First Christmas Joy With Baby McKenna
December 19, 2024By: Kim Shopper
Categories: We are NKCH and MH, Women's Breast Health, Women's Health, Cancer
Mary Ann Lytle, LMSW, always dreamed of being a mother, but breast cancer and COVID-19 nearly ended that dream and her life. This holiday season Mary Ann is grateful for her health and a most precious gift: a baby girl named McKenna born March 18.
Mary Ann’s health struggles started before she became a social worker on Maternal Child Health in 2018. Four years earlier, as she prepared for her wedding and just before her 25th birthday, doctors diagnosed her with stage 2 breast cancer.
“Instead of getting married in October, I started chemotherapy,” Mary Ann recalled.
She chose to undergo a procedure where doctors retrieve and freeze embryos to preserve options for future fertility.
For the next five years, Mary Ann focused on beating breast cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy followed by reconstruction surgery, 18 weeks of chemotherapy, 28 rounds of radiation therapy and a regimen of tamoxifen, an estrogen blocker that controls some breast cancers.
“I am that person. If anything can go wrong, it will happen to me,” Mary Ann said. “Over 80 percent of women who take my chemotherapy, never get sick. But I was admitted to the hospital for dehydration and my radiation therapy caused such bad acid reflux I couldn’t lay down.”
“My mom, Nancy Leach, who works at Meritas Health Gashland, always tells me I have to experience it all,” Mary Ann laughed.
In 2020, Mary Ann’s oncologist approved of her stopping tamoxifen to start a family. After a year without getting pregnant, Mary Ann and her husband, Craig, turned their thoughts to the frozen embryos.
Yet, another obstacle thwarted those plans. Mary Ann discovered her reconstructive breast implant had ruptured. After getting the implant removed, Mary Ann went home to recover in June 2021 during the height of COVID-19.
Mary Ann soon became a statistic as one of the 31.8 million people to get COVID-19 that year. Like many patients during that time, Mary Ann faced the biggest challenge of her life. Already weak from surgery, COVID-19 attacked her lungs. She struggled to breathe, and her oxygen dropped from a normal range in the 90s to 36 and by the time she arrived in the ER, her lips were blue, and her body struggled at only 23 percent oxygen.
Despite the efforts of her medical team, Mary Ann continued to gasp for air and wasn’t responding to treatment.
“That’s when they wanted to intubate me,” she remembered. “Back then, if you went on a ventilator quite often you died. I was scared.”
Mary Ann beat the odds and improved on the ventilator until Day 5 when her condition worsened.
“Pulmonologist Justin Ranes saved my life the first day, and nurse Lauren Mitchell helped stabilize me, so I could get a CT scan,” she explained. “That’s when they discovered I had multiple pulmonary embolisms or blood clots in my lung.”
In total, Mary Ann spent 33 days in the hospital.
Her recovery continued after her discharge. She had to relearn to walk, talk and regain her ability to think and process thoughts.
“I was like a patient with a brain injury because I didn’t get enough oxygen. I also had PTSD from the experience. They called me the Little Miracle,” she smiled.
With Mary Ann’s struggles over the last nine years, this Christmas is even more special now that she has McKenna, who is celebrating her first Christmas.
“Life could have easily been taken from me at any time over the last several years,” Mary Ann said. “Whenever my time comes, I want to know I spent as much time as I could with McKenna. Life is not promised.”
