Sharon's Race for Life At Home

Leahs story - Back in August 2020 I had what I thought was the best news - I was pregnant with my second child! I got to around 11 weeks just getting excited for my first scan when I noticed I had started spotting/bleeding, I instantly called the doctor and got booked in for a scan to check all was okay. It was that day my heart broke into a million pieces and was told there was no sign of a heartbeat and had what is called a missed miscarriage. I then had to take medical management which is a tablet to contract your womb to bring away the 'baby'. Two weeks later I was instructed to take a home pregnancy test to make sure it was negative. Unfortunately it came back strongly positive! The doctor called me back in immediately for blood tests and another ultrasound. It turned out everything in my womb hadn't moved and all was the same as two weeks previous, at this point I am so confused. I was told I would need surgery to remove everything instead as the tablets didn't work. At this point I am told there are now signs of it being a 'molar pregnancy'. I literally had no idea what this was and didn't even think about it much at all, I just wanted it gone so I could move on. I had the surgery and went home thinking 'great, it's over' oh how I was mistaken. Two weeks after the surgery I start to bleed.. heavily. So bad I ended up been taken to hospital and then started to pass clots alot bigger than the size of my hand. It was awful, I was in hospital for a week and had 5 blood transfusions. Whilst in hospital the doctor's tell me they sent off the tissue that was taken from my womb to be tested and it came back as a confirmed 'complete molar pregnancy' (A complete mole forms when sperm fertilizes an egg that does not contain the mother’s DNA. The egg has DNA from the father and the cells that were meant to become the placenta are abnormal) I was also told this can sometimes develop into a form of cancer called 'persistent trophoblastic disease' and would need chemotherapy to treat it, however this is very rare and shouldn't happen. Since I am now diagnosed with this molar pregnancy, I was referred to 'charing cross hospital' which is where a specialist team deal with this diagnosis. I was told I would need weekely blood tests to be sent to charing cross to check the hCG (the pregnancy hormone) is coming down on its own to normal (Below 5). At this time my levels were 7,000. Unfortunately after my surgery I had constant hospital trips due to blood loss, which lead to constant ultrasounds, where the results shown I had retained tissue, which is quite common after a molar pregnancy, this is where the doctors wouldn't of been able to get out all the molar tissue and some was left behind. Unfortunately for me this gave me a bigger chance of developing 'persistent trophoblastic disease' As it happened my hCG levels were dropping amazingly on their own and managed to get down to 592, from starting at 100,000ish. Unfortunately for me my hCG levels then started to rise and went up to 1,594, then two days later 2,204. This meant I had to travel to charing cross hospital to see the specialist team and have scans, xrays and blood tests to check if the mole had developed into 'persistent trophoblastic disease'. As it happened, it had turned into this. Persistent trophoblastic disease is when women who have had treatment to remove a molar pregnancy from the womb still have some molar tissue left behind. The tissue will remain and can grow further into the lining of the womb and, like a cancer, spread to other areas of the body. Luckily for me, it hadn't spread and was just in the cells of the molar tissue but needed to be killed off with treatment. I immediately started chemotherapy to kill off the cells in my womb, I had to stay in Charing cross hospital for my first week of treatment. The chemo I am given is called methotrexate and is given every other day for a week, and then I have a week off. Two weeks is once cycle. I am 6 cycles down and have finally reached a normal hCG Level! Once you reach a normal level you need to have 3 precautionary rounds to make sure the tissue has all been killed off 100%. Once I have finished this treatment I will have scans, x-rays and more blood tests to confirm I am in the clear. I will be followed up by charing cross hospital with blood tests for 10 years as there is a small percentage this can relapse at any time. If I want to try again for another baby, I need to wait a whole year from the end of my treatment. I pray we will go on to have our rainbow baby and be able give our daughter a sibling.