Giving Birth After Fighting Cancer

GIVING BIRTH WHILE FIGHTING CANCER

BY:
RUTH HAWTHORNE

PSY 105
Dr. H. ODERINDE
NOVEMBER 1, 2014

Ruth Hawthorne
November 1, 2014
PSY 105
Final

Giving Birth While Fighting Cancer It is funny how life seems to take many twists and turns that somehow mesh into each other to form a chaotic knot of trials. Many people can even pin point the exact moment in their life which was forever changed by a single event. That event for me was when I was pregnant with Jenesis, my youngest son, while also diagnosed with a tumor on the left part of my brain. When an event so serious happens it becomes an unforgettable memory for you and teaches you a lesson that becomes one of the basic guidelines in your life. This event that forever changed me and was the most significant to me was when I decided to give my son life and disregarded my own life in doing so.
The day I found out I was pregnant and had a brain tumor started like any other day. I was taking my two eldest children to school, so that I can rush home prepare dinner for the day and take care of my daily household duties. While walking up the stairs to my front door I began to feel faint and I clutched for the stairwell as I began to fall and lose consciousness. When I woke up I found myself in the local emergency room with my significant other looking over me with worry in his eyes. I was not prepared for what happened next; it was the worst news ever. Not only was I five months pregnant, but I also was told they needed to take further tests for a mass they found on x-rays taken earlier of my head. At that moment all I could think about was what in the world was going on; I was clueless. Looking at my life with a psychodynamic perspective I was in denial and I felt like I was living in someone else’s dream. How can a healthy twenty-five year old possibly have a brain tumor? How can this happen to me? Who will take of children if I die? These were the many questions running through my mind at that point. It seems as if the years of unhealthy habits have finally caught up with me. Finding out the positive results that I did indeed have a malignant tumor on my brain was hard enough, but to hear the doctors try to talk me into aborting my son in order to save my own life was even more crushing. Trying to process everything I used a cognitive perspective approach to the situation because I was in a state of disbelief and needed to figure out what action I would take next. I decided that prayer was much needed, and needed now. After talking to my family, friends and getting a second opinion, I chose to save him. I believed that I have lead a full life (even at twenty-five) and my son deserved to live, even if it was for only a couple years given this circumstance. It was months of pain and anguish as I waited for him to be big enough before they could deliver him and start my radiation treatments. It is now six years later and he is a healthy little boy with no health issues at all, and I am a cancer survivor of six years.
Life sets out many pathways to decide your future. It can give you experiences and certain experiences in your life can impact you a lot. In a weird way I believe that operant learning was used as a result of the event in my life. I knew that I had to change my habits in order to see my children grow up and become parents themselves. So I would use positive

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