Brave Mother’s Little Miracle
Published: June 2, 2006
A CANCER-stricken Yorkshire mother has had pioneering radiotherapy treatment – despite being heavily pregnant at the time.
Last November Donna Butterworth, 37, from Doncaster, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour when she was just a few weeks pregnant.
As surgery failed to remove all the tumour she was faced with a terrible dilemma.
Patients would normally be given a rapid course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy to try to shrink it, but because Miss Butterworth, of Greenwood Avenue, Balby, was 20 weeks pregnant, she was told this might not be possible as it could damage or even kill her baby .
But consultant oncologist Dr David Levy, at Weston Park, Sheffield’s cancer specialist hospital, decided it was a risk worth taking and the radiotherapy went ahead.
Had it not done, he said, Miss Butterworth and her baby daughter Ellie, who is now 12 weeks old, and healthy, might both be dead. As it is, Miss Butterworth knows her cancer will eventually kill her, but the treatment allowed her baby to be born and has given her precious time.
Dr Levy said: “We normally don’t treat patients who are pregnant because of the risk to the unborn baby.
“But this really left Miss
Butterworth between a rock and a hard place – without the radiotherapy she simply would not have survived; the tumour was that aggressive.”
Since the birth Miss Butterworth has had further surgery on her brain and is undergoing chemotherapy.
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