Miracle baby 'born twice' after rare surgery
A mother who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer underwent surgery that had medics holding her womb for two hours outside her body so surgeons could remove the cancerous cells.
Lucy and Adam Isaac have a unique story to share one day with their baby boy, Rafferty.
When Lucy was just 12 weeks pregnant, she went for a routine ultrasound and found out the devastating news that she had ovarian cancer. At this point, she and Adam had to make a vital health decision.
Doctors didn't feel comfortable waiting for Lucy's pregnancy to reach full term, as this could risk the cancer spreading, and Lucy was too advanced in her pregnancy for them to perform standard keyhole surgery. The only other option was for them to perform the rare procedure.
"A team headed by Mr Hooman Soleymani Majd, an Oxford University Hospital (OUH) consultant, proposed the radical operation – a rare procedure which would lift Lucy's womb out of her abdomen, still containing her unborn child, to allow them to examine and remove the cancerous cells on both ovaries behind the womb," OUH reported.
The baby remained inside Lucy's womb, which was removed from her abdomen whilst still being connected to the uterine artery and attached to the fallopian tube and cervix.
According to the Oxford University Hospitals website: "The procedure involved a team of 15 people, including anaesthetic, surgical, obstetric, and pathology staff members who were all directly involved in Lucy's care on the day of her surgery. Two members of the team held Lucy's womb in their hands during the entire procedure, with the baby’s heart rate and temperature being monitored along with Lucy's.
Her womb was wrapped in a warm, sterile saline pack to mimic being inside the body and to keep it at the right temperature, and was replaced with a fresh pack every 20 minutes."
The procedure revealed that Lucy's cancer was at stage 2, which meant that doctors made the right call in doing the surgery. Majd not only shared how this procedure added to the advancements in the medical field, but also shared how emotional it was meeting Baby Rafferty two weeks after he was born.
The Isaac's story is that much more special because, over and above Lucy's cancer diagnosis, the couple had waited to get pregnant while Adam waited for a kidney transplant. He received a transplant in November 2022 from a friend.
Watch the news interview with the couple on Good Morning Britain, courtesy of YouTube.
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Image Courtesy of YouTube