Mother's courage 'I BEAT BOWEL CANCER TO HAVE A BABY'

Never giving up on her family dream, Rachael was delighted to discover the sweetest surprise after chemo

- Kasia Jillings 

Early childhood education teacher Rachael Ferguson was in the prime of her life, recently married and excited to start a family when prenatal testing led to a terrifying diagnosis – stage four bowel cancer.

“Back then, I had no idea bowel cancer was a possibility. I was only 32 and it was just not on my radar at all,” says Rachael, now 34, who like so many believed she was too young for the aggressive disease.

Extremely low iron stores, picked up in the prenatal blood tests, and the occasional spots of fresh blood in her stools were the first warning signs for Rachael, who was sent for a flexible sigmoidoscopy examination to be cautious. 

“I went on my own and opted to be awake for the procedure because I wanted to drive home after and get on with my life,” recalls Rachael, who was shocked to learn she had a large cancerous tumour. Doctors estimated it had been growing for 18 months.

“It was frightening,” recalls Rachael. “I lost it, had a really big cry, then looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Okay, that’s it, you need to pull it together and it is going to be okay.’ You don’t have much control, so finding something that I could control, which was my emotions, helped keep me going.”

A major but successful surgery to remove the tumour from her bowel and a second smaller one on her liver came next, followed by six months of chemotherapy.

Trying for a baby was put on pause while Rachael underwent the gruelling treatment, but she never gave up on her family dream.