TRUE-LIFE
One minute I was on the verge of losing everything, the next
Ngozi Onwuchekwa, 46, Chichester
Iscrunched up my face and shook my head as my husband James, then 45, pointed out a coffee table. ‘The edges are too sharp,’ I said, walking over to a round table.
‘We’ll need a gate for the stairs, too,’ James said.
It was 2019 and we’d just moved into our dream family home.
Though I wasn’t pregnant, we were planning on trying for a baby soon.
I had so many adorable nieces and nephews.
It’d always been my dream to have kids, and I’d pictured holding my baby, watching them grow.
After marrying in 2014, James and I waited until we were financially stable.
Now, with our beautiful three-bedroom home, we were ready to start a family.
It was in walking distance to the schools we favoured. We’d earmarked a room for the baby.
It was all coming together, and we were enjoying looking at things differently as we kitted out our home.
Making sure it was baby-proof.
Now all we needed was a little one.
Only, a few months later, I had a period that didn’t stop.
My GP put it down to the stress of moving and work.
But when I confided in my friend, Lyndal, she wasn’t so sure.
‘They must take it seriously. Insist on tests,’ she said.
By then I’d been bleeding for almost three months.
So I did, and in June 2020 I was sent for a scan.
‘Looks like polyps,’ the specialist said, explaining that they were benign growths in my womb.
‘You’ll need to have a small operation to remove them, because you want to have children.’
I was relieved to have an answer and know my quest for kids wasn’t going to be affected.
But after the op in July 2020…
‘I’ve removed something, but it wasn’t polyps,’ the doctor said.
He’d sent the mass off for testing.
I tried not to worry too much.
I had a healthy lifestyle and no symptoms apart from the bleeding. How could it be anything really sinister?
So a few weeks later, when I was called in for the results and told it was rhabdomyosarcoma – a rare and aggressive form of soft tissue cancer – my world fell apart.
In the few weeks since the doctor had removed what turned out to be a tumour, it had already grown back.
‘How can this be happening to me?’ I wept to James, terrified.
The cancer was so aggressive I’d need chemo for a year, probably followed by a hysterectomy.
‘But I want children,’ I whispered.
‘You’ve a very small window for IVF before we need to start treatment,’ the specialist said.
James and I didn’t need to discuss it.
I tried not to think about how high the stakes wer
