3 is not a charm.

I saw a client recently that I’ve been doing for about 15 years now. She lives a busy active life, working and sharing two, now adult, kids with her husband. We talk about everything from shopping, holidays, relationships, whatever. I almost forget the horror she went through a number of years back when she was surprised to find out she was pregnant again. Her 2 kids were already high school age, and her own age was a bit high to have another child, but she and her husband welcomed the idea of having another. Clearly when she told me she was pretty surprised and was about to undergo a bunch of tests to make sure all was well with her and the fetus. The next time I saw her for her appointment she was completely in a different place and I asked if everything was ok. She told me she had a molar pregnancy and I’m a little fuzzy on the exact diagnosis but I don’t think she was ever actually really pregnant. The way I understood it, her body mimicked being pregnant, but in reality it became a form of cancer. Not all molar pregnancies turn cancerous, but hers did. Until this diagnosis everything that they tested showed that she was pregnant. To make a long story short, they did what they needed to do and after months of chemotherapy, she is in remission. Luckily this type of cancer is pretty curable. I didn’t see her for months while she was wearing a wig, but as it came back, so did she! We talk about it sometimes and I am amazed at how brave she was at the time, and how to this day she puts it in its place. It was a freak thing that happened and clearly she doesn’t want it back in her life, or even her consciousness. It’s exactly where it should be, behind her. As much as her hair is back and people that don’t know her would never know she went through this, it’s something she’ll never forget. Nor will I. Thanks to people like her I think at times I can write a medical book! It’s an odd thing to learn to accept something that wasn’t originally wanted, yet gladly accepted, turn into the worst case scenario nobody could ever dream of having. I hope to never have to see that look of fear in her eyes again. Thankfully she’s healthy and happy and probably shopping as I write this.