#SaveOurBond - Kristie's Story

Content warning: Kristie's story contains reference to a cancer diagnosis while post-partum, struggles with physical and mental health, and references to fear of dying and a child losing their parent.

At age 29, just six months after giving birth to my daughter and in the middle of my maternity leave, I was referred to Addenbrookes Hospital being told I had ovarian cancer.

The only symptom I had experienced, in the months beforehand, was a persistently bloated belly, but I had put this symptom down to ‘just having a baby’. This happened in 2020 and the COVID pandemic had just started, so I had also put my swollen belly down to simply gaining weight during lockdown.

Eventually, the size of the bloating became too hard to ignore. I looked eight months pregnant, but was in fact six months post-partum. So, I booked a doctor's appointment. I was told to go A&E to get a scan, which revealed an enormous 7lb ovarian cyst which was immediately referred to cancer specialists at Addenbrookes. They rushed me for surgery the next morning.

I can't express in words how devastating hearing that news was. I was terrified and isolated. I heard the word 'cancer' and immediately assumed I was going to die. Suddenly for the first time in my life, I could not see or imagine a future.

The immediate treatment was abdominal surgery to remove the tumour (a laparotomy). After 4 weeks of recovery from surgery, I went through 3 cycles of intensive BEP chemotherapy which was incredibly grueling. Each cycle was 21 days long and the first 5 days involved being pumped with chemo drugs for 8 hours a day, every day. I would then return to the hospital weekly to have another day of chemo with the drug Bleomycin, which took 2-3 hours. From June - October 2020 I was in and out of hospital constantly for surgery and chemo.

When I returned home in between visits, I was so ill I couldn't function. The chemo had so many side effects: I had two pulmonary embolisms, anemia and neutropenia just to name a few. All are life threatening if not spotted early, and I can’t thank the Addenbrookes Team enough for keeping such a close eye on me during this time. But I couldn’t have any additional professional or community support because it was lockdown 2020 and everything was closed.

I could not care for myself let alone a baby. The surgery essentially had the same rules of recovery as a c-section does, leaving me unable to lift my baby or complete simple tasks like cooking for some time afterwards. I was told not to lift anything for 12 weeks minimum, so holding my daughter was only possible if sitting down. If wasn't hovering over a toilet being sick then I was asleep; this didn't leave much room for me to do anything with her. I was in and out of hospital so much, it was hard to even know what day it was and when I had last spent quality time with my daughter.

Apart from the physical separation, I felt overwhelming worry and concern regarding my diagnosis, which made me believe that I should distance myself more from my daughter as a protective mechanism.

My thought process was that if I was to die then at least she wouldn’t have been that close to me to notice. It wasn't because I didn't love her, it was because I loved her so much that I wanted to protect her from the pain of potentially losing her mother.

While I was in hospital, I wrote a letter for her for every birthday until she was 18 so she would still have something left of me if all went wrong.

I had hoped my maternity leave would be full of time spent with my newborn baby, learning about motherhood and enjoying every second of this very special time. I wanted to take my daughter to meet people and spend every moment I could bonding with her. The reality was that once I got the diagnosis in June, I felt very distanced from my daughter, both physically and emotionally. I felt guilty for not being there for her as much as I had hoped in the first year of her life.

Instead of changing nappies and bottle feeding, I was fighting for my life and for my daughter to still have her mum by her side.

My mental health was all over the place during my diagnosis and treatment. I had been diagnosed with post-natal anxiety 12 weeks after giving birth, which I believe was triggered by the pandemic and the uncertainties around that time. I had not been able to access help or support for it, due to lockdown restrictions. Then, once diagnosed with cancer, it spiralled out of control. I was put on Citalopram and given Propranolol to cope. I could no longer see myself in the future and I felt completely robbed of what should have been a time full of happiness.

Balancing life as a mum and a cancer patient was not easy at all. The pandemic made things extra tricky. My partner at the time still had to go to work, regardless of whether I was at hospital or not, as we could not afford to lose the money. My mum was off work due to the restrictions, so she took my daughter for the majority of the time I was in hospital. I was so unwell I could not drive, so I had to organise lifts back and forth to treatment, which was a one hour journey each way.

It was a nightmare that felt like it was never going to end.

My treatment finished in October 2020 and I went back to work in January 2021. My manager was fantastic and made sure not to overwhelm me, and I was happy to be back at work because it gave me something to focus on other than what had just happened. But I would have loved to have had a little more time before going back.

It would have given me the chance to recover and digest what had happened and it would have given me back that time I’d lost with my daughter; after fighting cancer all I wanted to do is spend every moment I could with her and make up for the lost time.

The Save Our Bond campaign is calling on the UK Government to change the law to allow mums and birthing people, diagnosed with cancer in or around pregnancy, to defer or pause their maternity leave until after treatment.