‘Worst moment of my life’: Cancer survivor Mikayla Quaziz’s second hidden struggle

Beating cancer once took a toll on teenage Mikayla Quaziz but discovering she had relapsed years later was made all the more difficult by the news she was pregnant.

Having children was the last thing 18-year-old Mikayla Quaziz was thinking about when her doctor told her the rash she’d been experiencing for months was cancer.

“It didn’t feel real – I felt like my whole world closed in,” she said.

“You’d never think you’d have cancer, let alone at 18.”

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Ms Quaziz was told that while cancer treatments can effect her fertility – with one in 10 cancer survivors experiencing fertility issues – if she wanted to freeze her eggs, it would delay her treatment by six weeks and leave her thousands of dollars out of pocket.

“Postponing treatment was not something I was willing to risk,” she said.

Luckily after she went into remission she fell pregnant naturally with her baby girl, Stevie, only to heartbreakingly relapse at 23 weeks.

“Relapsing was worse than finding out the first time," the Ascot Park mum said.

“The second time you know what it’s like and how hard it is.

“It was the worst moment in my life … I was pregnant, what was I supposed to do?”

Mikayla Quaziz with daughter Stevie, now aged two, at their home in Ascot Park Picture by Kelly Barnes

Doctors were able to keep Ms Quaziz’s cancer “at bay” while she carried Stevie to 32 weeks. Straight after her baby was born, she undertook aggressive chemotherapy alone, without her baby.

“At the time it was horrific, I felt like I’d been robbed,” the 24-year-old said.

“There were just so many things that were robbed from me. I couldn’t breastfeed because I was having chemo … I felt like my mind and my body were just in survival mode.

“You see online all the first-time mums and what they experience, like the newborn bubble, but I didn’t get that.”

Not wanting to be “robbed” of anything else in life Ms Quaziz, whose cancer is now “under control”, decided to have her ovary removed during Stevie’s C-section to preserve her future fertility.

“I only did it because it was funded,” she said.

Through the Sony Foundation’s You Can Fertility program in partnership with the National Ovarian and Testicular tissue Transport and Cryopreservation Service (NOTTCS), Ms Quaziz was able to preserve her fertility for no cost.

Now 24 with her cancer “under control” Ms Quaziz’s ovary is still stored in a freezer in Melbourne in case she wants another child in the future.

In Australia, an estimated 50 per cent of cancer patients do not go through with IVF before treatment due to a lack of access to services, prohibitive costs or insufficient time before treatment commences. Picture by Kelly Barnes

CEO of the Sony Foundation Sophie Ryan said “more patients than ever are surviving cancer, but it’s the lasting impacts of cancer … that are now being recognised as having a devastating effect on their ability to live a full life post-cancer”.

“In Australia, an estimated 50 per cent of cancer patients do not go through with IVF before treatment due to a lack of access to services, prohibitive costs or insufficient time before treatment commences,” she said.

“Sony Foundation’s program means that patients can have access to fertility preservation free of charge and swiftly.”