None of My Mom Friends Are Dying

[NNadir]

Last night I posted a reference to a memorial included in a scientific journal, to an important environmental scientist, Dr. Katherine T. Peter, who died young, shortly after giving birth to her first child.

The post is in the E&E forum and is here: In Memoriam: The Scientific Legacy of Dr. Katherine T. Peter

Before dying, Dr. Peter wrote a moving piece about being terminally ill, which is also, in my view, valuable inasmuch as it stands as a warning that one should trust one's body as much, perhaps more, than one's doctors, since doctors, even excellent doctors, as human beings, are subject to making mistakes.

Dr. Peter's piece is here: None of My Mom Friends Are Dying

An Excerpt:

I’m squarely in the middle of my friends, in terms of when we became “mom friends.” However, one aspect sets me apart: None of my mom friends are dying.

None had excruciating pain during pregnancy, unrelenting constipation or unexplained blood in their stool. None went septic five days postpartum or were ultimately diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer with liver, lung and peritoneal metastases. None are parenting a two-year-old, knowing that they might not see him turn three.

It’s not surprising that I’m unique among my friends in this way. Colorectal cancer (CRC) during pregnancy is rare, occurring in one woman per 50,000. Applying this ratio to the 3,664,292 US births in 2021, I’m one of seventy-three extremely unlucky women. Such cases often involve delayed diagnoses, because CRC symptoms often present when the disease is relatively advanced, and are masked by pregnancy symptoms. Looking back at my pain-filled pregnancy, the clues were there—but no one deciphered them until too late.

I was so excited to become pregnant, determined to stay physically active and continue my usual busy routine as an environmental scientist, hiker and quilter. Unfortunately, my actual experience was very different. By mid-second trimester, I was enduring left-sided abdominal cramping that made even a thirty-minute walk challenging. I was also extremely constipated and had blood in my stool, but my obstetrician explained these as common pregnancy symptoms.

At thirty-two weeks and six days, the cramping suddenly became a sharp, agonizing pain, folding me in half. The next morning, at my thirty-three-week appointment, my obstetrician recommended more stool softeners and told me stories about other patients who’d experienced pain during pregnancy. I remember feeling baffled, and guilty about complaining.

Is this awful pain truly typical third-trimester discomfort? I wondered. Do I just need to be tougher?...

It's a moving piece, but also something of a warning.

[KT2000]

1. Environmental health research

is kept separate from medical research. So much is known but it is ignored and people who need to know are ignorant. It is in fact a threat to one's career for integrating that knowledge - it is called the slippery slope.