Becoming a mother after a rare cancer. It was possible for Angelica that at 27 she was diagnosed with a rare tumor of the sacrum – a grade 1 chondrosarcoma very close to the rectum, uterus and ovaries – whose treatment risked compromising her ability to have children. In May 2019 from Campania she arrived in Pavia, at the National Center for Oncological Hadrontherapy (Cnao), which studied and performed a completely new procedure for her. She is treated and today, at just over 30 years old, she holds little Federica of almost 5 months in her arms.
“I found out I got pregnant over Mother’s Day weekend last year. After the treatments I went through, I didn’t expect it to happen naturally or to have a pregnancy where everything was so perfect,” she says. Angelica who decided to give birth to the baby in Pavia where they “gave her life back”.
To accompany her on this journey, a multidisciplinary and all-female task force of doctors from the Cnao and the San Matteo Polyclinic, supported by the surgeon Lorenzo Cobianchi. Angelica was treated with carbon ion beams, the most advanced form of radiotherapy, preceded by a “quite unusual” operation of simultaneous dislocation of the rectum, uterus and ovaries to place these structures safe from the radiation beam and be able to deliver a radical dose on the tumor”, underline the health facilities.
“Since any operation on the ovaries is not risk-free, Angelica also underwent oocyte cryopreservation, to allow her to become a mother in the future”, highlights Amelia Barcellini, Cnao radiotherapist.
“As far as we know – says Maria Rosaria Fiore, Cnao radiation oncologist and referent for the treatment of bone sarcomas – it is the first time in the world that a treatment with carbon ions has been performed on the pelvis preceded by a procedure of this type to protect fertility. The sessions were held in the summer of 2019; in the spring of 2022 Angelica informed us that she was pregnant”. After delivery, histological examination of the placenta revealed no signs of radiation treatment.
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