Dory Ogden Dory's Journey

Did you know pregnancy can lead to cancer? Neither did I until a week ago. Apparently it's very rare, but it can happen.


On August 3rd, God blessed us with a perfect, handsome "little" boy. William Robert Ogden came into this world just before noon at a whopping 11 pounds, 8 ounces. The next days and weeks were filled with love and wonder as we began to get to know our family of six. On September 1, just four weeks after he was born, I started having excessive, uncontrolled bleeding. Knowing the signs of hemmoraging, I knew it was time to get to the hospital immediately. An ultrasound showed retained tissue, and I was scheduled for a D&C the following day. 


We thought all was back to normal. I was told I had a couple of months recovery time before my iron levels would be normal again from the severe blood loss, but that we were out of the woods physically. After a few weeks, I received a phone call from my doctor's office requesting a followup appointment. At this appointment I was told some of the tissue removed during my D&C was abnormal, and could either just pass normally or be cancerous. The easiest way to tell was a series of blood tests to test my hcg levels, a hormone that should only be present during pregnancy. If the levels dropped, I was in the clear; if they rose, it was cancer. After three tests over the course of a week, my levels had multiplied seven times the amount the original test and I was diagnosed with choriocarcinoma, a rare, fast-growing placental cancer, on Friday, September 23rd.