Mum credits baby with saving her life after grapefruit-sized tumour detected at 21-week scan
Video report by ITV News Reporter Sangeeta Kandola
A woman whose rare cancer was detected during a pregnancy scan says she will be “forever grateful” to the doctors who removed a grapefruit-sized tumour from her kidney.
Rachel Bailey told ITV News the tumour was only found when she went in for a scan for baby Phoenix at 21 weeks.
“I started bleeding, and first of all I thought I was losing the baby, so we went to the specialist midwives in St Thomas Hospital and they did all the checks and realised it wasn’t her,” Rachel said.
The 28-year-old was diagnosed with a rare kidney cancer and she believes her daughter saved her life, as without the 21-week scan the tumour may not have been detected.
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“It was more shock, that I didn’t know how to feel or what to feel and then I left and went home and had a little cry about it, just because at that time we didn’t know, what the next step was going to be,” Rachel added.
Dr Ben Challacombe, Consultant Urological Surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas', said the tumour was originally 6.5cm in the original scan but after three months of lockdown, it had grown to 9cm.
“It was really touch and go as to whether you can save the kidney and get it all out, so there was a little bit of me looking around the room at everyone, thinking we will have to give this a go and thankfully it came out really nicely and preserved two thirds of the rest of the kidney,” Dr Challacombe said.
Rachel was able to return home just 25 hours after being admitted to hospital.