Conceiving after the Inconceivable

Kara with Kyle

Published in Bay State Parent Magazine
Winner of The American Cancer Society Sword of Hope Award
Read the BayState Parent Blog Entry

Cancer is devastating for anyone to face.

But for women in their childbearing years, the impact of cancer can spread beyond the individual. Surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments may cure cancer, but contribute to inability to conceive. Couples without children are left with compromised fertility. Couples with children continue to parent their children while facing an unknown future. And for some women, cancer and pregnancy come at the same time. Below are three women’s stories of cancer, courage, and children.

Kara and Matthew Langevin were newlyweds in 1995 and were eager to start a family, when their dreams were abruptly put on hold.

“We had to endure other things first,” says Kara.

What they had to endure was cancer.

Less than one year from the day they were married, Kara began suffering from severe headaches and abdominal pains. An ultrasound showed “a big, black mass in my abdomen,” remembers Kara.

She underwent immediate surgery to remove a four-pound tumor. The diagnosis: Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer usually found in infants and young children.

After just six weeks, the Langevins discovered a new tumor. The cancer had come back.

“This time, they couldn’t get it all,” remembers Kara. “They told my family that I had three-to-six months to live.”

Matthew, who is a police dispatcher in Webster, is trained to remain calm in the midst of a crisis. But the day he had to tell his wife she had just a few months to live “was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he says.

Kara didn’t accept the death sentence.

“It never sunk in. I never believed it,” she says. With her life on the line, the dream of one day becoming a mom faded as Kara fought back with everything she had. “Your sole focus is surviving,” says Kara.

“You really have to learn to let go.”

In August of 2002, Kristen Couture had a lifelong mole checked on her back. Her doctor told her it was fine. But Kristen had a bad feeling about it and wanted it off. She kept calling to get a follow-up appointment. Six months later, the mole had doubled in size and was almost black. The doctors removed the mole and performed a biopsy. It was melanoma.

When she was diagnosed, Kristen was going through a divorce. She had a 4-year-old daughter, and she was seven months pregnant.

“I had so much on my plate,” she recalls. “You really have to learn to let go because you know that stressing out wouldn’t help you or the baby. I don’t want to say that I wasn’t ever worried. I had dark days.”

The doctors performed a wide incision around the area of the mole, and it came back clear. Additional tests would have to wait until Kristen gave birth. In April, Piper, a healthy baby girl, was born. In May, the doctors resumed diagnostic tests.

“They injected radioactive dye. They took three lymph nodes from under my arm. When they biopsied those, they saw that it had traveled to under my arm. I was classified as a Stage 3.” (Stage 4 is the worst stage of cancer.)

In September, Kristen started Interferon treatment. She received IV infusions in the hospital every day for 20 visits, then 11 months of self-injections three times a week.

For the sake of her 4-year-old, Skylar, Kristen kept a positive attitude through it all. “I didn’t go into it [the cancer] whatsoever. I tried to make it seem like I was normal to her. She probably knew I was sick. Kids know everything,” she adds.

“God loves my children more than I do.”

Shrewsbury resident Linda Zawadzki can identify. A mother of five children in 1999, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

When she heard the news, Linda remembers being most concerned about the impact of her cancer on her kids.

“That was the hardest part,” she says. “I could deal with anything except something that would affect my children.”

She went to see the elders at her church the night before she was scheduled for surgery. “I went to the church to ask for healing. The elders, while praying, said, ‘God loves my children more than I do. He would not abandon them.’ I can’t tell you how much peace that brought me. It was a life-changing moment. I felt this whole entire peace come over me,” she says.

But cancer came back, this time with a new name. “Lung cancer was a surprise,” she says. Linda has been hospitalized eight times, and has had five surgeries for both of her cancers.

“They said I am Stage 3,” she says. “I refuse to accept that. I don’t feel Stage 3.”

“I never thought I’d be able to have a child.”

With the help of doctors, from UMASS Memorial, family and clergy, Kara Langevin of Webster recovered. When she was five years cancer-free, she and Matthew began to dream again of having a child. Their odds were not good. One of Kara’s fallopian tubes was completely blocked because of the cancer and subsequent surgery, cutting the odds of conception in half. But Kara doesn’t live by the odds.

After a year of trying to conceive naturally, they started In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Kara remembers the disappointment after multiple IVF procedures failed. Then, before what they had determined would be the last treatment, an old specter reappeared.

“As I was just about to start the last IVF, I started feeling sick” she says. “I was nauseous, I had headaches. I immediately thought ‘cancer.’ I called the doctors, and went in for testing.”

The doctors called back with the reason for Kara’s malaise: Kara was pregnant. “I was in complete shock,” she says. Today, she and Matthew are the grateful parents of 14-month-old Kyle.

“We’re there every second for him, beams Kara. “We do everything for him. We absolutely adore him.”

“She’s the miracle baby.”

Linda was experiencing similar disturbing signs after having recovered from her colon cancer five years ago.

“It was so sudden. My whole body was very weak,” she says. “I called the doctor at home on a Saturday, which I had never done. He said, you know, there is a chance you could be pregnant.”

Linda, 42 at the time, was in fact pregnant. “I just looked at it as a blessing,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it. I was actually ecstatic and scared to death at the same time.”

Because of her cancer history, Linda was closely monitored through her pregnancy.

“I was so incredibly well-watched,” she says. “My obstetrician was also a colon cancer patient, and a high-risk obstetrician.”

Six months later, Grace was born. “She was perfect,” says Linda. “Everyone called her the miracle baby.”