A pregnant 18-year old school girl from Idaho made the ultimate sacrifice after refusing chemotherapy treatment for a deadly brain tumour, to save her unborn baby.
Jenni Lake sadly passed away 12 days after she gave birth to her son.
Jenni’s distraught mother Diana recalled how her daughter began suffering from migraines last year and after consulting a doctor, an MRI scan revealed she had a small mass of tumours, measuring about two centimeters wide, on the right hand side of her brain.
Despite a biopsy shortly after, Jenni was diagnosed with stage three astrocytoma, after doctors discovered the tumour was larger than they first thought. They also fund three further tumours on her spine.
“She didn’t break down and cry or anything,” recalls her mother. “When they told her she might not be able to have kids though, she got upset,” her father revealed, as reported by the Daily Mail.
After months of grueling chemotherapy treatment, in March this year, Jenni’s tumours had began to shrink, giving the Lake family hope.
Shortly after this positive development, Jenni began throwing up and experiencing sharp stomach pains. After a trip to the doctors, Jenni discovered she was 10-weeks pregnant. “We were told that she couldn’t get pregnant, so we didn’t worry about it,” says Jenni’s boyfriend Nathan.
Despite stark advice from doctors and oncologists warning Jenni that she couldn’t continue with her treatment if she kept her baby, otherwise she would have to stop the chemotherapy and risk the tumour growing further, Jenni refused a termination.
“I guess we were just hoping that after she had the baby, she could go back on the chemotherapy and get better,” her mother said.
Jenni gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Chad Michael. The proud mother, whose vision had been lost throughout the final stages of her pregnancy, said, “I can kind of see him. I'm done, I did what I was supposed to. My baby is going to get here safe," before passing away.
