A 24-year old mother, Ashley Bridges, made the ultimate sacrifice for her unborn baby when she denied life-saving chemotherapy treatment for bone cancer. Bone cancer accounts for less than 1% of all cancers, and cancer in young adults is extremely rare. In the United States, 2,300 new cases of bone cancer are diagnosed each year.
Bridges was only 10-weeks pregnant with her daughter Paisley when she found out about her diagnosis. Her doctors recommended that she begin chemotherapy immediately. However, in her case, this would mean ending the life of her unborn baby. Bridges said, “There’s no way I could kill a healthy baby because I’m sick.”
During her third trimester, Bridges was told that delaying treatment had allowed the cancer to spread. Even though she was only in her eighth month of pregnancy, she was told she needed to deliver Paisley immediately so she could begin treatment.
But even with multiple rounds of chemotherapy, her cancer was terminal. Bridges was given less than a year to live.
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