When Pregnancy and Cancer Collide, “Push through with Love”

Brooke DiManno knew something was wrong when the tech running her sonogram asked her to wait. This was Brooke’s third pregnancy, and she had enough experience with the routine tests and OB-GYN visits for this to set off an internal alarm. Even then, she couldn’t have imagined the journey that lay ahead of her.

Spoiler: She and her now 10-year-old daughter, Drew, are fine. They’re doing beautifully, in fact. But remembering everything they went through as a family can still bring quiet tears.

The sonogram showed a healthy pregnancy, but also spotted a large mass in her right ovary. Within a day or two, Brooke and her husband, Derek, were sitting across from (now retired) gynecologic cncologist Francis “Bing” Grumbine, MD.

“He was amazing,” she recalled. “He settled my worries and answered all my questions.”

Of course, she had a lot of questions. Dr. Grumbine explained the importance of the first trimester for the baby’s development and recommended postponing surgery until her pregnancy reached 14 weeks.

“Dr. Grumbine was caring for me and my baby,” Brooke said. Dr. Grumbine removed Brooke’s right ovary in September, and she went on to deliver a perfect, healthy baby the following March.

“I knew I was in good hands,” she said calmly. “The doctors and staff at GBMC guided me through so well.”

Brooke, Derek and their two oldest daughters, Tessa and Reese, welcomed baby Drew home and for a time were immersed in all the usual delight and disruption that comes with a new baby. When Drew was eight weeks old, Brooke returned to Dr. Grumbine’s office for a follow-up CT scan. Alarmingly, the scan showed a new mass in her left ovary and the team went into action. Brooke was scheduled for a full hysterectomy and chemotherapy.

After surgery, according to Brooke, “I was assured the surgeons got everything they could see, and chemotherapy would take care of anything surgery couldn’t.”

It’s true what they say about friends in need and, indeed, the DiManno family are blessed with many supportive friends. Parents and in-laws came to stay, and neighbors sent over meals and even helped care for the girls.

At GBMC, Dr. Paul Celano, FACP, FASCO, Medical Director of the Sandra & Malcolm Berman Cancer Institute, signed onto Brooke’s team and “got me on the right concoction of medicine.”

“He was just incredible at giving me guidance and confidence. He’d say, ‘we need to kill all of those fast-growing cells.’ Through the whole experience, I felt that the doctors put their patients first. They checked and double- and triple-checked in every way so the treatment would be successful.”

Though her chemotherapy regimen was pretty intense – seven hours per day, Monday to Friday in the weeks she received treatment, from July until early that November – Brooke decided every side effect was proof cancer cells were under attack. And the cancer was losing.

She told herself, and her children, “My hair will fall out; I’m going to feel and look sicker, but actually, I’m getting well.”

“We’re going to push through with love,” she promised. “I held that posture through the whole thing, and it got me through.”

In fact, the whole family made it through with flying colors. Drew was thriving almost from the start and, when she looks back on that difficult time, Brooke finds, “In the end, we landed in a stronger place with everything, our marriage, our faith, our family, friends and children. I’m grateful for that period.”

When she returned every three months, then every six, Dr. Grumbine “stayed steady, confident,” Brooke said. “He was this rock for me.”

And now, after 10 years cancer-free, when someone in her circle of friends and family learns of someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer, they often send them to talk with Brooke.

“You’re going to walk through the unknown,” she tells them. “Listen to your doctors, listen to your heart, listen to God, and you’ll make it through.”

And one more thing: “Ask for help.”