  She thought she was a boy mom, not a girly mom. But, when her niece was born, they had a really close bond and Katie was a favorite auntie. At 16 weeks she found out the gender.  She needed to prepare. They also did a gender reveal with the family. She needed to know what color to paint the walls.

She was born on April 13. She needed a C-section because she was on Tamoxifen. There are lot of different side effects and, unfortunately, the luck one that she is, she got the one of the most rarest side effects, which is fibroid growth. She was going through having a lot of pain, like a knife that was stuck under her pelvis. She felt like it was digging into her ovaries. Then, when she went to have me scanned, they said she’s got a huge melon shaped fibroid growing in the uterus.  We can either leave it, change your medication and see if it shrinks or we can have it removed. Katie told them it’s causing her too much pain. So, she went and had a myomectomy, which is the incision is the same as a cesarean. Instead of pulling out the baby, they pulled out the fibroid. This was in 2014, that if she was ever to get pregnant, then she would have to have a C section because there is already scarring and damage to the uterus wall. That’s what she was told, so that’s what she thought was going to happen. When she told them this, they had to contact the hospital and that was a trip. The hospitals don’t communicate with each other. She was in a West Yorkshire hospital and they couldn’t contact or find out from their system anything to do with the Lancashire hospital, so Katie had to go and get it. This took months. She was going in for a C section because that what was advised. Then this letter turned up when she was about week 32 it said there was no uterus rupture. When she went for her appointment, they said ok, you’re booked for one at 39 weeks. When she went back at 36 weeks, Gavin said forget the C section. They said, OK, but you’re carrying a large baby at the moment. Based on the growth rate, she’s going to be over nine pounds. They told me all the things that could happen. You’re not selling me on this. So, the safest option then is to go back to the original plan of having a C section. Should I? Should I not? Back and forth. She finally scheduled at 39 weeks for a C section. But, then she couldn’t drive for 6 weeks. What to do? She ended up with a C section. She got all gowned up, went to the OR and they gave her a numb shot for the C section and she felt all the tugging and then began to clean her up. Then everyone began to panic. They gave her some more drugs and told her not to worry, but she heard “they can’t stop the bleeding”. She was hemorrhaging and they gave her more drugs. That’s when she felt sick but also felt out of it. They couldn’t give the baby to Katie, so they gave her to Frankie. They took her to recovery and said she wouldn’t be going back to the ward. She was going somewhere else and they will get all her stuff. They laid her on her side and gave Eveline to her. They put her on the bad side and she told them there won’t be anything there, but nobody was listening to her and she was getting upset. This was supposed to be the best moment of her life and she didn’t feel well and nobody is listening to her. She felt trapped. Maybe she really wasn’t saying anything, she was so drugged up. They wheeled us somewhere else in a room of our own and said they would be back. The monitor was beeping and nobody came back. The baby hadn’t had any milk and hadn’t latched or anything. Katie began to come alive again and someone came in to turn the machine off. Katie was still in a towel, no clothes, nothing to eat, so she took the baby and held her and she felt like she was beginning to come around.

Katie had found out that she hemorrhaged and they couldn’t stop the bleeding and then they’d given her more drugs to be able to fix it.  Then it took them another 20 minutes to stop it. because they’ given her extra drugs, obviously that took her a lot longer than 20 minutes to come around. They obviously hadn’t read her medical notes. They didn’t understand that she had breast cancer and then they weren’t able to stick her on her nipple and it’s okay. So, she was really upset.  This really lovely nurse came over and Katie said, “ Look, I said my oncologist has told me that I don’t know whether I will be able to produce breast milk or not. I’ve got one boob that has had a lumpectomy by my nipple and everything is still there so it sold still be all connected and then I’ve had a reconstructive surgery on the other one and I’ve actually had my nipple removed and removed further up so that one is probably the one that’s not going to work. But, we don’t know and my oncologist that it was hilarious that he came up with this.” He said she’ll have to suck it and see. Obviously when you have a C section, it doesn’t come in straight away, either. Because  your body is shocked into this rather than it being natural. So, she worked with me and we got some out of it. It’s in a little syringe and gave it to her. They just abandoned us in that room and kind of left of there. And when they came back in, it was tea time, about 5 o’clock. They said we can stay until we get kicked out of here, so he left about eight 8o’clock. Brilliant. She’s got a room to herself and she’ll settle down for the night. And then they came in to wheel me out and take me back to the ward where there was four women on the ward together and obviously four crying babies. Then, Katie was trying to feed her and she wasn’t latching. Then she was asking for help, but nobody seemed to want to help me. At that point, she had managed to get up out of bed and was very close to the reception desk, so I would waddle over and say, “Can somebody please come and help me because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but she’s not latching?”  They said they would be right over. Eventually somebody came in hours and hours later.  They said she wasn’t producing any milk. She said she was because the other nurse spent the time with her and she got it out. You just need to work with me. She said no, we just have to use formula. We’re too busy.

They were home by 6:30 pm the following day after a C-section. By day 5, even Katie was out walking up the street with the push chair and the pram. Katie had to take painkillers for about 5 days after coming home and begin to ease off.

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