29 year old Melissa Gilbert received the ultimate gift on Valentine’s Day. Her daughter Kendal Grace entered the world. But, just two years ago, holding her own baby, seemed like an impossibility. A pap smear revealed she had cervical cancer. “I knew nothing about cervical cancer, I didn’t know what survival rates were, what treatments were, you know to hear that word at age 27 it was very scary,” says Melissa.

Unbelievably, Melissa was pregnant with her second child when she was diagnosed. “All I could think about was how I wanted to have another someday, and just hearing that I might not be able to was really, really upsetting maybe more so than having cancer, believe it or not, but it really was,” says Melissa.

Melissa miscarried and needed special fertility sparing surgery which involved removing cervical tissue through a laparoscopic procedure to preserve her ability to conceive.

“The operation saves the fundus or the top part of the uterus but treats the cervical cancer by removing the cancer and surrounding tissue and removes the lymph nodes and if the margins or the edges of the specimen appear healthy and they don’t have cancer, the top part of the uterus can be repaired back to the top part of the vagina, the patient menstruates normally and they are able to have children,” explains Dr. Nadeem Abu-Rustem of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Regularly scheduled pap smears are absolutely crucial in catching cervical cancer. “Pap smears are very good at detecting precancerous lesions that can usually be cured. In the pre-invasive stage it is very silent because precancerous lesions usually don’t have symptoms, it takes an invasive lesion of the cervix to start having problems with abnormal bleeding or discharge or bleeding after intercourse, that usually means that it is at stage one by that point,” says Dr. Abu-Rustem.

Dr. Abu-Rustem emphasizes that women of reproductive age who are battling cervical cancer and want children, should not give up their dream.

“Get an opinion from a gynecological oncologist who has experience with fertility preserving operations, there are many options including conization of the cervix, trachelectomy through the laparoscopic approach or abdominal approach, there are many options that potentially can help and spare a patient a radical hysterectomy,” says Dr. Abu-Rustem.

Post surgery, Melissa and her husband, Scott, knew they wanted to try to have another baby. After 6 months and no luck, they turned to in vitro fertilization. Thanks to this miracle of science, Kendal Grace joined the Gilbert family.

Additional symptoms may include painful urination, sometimes with blood in urine, dull backache or swelling in the legs, diarrhea, fatigue, loss of weight and appetite, and a general feeling of illness.

Medical experts recommend that if you are sexually active you should have regularly scheduled pap smears. If a woman is not sexually active then she should consider getting pap smears starting at age eighteen.

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