Published Aug 18, 2022

Woman Pregnant with ‘Miracle’ Baby Is DEVASTATED She Can’t Breastfeed Due To Shock Cancer Diagnosis

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A Mother's Nightmare

Allison Murphy faced every mother’s nightmare when she found out she potentially had cancer while 35 weeks pregnant. and needed surgery to get her thyroid out.
The new mom gave birth to a healthy baby girl, then received her diagnosis.
Luckily, thyroid cancer is typically slow-growing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be serious. If you have a lump in your neck, a constant cough, or trouble breathing or swallowing, be sure to get in right away to see a doctor.

Allison Murphy faced every mother’s nightmare when she found out she potentially had cancer while 35 weeks pregnant. and needed surgery to get her thyroid out. She and her husband had been trying for years to have a baby.

“It was a miracle,” the Atlanta-based wife and mother told her local Fox5 news station. “It really felt like a miracle, like we were given a gift.”

By this point, Allison’s doctors had been watching a lump in her throat for eight years, but biopsies always came back benign, or negative.

“I had a thyroid nodule,” she says. “It was right here. I looked like a girl who had an Adam’s apple. It stood out, like a knot in my throat.”

All of a sudden she wasn’t so lucky, as results for her latest biopsy as an expectant mother finally came back suspicious.

“I just looked at my belly and was like, ‘I can’t have my thyroid out by the end of the year, I’m about to have my baby,'” Alison recalled of the painful news.

Doctors explained to her that thyroid cancer is very treatable, but they needed to get her thyroid out right away.

Thankfully, Allison was able to wait to have the surgery three months after she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

The doctors had been right, the lump was indeed cancerous. Part of her treatment for the disease was radioactive iodine treatment, so unfortunately the new mom had to stop breastfeeding her baby, which she says was the “hardest part of the journey.”

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But she got past it. It has now been six years since Allison’s traumatic pregnancy and diagnosis, and she is happy to report she is still cancer-free.

Getting checked by your doctor and taking care of anything suspicious that arises as quickly as possible will help prevent this type of cancer from spreading beyond the thyroid.

What is Thyroid Cancer?

Thyroid cancer is a disease that begins in the thyroid gland, which is at the base of the neck. The cancer will often present itself as a large bump (tumor) in the neck. It remains unclear what causes the disease. Some symptoms of thyroid cancer can be mistaken for a common cold.

Treatments for this type of cancer can include surgery, hormone therapy, radioactive iodine, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Symptoms of thyroid cancer include the following, outlined by the American Cancer Society (ACS):

A lump in the neck, sometimes growing quickly
Swelling in the neck
Pain in the front of the neck, sometimes going up to the ears
Hoarseness or other voice changes that do not go away
Trouble swallowing
Trouble breathing
A constant cough that is not due to a cold

Luckily, thyroid cancer is typically slow-growing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be serious. If you have any of these symptoms, be sure to flag them with your doctor.

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