Sarah Gaffney-Lang feared her gruelling brain tumour treatment had left her infertile – but she’s now expecting her first baby.
A woman who feared the tumour that saw her have brain surgery whilst awake had robbed her of her chance of motherhood is now expecting a miracle baby.
Previously fit and healthy, Sarah Gaffney-Lang, 32, suddenly suffered a huge seizure in her sleep and was horrified to be diagnosed with a brain tumour two months on, in October 2016.
Then, in December 2016, she had radical surgery whilst awake, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy which doctors warned would likely leave her infertile.
To give her a shot at being a mum, she had time for one round of egg freezing before beginning treatment – but incredibly, she fell pregnant naturally just three months after finishing chemotherapy and is now expecting her first child with her commercial director husband Matt Lang, 34.
Due in March, Sarah, a freelance copywriter from Manchester, said: “Finding out I was pregnant was a huge surprise. I assumed kids would mean carefully deciding on the right time to use the eggs that had been frozen, so it’s amazing it happened naturally.
“Throughout my treatment, I lived life only thinking one step ahead, but now I need to train myself to think more long term. Though I was worried about how my body would cope with pregnancy, I’m as stable as I can be and now can’t wait to meet him or her.”
Sarah, who married Matt in Manchester with just two guests – their witnesses – during her treatment in 2017, told of how she’d had absolutely no symptoms in the lead up to her seizure.
In fact, eating well and regularly exercising, she was the picture of health.
But, after a day out at York races in August 2016, she was asleep in a hotel room when disaster struck.
She recalled: “I had a big seizure in my sleep. I don’t remember the exact moment it happened, all I remember is coming to feeling really frightened.
“There were loads of people in the room including hotel staff and paramedics.
“Matt was also there, and while I was lucky it hadn’t happened when I was on my own, it must have been really distressing for him to see.”
Sarah was taken to a local hospital and examined, before she was referred to a neurologist at Salford Royal, closer to where she lived.
There, she underwent a number of tests, including an MRI scan, which shockingly revealed that she had a brain tumour.
Speaking of the October 2016 diagnosis, she continued: “I was really fit and active, and so the thought of cancer – let alone a brain tumour – never crossed my mind. It was a complete bombshell.”
She added: “Doctors couldn’t say much at first. All they knew was that I had a tumour. They needed to do more tests to determine exactly what kind, and exactly what we were dealing with.”
Further investigations confirmed that Sarah had a grade two glioma – one of the most common types of brain tumour.
It was located at the back of her right frontal lobe – the part of brain that controls cognitive skills – affecting the area responsible for movement in the left hand side of her body.
Two months after her diagnosis, she was faced with the daunting task of undergoing an awake craniotomy, where the patient is conscious during surgery.
According to the NHS, this is the preferred technique to remove tumours close to, or on, important areas of the brain as it allows doctors to test the patient’s function continuously, particularly before removing anything.
Sarah said: “My memory of the surgery is actually really clear. I was put to sleep whilst they made the incision, then woken back up. They needed me to be awake and alert so they could do tests and work out what would be affected if they removed certain areas.”
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She continued: “I was chatting away about really normal things – my holidays, what I was having for dinner – while a huge team operated on me.
“At the time, I felt like I was on a treadmill, just looking ahead to the next step in my treatment and what to do to get better. It’s only now I look back and realise how surreal it all was.”
Unfortunately, during the operation, doctors discovered the tumour was more diffuse – meaning it had threadlike tendrils making it more difficult to remove – than originally thought.
Its precarious position meant removing it completely could pose too great a risk of paralysis, and so the surgery was abandoned.
“I could hear them talking about the paralysis risk, which was really scary,” she said. “Because I knew all that was happening, though, I came back round already knowing and accepting that the surgery hadn’t been able to remove the tumour as we’d all hoped.”
After three weeks in hospital recovering, Sarah was allowed home, before launching into the next phase of her treatment in February 2017 – a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Just before beginning, she was allowed to freeze her eggs in an attempt to preserve her chances of having children, but, due to the urgent nature of her situation, there was only time for one shot.
“With everything going on, my fertility hadn’t even entered my mind, so I’m really glad the doctors bought it up with me,” she said. “I’d always wanted kids so it would have been tough if I’d lost my chance altogether.”
According to Macmillan, the type of anti-cancer drug chemotherapy uses to destroy cells can reduce the number of eggs stored in the ovaries, and even cause permanent infertility or bring on an early menopause.
On top of that, as Sarah would be undergoing radiotherapy to her brain, there was a high risk of her pituitary gland, which releases the hormones that stimulate ovaries, being affected.
Still, she bravely pushed on with 12 cycles of treatment, which took place every month for a year, hoping the eggs she had frozen would be enough to help her become a mum in the future.
Overjoyed to finish treatment in March 2018, she had even more happy news when she discovered around three months later that, against the odds, she had conceived naturally.
“It was absolutely amazing. Matt and I couldn’t believe it,” she added.
Worried about whether her body could cope, Sarah discussed her pregnancy with her medical team, but they were happy for her to proceed so long as she was regularly monitored.
Thankfully, she has coped remarkably well, and now cannot wait to meet her baby, which she doesn’t know the sex of.
Throughout her journey, she has been supported by the charity Trekstock, which helps young adults in their 20s and 30s affected by cancer.
Praising them for all they’ve done for her in her hour of need, she said: “When you spend your life in hospital waiting rooms, you don’t see a huge amount of young people, so it was great to find Trekstock and a community of people just like me.
She added: “I’ve been to several meetups, and they’re so fantastic and informal. It just feels like a group of friends on a day out – there’s nothing forced about it. Everyone I’ve met has been really excited for me and my baby too.”
Now preparing for her miracle arrival in March, Sarah is currently finished with treatment, and continues to undergo regular MRI scans to monitor her progress.
She said: “Now, I just want to put my all into being a mum.”
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish lawmakers voted Friday to move forward with proposals to lift a near-total ban on abortion, a divisive issue in the traditionally Roman Catholic country, which has one of the most restrictive laws in Europe.
Members of the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, voted to work on four separate bills. Two of them propose legalizing abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, in line with European norms. The Sejm also created a 27-member commission to work on the four bills. They voted for it to be led by Dorota Łoboda, a lawmaker who was formerly an activist with a women's rights group.
The party of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk is seeking to change the law to allow women to terminate pregnancies up to the 12th week of pregnancy. Tusk won office last year after an election in which young people and women turned out in large numbers amid a record high turnout of nearly 75%. Political observers say voters were mobilized after the abortion law was restricted under the previous right-wing government.
Tusk said he believed Poland still probably has a long way to go to liberalize the law, but welcomed Friday's votes as a move in the right direction. He said he believed the country would ultimately end up with a law that gives women the feeling that they are not “an object of attack, contempt or disregard.”
Tusk is supported on the issue by the Left, a member of his three-party coalition. However, the third coalition partner, the more conservative Third Way, favors restrictions on abortion rights, and the issue has been a source of tension within the government.
Abortion rights advocates said the decision to continue work on the bills, and not reject them outright, was a step in the right direction, though they also don't expect real change in the law coming soon.
Kinga Jelińska, an activist who helps provide abortions with the group Women Help Women, described being “moderately satisfied.”
The Women's Strike, the Polish organization that led massive street protests as abortion rights were restricted, noted that it was the first time since 1996 that bills liberalizing legal access to abortion in Poland were not dropped in a primary vote.
Any liberalization bill would likely be vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who last month vetoed a bill making the morning-after pill — which is not an abortion pill but emergency contraception — available over-the-counter to women and girls 15 and older. Duda’s second and final term runs until the summer of 2025.
Abortion opponents are also mobilized in the European Union country that has long considered the Catholic faith to be a bedrock of national identity, but which is also in the process of rapid secularization.
The Catholic church called on the faithful to make Sunday a day of prayer “in defense of conceived life," in a statement carried by the state news agency PAP. An anti-abortion demonstration called the March of Life is also being planned in downtown Warsaw that day.
Currently abortions are only allowed in the cases of rape or incest or if the woman's life or health is at risk. Reproductive rights advocates say that even in such cases, doctors and hospitals turn away women, fearing legal consequences for themselves or citing their moral objections. According to Health Ministry statistics, only 161 abortions were performed in Polish hospitals in 2022.
The reality is that many Polish women already have abortions, often with pills mailed from abroad. Reproductive rights advocates estimate that some 120,000 abortions are carried out each year by women living in Poland.
It is not a crime for a woman to perform her own abortion, only assisting a woman is a crime.
One of the four bills that now goes for further work is a proposal by the Left that would decriminalize assisting a woman who has an abortion, currently a crime punishable by three years in prison.
A fourth proposal, introduced by the Third Way, would keep a ban in most cases but allow abortions in cases of fetal defects — a right that was eliminated by a 2020 court ruling.
Associated Press writer Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed.
