People magazine is reporting the story of Aleks Patete, who was seven weeks pregnant last November, when, during a routine ultrasound at University Hospital Cleveland, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Doctors told Patete and her husband Dominic that her best treatment option would be to have an abortion and undergo aggressive chemotherapy.
Patter refused the abortion but had the chemotherapy. On April 24, her son DJ was born.
“It’s a miracle,” Patete, a registered nurse, told People. “The cancer could have progressed a lot further, and we would have had no idea if I wasn’t for my pregnancy. God sent DJ to save my life.”
“He saved my life,” she said. “Now it was my turn to save his life.”
Patete works full time as a nurse.
“It was rough trying to grow a human and go through chemo,” she said. “I was so tired and sick that I had to schedule my days off for when I knew I would be feeling ill.”
Three weeks before giving birth to DJ, she finished her treatments.
“It was just beautiful,” she says. “And he’s the sweetest baby, always smiling and just a joy.”
Patete is officially in remission and goes in for a checkup every three months to make sure the cancer has not returned. “I think about the things that could have happened and what could have gone wrong and there’s no other reason than the grace of God that everything worked out and we are both alive.
“I truly think God was watching over us.”
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