WHEN you're pregnant the last thing you probably want to be told is that you have breast cancer - as if carrying a baby isn't overwhelming enough, the news of breast cancer just adds to the immense emotional load and health fears. There are some questions you should ask, for instance, at what stage is the cancer? Will it affect the baby? If you continue with the pregnancy will this pose difficulties for you? Does medication or treatment harm the baby? How long do you have to wait until doctors are able to treat you?
When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy the emotional and physical pressure is considerable and she is asked to make some serious decisions.

Oncologist Duvaughn Curling at the Princess Margaret Hospital told Tribune Woman : "Options are discussed and if her tumour is very aggressive and has spread rapidly we give her the option to terminate the pregnancy for her well-being," he said. Although breast cancer does not affect the baby directly, doctors will wait until the third trimester of pregnancy to treat the mother.

"We do not treat the mother until the third trimester because medication can harm the baby. The thing about chemotherapy is that it kills the cells both good and bad, but specifically those of the cancerous tumours, so a woman is in the position where she has a fetus in her womb which will be affected detrimentally by the treatment," he said. While waiting until the third trimester to treat is a must, he noted that this is also a very nerve-wracking situation.

"We continue to monitor the cancer, but waiting until the third trimester can be a scary situation, since the cancer was at a curable stage and it could spread to the lungs or other parts of the body by the third trimester," he said. Even surgeries can sometimes be detrimental to the well-being of both the mother and her baby. Dr Curling said that doctors are often skeptical about performing surgeries on pregnant women because this can also harm the baby. Breast-feeding during pregnancy is also not recommended by doctors for women undergoing chemotherapy.

From the website www.breastcancer.org here are some frequently asked questions and answers about breast cancer during pregnancy. Does pregnancy does lower survival or increase the risk of recurrence?
For women with a personal history of breast cancer, studies have shown that: There was no apparent long-term increased risk of cancer recurrence or death in women who became pregnant after a breast cancer diagnosis. Pregnancy did not appear to cause new cancers to develop.

Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy did as well in the long term as women with the same type and stage of cancer who were not pregnant when they were diagnosed. If breast cancer is in your body during pregnancy, can it spread to the baby?

No. A barrier between the mother's and the baby's body blocks any cancer cells from entering the baby or its blood supply. What about mammograms?

Mammography during pregnancy may be considered for women with signs or symptoms of a possible breast problem. Small studies have found that mammography poses little to no harm to the fetus during pregnancy if a lead shield is placed on the belly to block any possible radiation scatter. But the accuracy of mammography is limited during pregnancy. In three different studies, the percentage of breast cancers in pregnant women that mammography detected was between 62 per cent and 78 per cent. This is significantly lower than the average 85 per cent detection rate in non-pregnant women.