Bernadette Mimura, 37, from Ingleby Barwick, was diagnosed with breast cancer one month into her pregnancy.
Doctors urged her to try life-saving drugs, but this would have meant terminating the pregnancy.
Ms Mimura refused the drugs and gave birth to her fit and healthy baby, but lived just long enough to see her son, Nathan, baptised.,,
The local community is now raising funds to help towards the cost of taking her body back to her native Philippines.
----------------------------------One of the saddest things I saw as a young doc was a mother with Sarcoma of the knee who allowed amputation but chose to delay radiation so she could carry her baby to term...the prognosis was grim anyway, and when I treated her she was seven months along, and terminal, but just trying to hold on to life so that her baby would live...
I wish this was a rare story, but I've had two patients with early Cervical cancer who chose to carry their child to term (both lived) and one who had advanced Cervical cancer, who probably wouldn't have been able to carry the child to term, who chose radiation, which killed the child... to this day she cries about it, but explains "I had three children to care for, and felt I should be with them"...
Ironically, the Catholic church forbids abortion, but DOES allow chemotherapy and radiation to treat cancer of the mother, even though the treatment would kill the child...but many women still chose life for the child over prolonging their own lives...
