 A mother was told she had three cancerous tumours in her right breast while pregnant with her first child. Just weeks after being induced early to deliver her son, she had two mastectomies and feels 'grateful to be alive'. Rhiannon Baxter, 35, a pharmacy care coordinator who lives in Wallasey, in the Wirral, said her breasts felt 'tender' when she was approximately 34 weeks pregnant. After feeling a lump on her right nipple, she believed it was a blocked milk duct and 'thought nothing of it'. Due to family history of cancer, Rhiannon was told to get it checked – her mother had breast cancer (and beat it) and her uncle had died of cancer. After a hospital scan, she was handed a Macmillan card by a breast cancer nurse, who informed her the lump may be 'sinister'. Later, she received the devastating news she had invasive cancer. 'I was scared because I had finally got to a point in life where I loved my life and I didn't want to leave it, and I thought, I've got a husband and a baby now, I cannot leave them,' she said. 'I just thought, I can't die, I have too many people to live for.' Rhiannon, her husband Dan, and Alvie (Picture: PA Real Life) Rhiannon's mother Lorraine was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s (Picture: PA Real Life) Alvie is healthy (Picture: PA Real Life) Rhiannon was then induced at 38 weeks pregnant, which is considered full-term, and she gave birth to her now 11-month old son, Alvie. Four weeks later, she underwent a mastectomy to remove her right breast, but since pre-cancer had been found in her left breast as well, she underwent a second mastectomy six weeks later. 'It was the worst week of my life waiting for those results, because I thought, if it has spread anywhere else, I can't do it; if it's just breast cancer, I can do this,' she said. Thankfully, it had not spread, but she then needed 15 rounds of chemotherapy and three weeks of radiotherapy. Having watched her mother go through her cancer jour){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
A mother was told she had three cancerous tumours in her right breast while pregnant with her first child.
Just weeks after being induced early to deliver her son, she had two mastectomies and feels ‘grateful to be alive’.
Rhiannon Baxter, 35, a pharmacy care coordinator who lives in Wallasey, in the Wirral, said her breasts felt ‘tender’ when she was approximately 34 weeks pregnant.
After feeling a lump on her right nipple, she believed it was a blocked milk duct and ‘thought nothing of it’.