Trying for a baby when you've been left infertile
Growing up, Danielle Golding had always suffered with heavy periods. Reassured by her doctor as a teen that they would “settle down” as she got older, she never thought too much about it. And she certainly never imagined that the root cause of her heavy bleeding might ultimately jeopardise her dream to become a mother one day.
“I would be on my period for three weeks at a time and I always had quite a bloated stomach,” Danielle, now 25, told Cosmopolitan UK, recalling her symptoms. “I used to have a sore tummy and would suffer with quite a bit of swelling, but I just thought at the time that was just what came with a period.”
Years passed with Danielle believing this was normal, until she reached the age of 23 and her long-term boyfriend accidentally hit her stomach as he turned over one night in bed.
"I was in complete agony. I went to work the next day and was just doubled over in pain,” she said. When Danielle’s mum came into the salon where her daughter worked for a hair appointment the following day, she was concerned to see her in such a state, and insisted they go to the doctors.
Initial investigations suggested appendicitis, then endometriosis, but after ruling both of those conditions out, the doctors didn’t seem sure what the issue was at all. “They said they needed to do some scans on me because they’d found some things not right in my blood,” Danielle recalled. Following an ultrasound, a CAT scan and an MRI, specialists spotted “dark shadows” on Danielle’s ovaries, and a biopsy later revealed their worst fears.
“I had stage 3 ovarian cancer. It was very surreal. It was very strange,” she recalled. “We’ve had quite a few different cancers in our family so at that stage I was very much thinking the worst. We have lost a lot of people through cancer.”
With Danielle’s diagnosis having taken months, and with her period-related issues dating back years, she was concerned about the extent to which the disease had taken hold. “I kept thinking, it’s taken them so long to find this cancer, what if it’s grown loads? I just felt like ‘what am I going to do? How do you get over this?’”
With stage 2/3 cancer, often chemotherapy can be used to shrink and entirely remove tumours. But for Danielle, it had gone past that point, so the only option was to have surgery. “When they said it would be an operation to remove my ovaries and my [fallopian] tubes, I panicked and thought ‘I’m never going to be a mother naturally’.”
This was especially devastating because Danielle and her partner had been trying for a baby for three years prior to her diagnosis. “We’d been going back and forth to the doctors [to find out why nothing was happening], and they just kind of said ‘you’re really young, don’t worry about it, you’ve got all the time in the world’.” Understandably, after her diagnosis Danielle felt angry that she’d tried so many times to find out what why they weren’t conceiving, but was dismissed each time. And now here she was, about to have her ovaries removed and facing being unable to get pregnant naturally.
“I could see all my family around me, they were just in bits. I was really low at the beginning but then I started to feel like if surgery was the only way [to survive] then I had to do it. Obviously being here is a lot more important,” she told Cosmopolitan UK.
Danielle had a six-hour operation where they removed her ovaries and her fallopian tubes. Doctors were unsure whether they would need to remove her womb, too, depending on where the cancer had spread, but thankfully they managed to avoid doing so. “They scraped my cervix and my bowel [for cancer cells],” Danielle explained. “The tumours were leaking out little seedlings which could be cancerous, so they needed to scrape that away to make sure it didn’t cling on to anything.”
The surgery went well, and as a result, she’s now cancer-free. “It was a huge relief. Every three months now I go for check-ups and I have a CA125 blood test done to see how my tumour markings are, but it’s finally all sorted and I get to still be here.”
The preservation of Danielle’s womb also means that she still has a chance of carrying a child, and it’s something she’s thankful for. “When I woke up [from surgery], I looked at my partner and asked if the womb was still there. When he said yes I was just so happy.” Now, two years after her surgery, the couple are now about to embark upon their first round of IVF using a donor egg.
“We didn’t even question doing IVF. To me and my partner it’s not about the genetics and the DNA, it’s about actually becoming a mum and a dad,” Danielle said. “You have a nurse who specialises in finding your egg, so they match up your hair colour, your eye colour, your height, your weight, and your hair type so there’s a bit more of a chance that it could look a little like you.”
Danielle and her partner have been given the first round of IVF free of charge, but they know there’s no guarantees it’ll work out. They’re feeling optimistic, however. “[We know] IVF is a really tough process and it doesn’t work all the time, but the best thing we can do is to keep positive. If it doesn’t happen, we can try again, have a break, and just take it at our own pace.
“We are just living with ‘what will be will be’. There will be a way for us to be parents at some point. We’ve always said if IVF wasn’t the route then we’d look at adoption. There’s always a way to be a mum or a dad.”
While cancer at such a young age has been a difficult experience for Danielle, and has made the path to motherhood more difficult than it would have been otherwise, she also feels some good has come out of it. “I’m so grateful for effectively getting a second chance. I’ve done things so differently ever since; I don’t worry about things as much, I’m more of a calm person, and I just enjoy everything that I have right now.
“I look around and I just think I’m so lucky that I’m still here with my family.”
Ovarian cancer symptoms
Symptoms of ovarian cancer are often mistaken for symptoms of less serious conditions, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Regular experience of the following could be a symptom of ovarian cancer, if you’re worried, speak to your GP.
Persistent stomach pain
Persistent bloating
Difficulty eating/feeling full more quickly
Needing to wee more frequently
Almost two decades are stolen from a woman who dies of ovarian cancer in the UK. A screening tool would change this. Help Ovarian Cancer Action raise £1million to protect future generations – visit the website for more information.
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