There is always one thing in a couple’s lives that completely changes everything in one fell swoop, it alters the schedules for life, that you might have decided. Each and every single mother can vouch for the fact that children are not all coos and grins, looking after a newborn is hard work, but worth it!
Loretta Cyrus, 41 years old and residing in Michigan really knows this well. When she was the tender age of 18 and then called Loretta Pullins, she found out that she was pregnant, she wasn’t married at the time…
At the time her boyfriend responded to the news by saying “You’re not going to keep it, are you?”, but Loretta said that she was going to have the baby and he then left her to cope all by herself!
It wasn’t long after this that she discovered that a lump on the side of her neck…
She had been tired and sick for months, the weight was really dropping off her too…
She visited the doctor in the end and that led to a biopsy and terrible news: She had a disease called Hodgkin’s disease, its a sort of cancer that affects the lymphatic system.
The Doctors advised her that if she started chemotherapy and radiation therapy straight away that she would have much better chances of living, but on the other hand it would kill her unborn baby, the choice was hers to make.
Loretta wouldn’t do it, she wanted her baby to have life and be born, it was a risk she was more than willing to take!
It was a huge risk and it nearly was fatal to her…
Doctors were not able to monitor the state of her cancer as it worked its way through her neck and chest to her abdomen and even under her arms, poor brave girl!
Towards the end of her pregnancy, the physicians started administering targeted radiation treatments to her chest so she was able to keep breathing and to keep the cancer in her chest at bay.
At about seven months her doctor induced labor, little Alana was born weighing 4 pounds and 10 ½ ounces…. After this Loretta’s treatment really started!
The chemotherapy really made her lose her hair fast and she was so incredibly thin too, but it really killed off the cancer too, she was at last cancer free!
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only problem that she had, she also had an ovarian tumor, o bowel obstruction and a very nearly fatal car accident, all affecting her life very seriously.
She was, however, such a strong girl and she survived it all, her daughter by her side all the time, her reason to live and to fight on!
Alana, her daughter said:
“My mom’s amazing!! …Sometimes when bad things happen, people kind of fall, and she doesn’t. When something bad happens, she gets back up and keeps going.”