'You couldn't really see I was pregnant because I lost so much weight.'
A mum who underwent weeks of chemotherapy for a rare form of blood cancer says her unborn baby saved her life.
Renata Rogers, 43, and husband, Cory, 46, were over the moon when they discovered they were having a child.
But Renata began feeling out of sorts in her third trimester, with blood tests revealing she had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in February 2021.
This type of leukaemia sees cancerous cells quickly clog up someone’s bone marrow – a soft tissue inside of bones that makes blood cells.
The choice was simple, Renata said. She would keep the baby and go through chemotherapy.
Something doctors said was out of the question as they advised her to terminate the pregnancy rather than wait to have treatment after he was born.
‘I felt my child and I were a package deal,’ the research scientist from Princeton, New Jersey said.
‘My son saved my life. I don’t know if I’d have gone to the doctor to get blood work if not.’
Renata first discovered she was having a child in February 2021 only a month before they were due to start IVF after feeling sick.
Initially shrugging it off as morning sickness, Renata’s nausea and sweats continued well into April when she got blood tests.
‘Doctors called me and said one of my test results came back abnormal. My white blood count was 38. It’s supposed to be between four and 11,’ she said.
Renata was transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, and isolated in a ward where she was given the choice to terminate her pregnancy.
She didn’t. Renata started seven rounds of chemotherapy at 12 weeks pregnant in April 2021 before having brain surgery so doctors could better access her spinal fluid.
‘You couldn’t really see I was pregnant because I lost so much weight,’ she said.
Despite there being no signs of cancer after the chemotherapy, Renata was rushed to the hospital with fevers and spinal headaches.
Doctors realised she was suffering from bacterial meningitis from an infection in her port – a tiny device about the size of a quarter placed under her scalp as part of the brain surgery – so had to perform a c-section when the baby’s heart rate dropped.
Renata wasn’t conscious when her baby Michaell was born, weighing 3lbs 8oz on September 19, 2021.
‘He was in the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] for 37 days. He was a little fighter,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get to see him a lot because I was so weak.’
Less than three months later, however, Renaat went into remission and required a bone marrow transplant.
Renata said: ‘My whole life flashed. If I didn’t get the transplant I was going to die.
‘I had my son. I just cried. I knew I had to fight again.’
Having the transplant in October 2022, Renata spent three months away from her son only to replace a second time in February 2023.
She received three donor infusions of lymphocyte – a type of white blood cell – from her half-brother and has had the all-clear since July 2023.
Renata can’t be officially cancer-free until 2027 – until then, she wants to spend as much time as she can with her son, Michael.
‘It’s made me a much stronger person. My son is the best thing that has happened to me. I’d go through it again for him,’ she said.
Renata added that her ‘special little boy’ was vastly unaffected by the rounds of chemo.
‘His kicks kept me going through chemotherapy,’ she said.
‘I want people to know there is hope. Cancer isn’t the end.’
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