'I'd never heard of my pregnancy complication, but it could have killed me'
“The doctors explained it could have been an ectopic pregnancy or something else. At that point I just wanted someone to tell me whether I had a baby or not.”
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Vanessa Drummond was ecstatic to learn she was pregnant in July when she started exhibiting all the usual signs of early pregnancy.
However, her first scan would show Vanessa was experiencing one of the rarest, and potentially most deadly, pregnancy complications.
Yahoo News reports that during her first ultrasound, Vanessa’s doctors flagged something unusual.
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“The ultrasound showed an empty gestational sac in my uterus,” Vanessa said.
“There was no heartbeat, no foetus, or placenta visible. I thought I was pregnant and the doctors thought I was pregnant, so they were testing my blood .. but my hormone levels were high.”
Vanessa was sent to hospital for further testing, and there she was given some shock news: There was a possibility she wasn’t pregnant - and never was.
“The doctors explained it could have been an ectopic pregnancy or something else,” she said.
“At that point I just wanted someone to tell me whether I had a baby or not.”
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"I was scared and confused"
After further testing, doctors confirmed Vanessa had developed gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD), a condition that occurs after conception.
Rather than a fertilised egg turning into an embryo and then a baby, GTD causes a rapid mutation of the cells that instead form a cancerous tumour.
While Vanessa’s body thought she was pregnant, she actually needed urgent surgery to remove the tumour and prevent it from spreading.
Vanessa told Yahoo News she’d never heard of the condition before she was diagnosed with it.
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“They were trying to reassure me it was fine, but I was scared and confused,” she said.
There are different types of gestational trophoblastic diseases, and it’s considered rare in Australia with only one in every 1000 pregnancies impacted.
Most GTDs are non-cancerous, but some women will develop the malignant kind.
Thankfully, most are “very curable” with surgery, and Vanessa is showing promising signs of a full recovery with a bout of preventive chemotherapy.
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"I'll be harder to get excited about being pregnant"
Unfortunately for Vanessa, her risk of getting GTD with any future pregnancies has increased.
“I’ve just gone from a 0.001 per cent chance of this happening to a one per cent chance, and it increases each time,” she told Yahoo News.
“This change in fertility is what is probably affecting me the most. My partner’s family has a long history of chromosomal abnormalities, something we are obviously very concerned about, and now this is another thing.
“It’ll be harder to get excited about getting pregnant.”
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