A New Mother's Breast Cancer Story

ichelle Groothuis was a 34-year-old woman just getting a taste of motherhood for the first time when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her journey, like that of so many other young breast cancer survivors, is heart-wrenching, beautiful, and extraordinarily inspirational.

“Initially, I wasn’t worried about conceiving. It was taking a while, but I didn’t think I couldn’t become pregnant. After about a year of trying, I went to a specialist who said rather gravely, 'Well, I still think it’s a possibility that you can get pregnant.' My eyes welled up instantly. A possibility? There is also a good chance that I won’t? That was a huge blow.”

After finding a more optimistic doctor, Michelle conceived after taking Clomid. She miscarried. She conceived again… and miscarried again. She learned she has Asherman’s Syndrome (her uterus had basically fused closed after an infection from the D&C she had after her second miscarriage), and she went through numerous surgeries to help her condition. She then tried IVF more than five times and became pregnant three times. All three times, she miscarried early. She went on to (miraculously) conceive the “old fashioned” way, only to miscarry again – this time so violently that she passed out from the blood loss and needed an emergency D&C. At this point, Michelle and her husband considered another option: a surrogate to carry their baby.

“We decided to find a surrogate because we could use my eggs and my husband’s sperm and have a child that was biologically ours. We found an amazing woman who ended up carrying twins for us! She was strong in body and spirit, and she carried our son and daughter full term.

When she went into labor, we drove four hours to the hospital. After a long day, our twins were born just before midnight. My husband and I were allowed in the delivery room, and through my tear-filled eyes, I saw our children being born from a vantage point that few mothers have. It was the most amazing day of my life.”

Unfortunately, Michelle’s joy was interrupted when she found a lump in her breast.

“When the babies were two months old, I felt a hard knot the size of a large grape in my right breast while showering. At 1:00 that afternoon my internist felt it and immediately scheduled a mammogram for me at 4:00. By 6:00, I was still in the radiologist’s office. I was the only patient left. I had been called in for 'more pictures' four times and finally an ultrasound. At last, the radiologist said, 'I’m concerned, I think it’s cancerous.'

For some reason, cancerous didn’t mean the same thing to me as cancer. To me, “cancerous” meant that I had a lump that needed to be removed. How wrong I was. After biopsies, MRIs and other tests, I learned I had breast cancer in the right breast and an area in the left breast that was considered pre-cancerous, or Ductal Carcinoma In Situ.”

Could the same reasons that prevented Michelle from carrying to term have also caused her cancer?

“No doctors have confirmed that there was a link between my breast cancer and the difficulty I had conceiving children. My own theory is that the extra estrogen I took to stimulate my fertility might have jump started a cancer that would have surfaced later on. In other words, my particular breast cancer is highly Estrogen Positive. So one of the methods I’m using to prevent recurrence is to limit the estrogen that my body produces naturally, because that feeds the tumor. I may have been predisposed to developing cancer that could have surfaced in my 40s or 50s, but because I took extra estrogen at a young age, it may have sped up the process. However, I have met only one doctor who thinks this is likely."