Coping With Pregnancy and Cancer
- The wife of Brazilian soccer player Leo Zagueiro was diagnosed with breast cancer seven months into her pregnancy with the couple’s second child. Fortunately, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. However, her stage 4 cancer journey continues with more treatment ahead.
- Pregnancy-associated breast Cancer is rare. According to the American Cancer Society, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer “about once in every 3,000 pregnancies.” It mainly affects pregnant women in their 30s.
- Detecting breast cancer so tricky while pregnant is that the breast changes in appearance. These changes can easily be masked by the body’s natural response to pregnancy; thus, diagnoses usually come after the cancer has reached advanced stages.
- Surgery is often the first line of treatment for pregnancy-associated breast cancer. Chemotherapy can be administered in most cases during pregnancy. After giving birth, additional treatments may begin, such as radiation or hormone therapy.
The wife of famous soccer player Leo Zagueiro is relishing a miracle while in the eye of a storm. Brazilian singer Camila Campos, 29, recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, all while facing stage 4 breast cancer.
“We knew that Sofia’s birth would be like a balm in the middle of the desert we’re living in, and so it was!” Campos and Zagueiro wrote in an Instagram post.
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Women coping with a breast cancer diagnosis is stressful on its own; carrying an unborn child further complicates potential treatment.
According to the American Cancer Society, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer “about once in every 3,000 pregnancies.”
“A few days ago, I entered a new phase of my life. Seven months pregnant, feeling a lot of discomfort, crying from back pain, I was faced with the diagnosis of breast cancer, which has now spread to my bones,” Campos said.
The family says they are relying on their faith to help them through the challenge of raising a newborn while undergoing metastatic breast cancer treatment. Fortunately, they’ve received an outpouring of support from concerned fans, who showered them with positive messages.
“Seeing so many messages of support and prayers has strengthened our hearts and faith,” Campos said.
What makes detecting breast cancer so tricky while pregnant is that the breast undergoes changes in appearance. These changes can easily be masked by the body’s natural response to pregnancy. However, changes in the shape, feel, and overall appearance of the breast can also be tell-tell signs of breast cancer.
Helping Patients With Fertility Resources
Coping With Pregnancy-Associated Breast Cancer
The American Cancer Society notes that treating breast cancer in pregnant women mirrors that for non-pregnant women – cure the cancer or control it and minimize the risk of spread. However, protecting the fetus makes treatment more challenging.
Research published in Obstetrics and Gynecology says women most impacted by pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) are in their 30s.
Most women with PABC are found to have a “painless mass in the breast or thickening of the skin of the breast.”
As noted earlier, researchers say a diagnosis usually comes after the cancer has matured because “pregnancy-induced breast changes, such as engorgement, often make it difficult to discern a concerning breast mass from a normal breast in a pregnant woman.”
Surgery with modified radical mastectomy (lumpectomy) is often the first line of treatment for pregnant women facing breast cancer. After giving birth, radiation and hormone therapy may be treatment options.
After the first trimester, chemotherapy may be used for adjuvant treatment following surgery.
“The majority of chemotherapeutic agents, including taxanes and vinorelbine, were safe for use during the second and third trimesters,” the researchers said in their report.
It’s important to note since the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer is so rare, limited research exists.
More on Cancer During Pregnancy
The American Cancer Society says in addition to breast cancer, other types of cancer pregnant women may experience include:
- Melanoma
- Leukemia
- Cervical cancer
- Thyroid cancer
- Ovarian cancer
- Colon cancer
- Lymphoma
Remember, during pregnancy, the body undergoes several changes making cancer-related changes harder to detect. Still, some things to be watchful for include:
- Hormone levels change during pregnancy, which causes breasts to become larger, lumpy, and/or tender.
- Rectal bleeding could possibly be due to benign hemorrhoids, a common occurrence during pregnancy, or from colon or rectal cancer.
- Feeling tired could be from pregnancy weight gain or from low red blood cell counts (anemia), which can be seen in leukemias and lymphomas or during pregnancy.
- As the fetus and uterus grow throughout pregnancy, ovarian tumors get more difficult to detect.
Staying current on all of your health and cancer-related screenings will help you manage your cancer risk.
How Cancer Treatments Impact Fertility
Chemotherapy can destroy eggs in your ovaries. This can make it impossible or difficult to get pregnant later. Whether or not chemotherapy makes you infertile depends on the drug type and age since your egg supply decreases with age.
“The risk is greater the older you are,” reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Jaime Knopman told SurvivorNet.
“If you’re 39 and you get chemo that’s toxic to the ovaries, it’s most likely to make you menopausal. But, if you’re 29, your ovaries may recover because they have a higher baseline supply,” Dr. Knopman continued.
Radiation to the pelvis can also destroy eggs. It can damage the uterus, too. Surgery to your ovaries or uterus can hurt fertility as well.
Meanwhile, endocrine or hormone therapy may block or suppress essential fertility hormones and may prevent a woman from getting pregnant. This infertility may be temporary or permanent, depending on the type and length of treatment.
If you have a treatment that includes infertility as a possible side effect, your doctor won’t be able to tell you whether you will have this side effect. That’s why you should discuss your options for fertility preservation before starting treatment.
WATCH: How chemotherapy affects fertility.
Research shows that women who have fertility preserved before breast cancer treatment are more than twice as likely to give birth after treatment than those who don’t take fertility-preserving measures.
Most women preserve their fertility before cancer treatment by freezing their eggs or embryos.
After you finish your cancer treatment, a doctor specializing in reproductive medicine can implant one or more embryos in your uterus or the uterus of a surrogate with the hope that it will result in pregnancy.
If you freeze eggs only before treatment, a fertility specialist can use sperm and eggs to create embryos in vitro and transfer them to your uterus.
When freezing eggs or embryos is not an option, doctors may try these approaches:
- Ovarian tissue freezing is an experimental approach for girls who haven’t yet reached puberty and don’t have mature eggs or for women who must begin treatment immediately and don’t have time to harvest eggs.
- Ovarian suppression prevents the eggs from maturing so they cannot be damaged during treatment.
- For women getting radiation to the pelvis, Ovarian transposition moves the ovaries out of the line of treatment.
In addition to preserving eggs or embryos, positive research has shown that women with early-stage hormone-receptor (HR) positive breast cancer were able to safely pause endocrine therapy (ET) to try to get pregnant, and they did not have worse short-term recurrence rates than people who did not stop endocrine therapy.
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