I was diagnosed with lethal cancer at five months pregnant, aged 31 – it triggered the most sickening ordeal I’ve ever had to face
A woman who discovered she had an aggressive form of cancer midway through her pregnancy was forced to make an ‘impossible choice’… save her life, or her unborn baby’s
In October 2017, Leanne Williams – now 41 – discovered a large lump in her neck, prompting her to book an appointment with her GP.
After she was invited to come in for a blood test the next morning, the expectant mother decided to visit her local A&E at Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI).
A month later, the lump continued to increase in size, she was struggling to breathe and other lumps were ‘sprouting up’.
After further tests and scans, a biopsy confirmed she had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – a rare type of cancer which affects the blood and bone marrow.
She was told she needed to start treatment straight away and she would have to terminate the pregnancy in order to survive.
‘It’s hard to put into words what it feels like to hear you have cancer, but hearing that while carrying a baby, there are no words,’ she said.
‘I was forced to make the impossible choice – my life or his.
Leanne Williams was forced to choose between her life or her unborn baby’s
Ms Williams was placed in an induced coma for five days
‘I gave birth three days later to a baby boy we named Theo. He didn’t survive.’
After months of intense chemotherapy, while ‘mourning (her) son’, Ms Williams reached remission in February 2018 – although the treatment continued until October 2020.
During this time, she said she lost the use of the right side of her body and discovered she had thrombosis – a blood clot – on the brain, which nearly claimed her life.
She was placed in an induced coma for five days, during which she underwent surgery to remove the blood clot, and Ms Williams’s family were told to ‘say their goodbyes’.
When she woke up, she had to relearn how to move, eat and walk, and she restarted the chemotherapy.
‘Eventually I restarted treatment, entered maintenance and slowly rebuilt a life I thought I’d lost,’ she said.
‘I reached the five-year mark (post-diagnosis in November 2022), a huge milestone, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had my ‘new normal’.’
But one month later, Ms Williams relapsed and was told that the cancer had returned even more aggressively.
She underwent further chemotherapy, which made her hair fall out within days, and in January 2023 she said she received the ‘devastating’ news that the treatment had ‘done nothing’ and all treatments had failed.
She has Theo’s hand and footprints as a keepsake
With two older children needing their mother, she was desperate to prolong her life.
Her main hope of survival at the time was a trial treatment of CAR-T therapy – which is primarily used for blood cancers – at King’s College Hospital in London in June of that year.
‘It was a massive breakthrough,’ she said.
She was then offered a stem cell transplant – which replaces damaged blood cells with healthy ones – and this helped her reach remission for a second time.
Ms Williams has since made contact with the donor, Niklas, who lives in Germany.
‘I am just so thankful because, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. He’s actually saved my life,’ she said.
‘I just think it’s amazing that somebody from Germany has donated to a stranger, and I can imagine his feeling of just knowing that I’m here, he’s saved my life, and I’m here for my children because of him.’
The donor was thrilled to hear from her, and said it felt ‘surreal’ when he was contacted to donate his stem cells.
In a note to Ms Williams, he wrote: ‘When you’re told that somewhere there is a person who is seriously ill and desperately in need of help – possibly your help – you inevitably become emotionally invested.
‘If you then hear nothing for half a year, you start wondering how that person is doing.
‘Then, all of a sudden… the doctors had decided that the patient – you – needed a stem cell transplant, and I was the best match they had found.
‘During the following weeks and months, I thought about you a lot… and more than a year later, I received the wonderful news that you were alive and doing well. Another year passed, and then you reached out to me.’
Ms Williams still has regular check-ups, suffers some side effects and takes HRT due to early menopause from her treatments, and said there is a ‘fear of planning too far in advance and then losing it all again’.
However, she is now focused on her new business, Ribbons of Resilience, which offers ‘an alternative to flowers’ with care kits and gifts designed to support cancer patients and caregivers during treatment.
‘I enjoy helping other people, knowing that I’m giving something back,’ she said.
‘I was just thinking about everything I went through, and I think the one thing that was lacking was something for people to buy for patients.’
While her journey often still feels ‘surreal’, she is determined to continue raising awareness and wants to encourage others to get any unusual symptoms checked and to appreciate the ‘simple things’ in life.
‘Every time you hit rock bottom, you have to (rebuild) brick by brick again, and I now have a different outlook on life,’ she said.
‘When I relapsed, I lost everything… whereas now, I’m really enjoying my business and that’s something that no-one can take away from me.’
