The Last Thing I Expected

About 1 in 3,000 American women is diagnosed during what’s supposed to be a happy time. Here, three survivors share their tough decisions, hard-won recoveries — and beautiful babies’ miraculous starts

- Katherine Malmo

I “It felt unfair to have a baby & not be there for him.”

Kathleen Sutton, 32, with Spencer, almost 3

Spencer knows a lot about things with wheels: He likes to push his toy trucks in the dirt and can name various construction vehicles. He’s also big into dinosaurs and rockets and hide-and-seek. But when it comes to his mom’s cancer he knows only that she sees a doctor, and that’s how Kathleen and her husband, Mike, hope to keep it. “I just want him to know he’s loved,” she says.

At 10 weeks pregnant in the summer of 2014, Kathleen noticed that her right breast was swollen and a bit sore. She didn’t stress — she knew breasts changed during pregnancy. But while preparing to go to a breastfeeding class a few months later, she felt a lump near her armpit. This time, she worried. “When you find a lump,” she says, “your mind goes to cancer.” Instead of being told her biopsy results by phone a few days later, she was asked to come in. “So it’s bad?” Kathleen asked. “The nurse said, ‘It’s a little more complicated than saying you have cancer.’ That’s when I really knew it was serious.”

Sutton was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, an aggressive disease that appears as swelling, redness and irritation on the skin. The lump she’d found was a swollen lymph node, a sign that the cancer had spread.