Dear Mums,
20 months ago I met a woman we can call Livia. She has a brilliant mind and we started working on a project together. As we got to know each other it became clear she was in an abusive relationship, ending up frequently in hospital. She has 4 small children, the youngest with her then abusive partner (5 years old), another the unfortunate consequence of an ill-advised fling (7 years old) and twins, a result of IVF from her first marriage (12 years old). I was recently divorced and living alone, she is an incredible beauty in a distressing situation – one thing led to another.
I have 3 children: 2 in their early 20s and living away from home and my youngest is 17 living with her mother but with whom I have a close relationship.
In the new year of 2023 Livia’s situation at home had become dangerous, she was under constant attack. She had won a restraining order on her ex but he had weasled himself into a neighbour’s flat below hers and was terrorising her daily. The police were ineffective as he acted from the shadows and evaded detection. Not knowing what else to do, I invited her to come and live with me while she waited for the final court case to come up, from which we would expect him to receive a custodial sentence. The wheels turn slowly and we are still waiting.
In June 2023, after several months of pain in the head had turned to bleeding from the ears, (we had attributed this to one of the beatings), she was diagnosed with glioblastoma which is a grade IV brain tumour with no cure. It has a median survival time of 12 to 15 months and we are now in the 12th month post-diagnosis. She is 36 years old.
It was not possible to have surgery to resect her tumour due to its location, but since she was in a very poorly condition when she was diagnosed they did an emergency procedure to insert brachytherapy seeds in very high dosage around the tumour. This gave her a very rough and painful summer but was actually quite effective, reducing the tumour almost completely by October.
Unfortunately, it sprang back very quickly and by January she was very sick again with considerable regrowth. The medical team then put her on an aggressive mixture of proton therapy, radiotherapy and chemo. They continued with this until March this year and while initially successful it quickly became apparent that the tumour was becoming resistant and spreading.
So far, a bit unorthodox but fair enough - they threw everything they could think of at it. What is troubling me is the next bit:
In April, a new guy came on board, apparently an eminent research oncologist - he took control and advised to put her treatment on hold for a couple of weeks while he reviewed her case history and decided on the next course of action. He was alarmed at the sheer quantity of medicine and radiation they had been pumping into her and felt she could do with a rest. Again, so far so good, this felt quite reassuring until he came back with his conclusion.
After a couple of weeks, she had already started to show signs of an allergic reaction, a burning and itching and redness all over her body. The doctor took her bloods and sent her for further scans and after a few more days called with the results.
He concluded that she was now rejecting the chemo and radiotherapy and that further treatment would do more harm than good. He advised that there was nothing else that could be done. But then he came up with this - and this is what I am deeply troubled about:
He asked if she had conserved any of the umbilical cords from her previous pregnancies. When she confirmed that she had not, he said that was a pity because there are a lot of promising results coming from research into stem cells and that the only possible option left to her would be to get pregnant.
The idea would be to try to carry the pregnancy to term in order to harvest the stem cells from the umbilical cord after birth and then create some kind of culture which would re-code the dna and potentially fight off the tumour. I have researched the heck out of this and can't find anything other than some testing in mice which has extended their lives by a few months.
She initially rejected the idea, but as it has gradually dawned on her that the only alternative is to do nothing and let the tumour kill her, she has now latched onto it as her only hope.
The whole idea sounds to me like pure science fiction, apart from being incredibly unethical and with no demonstrable chance of success. I have also understood that the only scientific probability is that the pregnancy will energise the growth of the tumour.
On a personal level, this is tearing us apart. She is incredibly angry with me that I have questioned the idea when it’s the only thing left. She has been given to believe that I hold the power of life or death over her. I am close to 50, with 3 grown kids of my own and have only known her for less than 2 years. The last thing in the world I want is to have a baby, with her or anyone else. I would do this for her if I felt for a moment that it had a genuine chance of success - but as it stands I can only feel that it will add to her problems over the coming months and that even if its clinically successful it might only extend her life by a short time - leaving me as the single parent of a new-born.
She is aware that the chances of success are slim, but its all she's got. In her eyes, I am now the cure for her cancer and my hesitancy will lead to her certain death instead of a chance of life. She feels betrayed and abandoned even though I have agreed to go through with it. She feels that I am agreeing half heartedly and would rather she die than to risk having a child.
From my own perspective, our relationship has been a catalogue of trials and challenges which never gave the opportunity for anything positive to flourish for me. Having to live with and maintain her 4 (traumatised) children has been a massive burden, as well as looking after her through her severe illness as she declines in health. She has no extended family and mine is all in my home country, we have no support or help from anyone and all of the children’s fathers are entirely absent and play no part in their lives, financially or otherwise. In spite of all this, I have now become the bad guy who in her eyes is not totally committed to saving her life and giving her a happy future. It has now been one year since I have been able to travel home to see my elderly parents as she has nobody to look after her here. I have been much more distant from my own children than I should have been as I try to deal with all of this. My job requires me to travel to visit my customers frequently and I have been leaning on my colleagues to cover my back for a year while I can’t risk being away.
I see no future and can only feel they have sold her a vain hope which requires me to mortgage my life to support, even if it adds no realistic improvement for her chances of survival. Am I wrong and selfish to not want to go ahead with this? Have I allowed myself to get so deeply sucked into this nightmare that I now have a duty to see it through at the expense of my own future? Has my desire to do some good only led to making everything worse for everyone? What is the alternative? She has nowhere else to go and nobody else to turn to.
I don’t think there are any easy answers, but I would highly value your perspective, even if it's not what I want to hear.
Thank you