A mom from California is celebrating five years of No Evidence of Disease (NED) after being diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer when she was 31 weeks pregnant. Amanda Webb, who was 36 at the time, was diagnosed after a routine prenatal scan suggested her baby might have trisomy 13, a severe chromosome condition. Follow-up testing showed her baby was healthy, raising concerns that something else could have been behind the initial screening result.
Because false positives can occasionally be linked to cancer cells in the mother's blood and Webb had a history of melanoma, doctors took a closer look at her health. "At that point, it became very real [that] something was going on," she told Newsweek. "I did a colonoscopy, a liver biopsy, a CT scan despite being pregnant, countless ultrasounds.
I kind of knew at that point we were grappling with the big C—cancer—in some shape or form." It was Webb's oncologist who delivered the devastating news: She had Stage 4 colon cancer. "I was just shocked," Webb said. "It was my husband's birthday.
He was on the phone and came rushing to the hospital to be with me. I remember a high-risk OB nurse taking me to the garden and just holding me while I scream-cried." Instead of planning for their baby's arrival, Webb and her husband, Jon, were facing a terrifying future. Suddenly, to Webb, the "woes of pregnancy" felt insignificant.
She removed the pregnancy apps from her phone, and conversations with other moms became fewer and farther between. "I was going through something different, and I just didn't feel like I could relate anymore," she said. Webb remembers a bleak conversation she had with an oncology fellow after receiving the diagnosis.
"I looked at him, and I said, 'Am I going to beat this?' He didn't answer," Webb said. "I don't think I wanted the answer. I didn't know the survival rates for Stage 4 colon cancer then, but I know them now." According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate for colon cancer that has spread to distant parts of the body is 13 percent, though outcomes vary widely depending on the extent of the disease and how it responds to treatment, such as chemotherapy.
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