Diagnosed with Breast Cancer while Pregnant, One Mom Was Told She Had Months to Live. Now, 'I'm Thriving'

Two years ago, Lindsey Gritton sat down in her daughter Saylor’s bedroom and began the most difficult conversation of her life. As Saylor, then 2 and wearing an anklet, played on the bed next to her and Gritton’s toddler daughter, Savannah, slept on a play mat nearby, the Georgia mom struggled to find the words to tell her toddler. that she has cancer – and that she may only have months to live. “I had to explain that mom would have to go to heaven soon, that I might have to leave her,” Gritton recalls.

She recorded the moment, one of many she took at the time in hopes of preserving the final memories for her children. In the video, the child tells his mom, “I’m going to miss you.” And Gritton hugged her tightly. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” says Gritton, a full-time mom and social media creator.

In May 2022, a week after the birth of her second daughter, Gritton, then just 29, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and told she had six months to live. But after months of intensive treatment and years of recovery, Gritton, now 31, has not only defied those predictions, “I’m thriving,” she says, moments after wrangling her two boisterous girls, now 4 and 2. , during a recent photo shoot at their home in Cumming, Ga. “I try to live each day with gratitude.”

Lindsey Parr Gritton, her husband Spencer and daughters, Saylor and Savannah Grace.

Lynsey Weatherspoon

Gritton was 34 weeks pregnant with Savannah when she found a lump in her breast. At first she thought it was a blocked milk duct, but it continued to irritate her. The doctor told her it was just mastitis, “but I had a feeling it could be something more.” She asked for an ultrasound – “and it saved my life.”

Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer and wanted to start treatment as soon as possible. At 37 weeks, she was induced so that she could start chemotherapy.

Childbirth was another trauma. “I started bleeding profusely. Towels soaked in blood. They didn’t think I would make it,” Gritton recalls. Her daughter’s heart rate was dropping and doctors suggested a C-section, but Gritton refused, fearing that recovery would further delay her cancer treatment. Intuition served her again and she was able to give birth to her healthy baby girl without surgery.

About a week after she gave birth, her cancer treatment began with a PET scan. Gritton was in a car with her husband Spencer, 36, when the scan results appeared on her phone: the cancer had spread and she had more than a dozen tumors on her liver.

The news was “shocking”. She was scared, but she had unwavering determination. “I knew I had to do whatever it took to be here for my family,” she says.

Lindsay Gritton undergoing treatment in July 2022.

Courtesy of Lindsey Gritton

She endured six months of chemotherapy, seeing an oncologist every three weeks for three hours, while her husband took time off from his job as a business owner to take care of their newborn and toddler at home. “He stayed up with Savannah every night for the first six months of her life so I could sleep during chemotherapy,” she says. — He always thought I would beat him. I kept that hope.”

Cancer treatment meant Gritton was unable to care for her daughter. When her hair began to fall out, she remembers feeling devastated: “It was a lot for me as a woman, not being able to breastfeed, losing your hair — to have it all ripped from you.”

Through it all, she carried the fear that she might not be around when her daughters were growing up. From time to time she was occupied with writing letters and making videos for them. “All I could think about was, ‘What can I do for them before I die?’ Cancer was all I thought about every day.”

Courtesy of Lindsey Gritton

Gritton continues to take immunotherapy drugs and has multiple PET scans each year, but now that there is no evidence of cancer, she is eager to make memories with her girlfriends. “I can actually be present with them,” she says. “I try to enjoy my time with them, make memories, do fun things, take them places and raise them to be kind,”

At one point, she didn’t think she’d be alive for Savannah’s first birthday, “but I celebrated her second.” Recently, she was able to watch Saylor ride a two-wheeler without training wheels for the first time.

Lindsay Gritton with her daughters.

Lynsey Weatherspoon

“I’m so grateful to be here to see those moments. This taught me to live in the moment, to live every day.”

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Source: HIS Education