Worrying sign at dentists led to mum being told choose her baby's life or hers
A mum has shared the shattering moment a routine visit to the dentist left her with a devastating diagnosis and faced with a choice no parent should ever have to make.
Zoe Sarginson was in the first trimester of a difficult pregnancy when she visited the dentist in late December 2018 but the appointment had to be cut short after the simple scrape and polish left her gums in too much pain to continue. Worried, Zoe, from Hednesford in Staffordshire, booked into the doctors the following day and explained what had happened.
She was given antibiotics and told paracetamol, rest and soft food would help but after two more months and two further courses of antibiotics, trips to her GP, dentist and even A&E Zoe said her gums were still getting worse. Unable to eat or sleep from the pain she found herself exhausted and losing weight, Wales Online reports.
"Something was telling me this wasn’t right, not for a pregnant woman. My face hurt, my jaw hurt, my glands looked like I’d got conkers stuck in my mouth. I had to get to the bottom of it,” she said. Then after another trip to the GP and a blood count, she received the phone call that would change her life.
Zoe was told to bring someone with her and be at the New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton within the next half an hour with a bag over overnight clothes. Terrified Zoe was 16 weeks pregnant and with no other information feared for her baby. Her father drove her to hospital. "We said nothing, not a word, but our thoughts roared like thunder," she recalled.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
Zoe was told to get to hospital in the next half hour and found out she was very sick (Leukaemia Care)In a small hospital room a team of specialists told Zoe she had aggressive cancer - acute myeloid leukaemia - at the age of 27. She was then given the heartbreaking news - the treatment she would have would inevitably end the baby’s life. But she could not postpone treatment because it would put my life at risk.
"I had one choice," she said. Zoe said in the days and weeks that followed she did not know what was going to happen. she said: "All of the doctors told me I had a good chance of gaining remission; I was young, healthy and they had caught it early.
"I had only had my bloods taken in January and they had come back fine. I was told it would be a long and difficult year. They explained I would have to stay in for a while and talked me through the process and treatments available to me only after I had had what they prefer to call a ‘medical miscarriage’.
Zoe went through hell in hospital and came close to dying several times (Leukaemia Care)"They explained the process and it would effectively be the same as an abortion. The treatment was the same, just higher dose and quantity." On March 4, 2019, Zoe gave birth to her "sleeping boy". She said: "He didn’t even weigh 1lb. He was beautiful. His fingers were still webbed, and he was ever so tiny.
"But he was perfect. Looking down at his still body, I felt nothing but guilt; I had done this to him. I had signed his life away with that consent form. The staff in the delivery suite were incredible, I was given a lot of support not only before delivery, but during and after too. Hand and footprints were taken and given to me in a little book. Photographs were taken of the little boy that had saved my life."
She said "For the first few weeks, it was as if it didn’t really sink in. I was in shock too much to even think. After the delivery, and the week that followed, came a haul of tests and treatments, blood transfusions and IV lines." A gruelling double round of experimental chemotherapy followed, which saw Zoe contract sepsis twice, her left lung collapsed, she had multiple infections in her lungs, viral and fungal.
Zoe pictured in hospital with son Benjamin (Leukaemia Care)She also had a hospital-bred virus known as CMV, two blood clots, two infected lines, two bouts of pneumonia, and organ failure as well as a full-body rash. But she said the hardest thing was not seeing her two-year-old son, Benjamin.
She said: "I was told on numerous occasions by various staff that I was extremely lucky. I wanted to laugh at them. I’d just come off 100% oxygen and lost three days of my life having been put to sleep. I was miles away from home, from my son, and my little boy was lying in the morgue because of me. I wanted to shout and scream that nothing about my situation was lucky. I wasn’t a statistic or a medical rarity. I was a mother, a woman who had cancer, whose soul was aching with every breath she took, for her son she had lost and the son she was too poorly to have visit."
Zoe continued with many side effects from the chemotherapy and said nothing could prepare you for the treatment itself. She said: "You won’t be ready for the hours of watching poison slowly drip into your veins through an IV. You know it’s both killing you and keeping you alive, so you can’t complain."
She said: "The treatments that I received nearly killed me very suddenly, but also quickly saved my life." On June 10 she was finally told she was in remission. She said this was not to be confused with cured - her cancer was under control, but it wasn’t gone—it was sleeping and she had to remain in hospital until she no longer needed many of her regular treatments.
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Zoe Sarginson was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia when she was pregnant and survived (Leukaemia Care)Zoe was finally discharged after 155 days. It wasn't the end of visits to the hospital as she had to go in three days a week for tests and treatment. And at home life was different with certain foods she couldn’t eat and she wasn't allowed around animals. She had to avoid germs which meant things like cleaning the toilet were banned.
Then in September, the young family finally got to lay their precious little boy they named ‘Joshua’ to rest. She said it was a beautiful send-off which saw red roses placed on his tiny white coffin and ‘Small Bump’ by Ed Sheeran played. Zoe added: "When I began my cancer treatment, I couldn’t wait for the day I finished. But when that day came, I was unsure if I was ready for life after treatment as a ‘cancer survivor’."
But she found adjusting to home life hard. She said: "I thought I’d just slip right back into my existing life, but I didn’t. I couldn’t find my place. It was almost like this huge explosion had gone off, and everyone was manic. But now it was all silent. Everything felt different. I distanced myself from my partner, not knowing where to turn, not knowing what my future was, what it held for me. Eventually our relationship broke down. His love and support through that time was second to none."
Zoe and her son Benjamin during her illness (Leukaemia Care)Over time life returned to normal for her friends and family and she herself had a learning curve. that recovering from cancer isn’t just about your body – it’s also about healing your mind. She said: "I still worry that every ache or pain is a sign of my cancer recurring. Eventually these fears will (I’m told) fade, though they may never go away completely."
And now, four years on, life is looking up again. Zoe has met a new partner and the two are planning their wedding. She said: "My son is now seven, and 11 months ago my partner and I welcomed a little baby boy into the world. Life is better than it’s ever been and I’m so thankful for all the amazing work my oncologists, consultants and everyone else involved in my care did for me, because if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be here today."
She added: "I will never forget my little baby Joshua, who saved my life. I think about him every day. I appreciate every single person in my life. I appreciate each day in a way I never could have imagined before. I now know what it means to be thankful for each day. Unless you are faced with death, I don’t think that’s really understandable."
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