Yes, ovarian cancer at 17. Given months to live. She probably didn’t hear much after that, too consumed with questions of “why?” and “how?” pounding in her ears.
Turns out Jessica beat those odds 14 years ago. She survived that blow but at a cost. There’s been a lifetime of other health challenges. “There have been so many dark, dark times,” she shared with me this week. “I was depressed for so long wondering why I had so many challenges, so much darkness?”
When she married in 2010, she and her husband figured they were signing up for a childless marriage.
“We figured we might adopt,” Jessica told me. “Or more realistically, figure out how to be happy with just us.”
That was about the time I met Jessica. She’d become friends with my friend Tricia and drawn into our group of women friends known informally as The Pretty Ladies.
We’re a loving bunch with a few hard fast traditions. As I’ve shared in this column before, when a Pretty Lady’s birthday comes around, you’re expected to write and share your Birthday Wish List. It can be a collection of stuff, adventures, goals and dreams you hope to see come true in the coming year. Sounds simple enough, and it is when you’re talking things like a trip to the beach or wanting new workout clothes.
Jessica set out to create her first Birthday Wish List just as she was turning 30. “I decided to wish for 30 things,” she reminisced me the other day. There were fun things on her list like seeing Adele in concert and taking a dance class once a week.
“But I as I got down to numbers 28 and 29, I got bold,” she said. “I dared to ask myself, ‘What do you really want, no matter how crazy? What’s your heart true desire? Just put it out there!’ ”
Jessica dug down deep. As I just looked at her wish list again recently, I saw those daring and daunting wishes. Right at the top was, “1. Healthy ovaries, fallopian tubes & uterus.” And the craziest of all, “30. A baby.”
Not a single one of us Pretty Ladies laughed or scoffed at Jessica’s list. After all, we’ve seen some pretty incredible dreams come true. But a healthy body after a long slew of health challenges? A baby? We do live in the real world, where disappointments are known to happen on a regular basis. This could’ve been the list that wished too far.
Our fears were heightened recently when Jessica reached out simply asked for our prayers. She hasn’t been feeling well since late summer. An achy feeling in her abdomen that just wouldn’t seem to go away. How could you not go to that place? Was her cancer back?
I knew she was going to the doctor to get answers, and I knew the results were waiting for me in that e-mail. That’s why the pit sat in my stomach.
Now that I have opened the e-mail, I can’t stop looking at it.
It begins, “Almost 18 months ago, I wrote my first Pretty Lady wish list for my 30th birthday … I wished for everything that was in my heart, whether I thought it possible or not. The list began with “a healthy body” … and ended with “a baby” … and now the list is quite literally complete. “I am … by some stroke of a miracle … 12 weeks pregnant!”
Yep, pregnant. She attached the little ultrasound for all of us to see.
Left again to ask “how?” Well, she knows how. The good old-fashioned way. No fertility treatments or interventions. She can no more explain why she was chosen for this miracle than she can explain why she got cancer at 17.
She can now see both as gifts. Yes, both. “The bad is dark and awful, there’s no doubt about that,” she said. “But it happens as the contrast to shine the light on the good.
Jessica put her hand over her growing belly. Where once doctors predicted her death, she’s now growing life. “And that,” she says is so amazingly good.”
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