Real life
Christine Shaw had survived cancer before having two muchlonged-for boys. Then history seemed ready to repeat itself
When Christine Shaw was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system – she thought it was the worst news she could ever get. That was until, more than 20 years later, her 11-year-old son George was diagnosed with leukaemia.
‘I cannot explain how I felt when the doctor told me. I was physically sick and heard myself screaming,’ says the 57-year-old from Nottingham. ‘It had taken most of my adult life to have my two boys and now I could potentially lose one of them. The fact we are both here today is just incredible – it’s something I’m grateful for every single day.’
Christine met husband Steve, now 61, back in 1983, when she was 16 and he was 20. Even then, they both knew they wanted children. After five years together, they began trying. Yet Christine suffered from a series of health problems and was eventually diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows outside of the uterus, sometimes causing infertility.
They tried a course of IVF in 1996 but doctors decided she wasn’t well enough to have the fertilised embryos implanted. ‘It was devastating – all I wanted was to become a mum, yet it felt like our chance had been snatched away. We were right back at the start,’ Christine remembers.
Then, in February 2004, when Christine was washing her hair in the bath, she felt a small, hard lump on her neck. A week later it had grown, so she saw her GP, who referred her for a biopsy. When Steve went with her to get the results, they were much worse than they could have imagined.
‘I couldn’t believe it when the consultant told me it was cancer. He said we’d caught it in the early stages and that I’d need chemotherapy,’ Christine explains.
‘But what I was most upset about was that the treatment would further affect my fertility. It was starting to feel like I would never have children.’
Thankfully, after six rounds of chemotherapy, Christine was declared cancer-free, and the couple restarted their journey to parenthood. But their attempts at both surrogacy and egg donation failed. ‘Life was a roller coaster. One minute we would be celebrating, the next sobbing,’ Christine says. ‘Whenever we were given a glimmer of hope, it was just as quickly snuffed out.’
In 2008, Christine and Steve found an anonymous egg donor and Christine finally became pregnant. At their 12-week scan, their joy and excitement doubled when the sonographer heard two heartbeats. They were having twins!
The pregnancy went well and in June 2009, at 37 w
