BITTER SWEET

Arina was diagnosed with cancer while carrying her miracle baby and made the tough choice to start chemo while pregnant 

- ROSS MICHAELS

AFTER years of desperate hopes and fervent prayers, finding out she was expecting another child was a dream come true – finally her little girl would have a sibling, finally their family would be complete. But then something happened that

would cloud her joy and force her to make a tough decision. Would she receive the treatment that would save her life, but risk harming her child – or would she forego treatment and possibly not live to see her baby grow up?

Arina Zandberg, a minister at the Dutch Reformed Church Bakenskop in Kimberley, had discovered a lump on her neck that turned out to be cancer and she and her husband, Dirk, were devastated.

“I cried for a whole week,” she says. “It was hard to hear I had cancer, but it was worse to hear we could lose the baby.

“We’d prayed for this for so long, we’d tried for so long. Our dream was coming true and then we got this shocking news.”

Arina’s first instinct was to forego chemotherapy to protect her unborn child, but doctors warned that avoiding chemo for six or seven months could endanger her life.

“The risk was just too great that the cancer would spread and become life-threatening and then I wouldn’t be there to raise her. We had to make tough choices: what was safe enough for her and what was the right thing for me to do so we both could survive?”

She and Dirk, a food scientist, turned to their faith to help them decide and Arina says they found solace in the words of Isaiah 41:10: “Do not fear. I am with you. I will strengthen you and help you.”