Jenni Lake gave birth to a boy a month before turning 18, even though she never intended to become another teen mother.
She dragged her nurse to bed level as she was admitted to the hospital and muttered into her ear.
The nurse would recite the girl’s thoughts to the girl’s family to reassure them after their worst fears came true a day after Jenni’s baby was born.
She told the nurse, “I’m finished; I finished my duty. “My infant will get here without incident. “.
In contrast to the sick girl who gave birth to him in the photos, the baby’s rosy cheeks and healthy weight stand out.
She gives the baby a tight hug and kisses his head. Jenni, who stands five feet four inches tall, only weighed 108 pounds at the height of her pregnancy.
Mrs Phillips discovered that her daughter’s decision to forgo treatment for tumours on her brain and spine to carry the child would have serious consequences the day after the baby was born on November 9. Too much of the area had been colonised by cancer. Nothing, according to Mrs Dot Phillips, could be done.
Jenni had only been alive for 12 days, half of which she had spent in the hospital and the other half at home.
On the other hand, her family and friends are committed to ensuring that tragedy will not be her legacy.
In the living room of her ranch-style home in Pocatello, where her family gathered this month, a Christmas tree was embellished with ornaments hand-selected for Jenni, including one in her favourite shade, lime green.
She had passed away in a bedroom down the hall.
Jenni’s mother said, hugging her son and kissing his head, “I want him to know everything about her and everything she did. Jenni’s infectious laugh and independent nature came to mind.
Last year, when Jenni was 16 years old and a sophomore at Pocatello High School, she started experiencing migraines.
After she was taken to the family physician, an MRI scan revealed a two-centimetre-wide mass on the right side of her brain.
A second scan at a hospital in Salt Lake City—about 150 miles south of Pocatello—showed that the mass was significantly more extensive than first believed.
Five days after having a biopsy on October 15, 2010, Jenni was told she had stage three astrocytoma.
Jenni’s situation was unusual because she had three tumours on her brain and three on her spine, and cancer had spread from her brain to another part of her body without producing any symptoms.
According to her estranged parents, they were taken to a hospital room and seated at a large table while medical professionals assessed her prognosis.
Jenni reportedly asked them if she was going to die, according to her father, Mike Lake, a truck driver who lives in Rexburg, Idaho, just to the north of Pocatello. Mike Lake is 43 years old.
The answer was insufficient. According to Mr Dot Lake, the child was given a 30% chance of living for an additional two years with treatment.
Mr Although Lake was in a lot of pain; he was amazed by how resilient she seemed.
He said, “She didn’t even cry out in tears or anything.”.
However, according to her mother, Jenni did experience a moment of weakness that day.
When they told Mrs Dot Phillips, 39, that she might not be able to have children, she reportedly became upset.
In addition to receiving challenging chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Jenni started recording videos for the YouTube channel Jenni’s Struggle to share her journey and give updates every other day.
The fatigue and weakness brought on by her treatments prevented her from uploading more than three movies.
In her second video, which was made public on November 20, 2010, Jenni appears upset as a family friend records her eating lunch with her mother.
“Last night, I was just lying in bed, and I was thinking about everything that was going on, and it just like, it just hit me, like everything,” Jenni says in the video.
Her mother is shown with her hands covering her face.
She begs, “Do you know how hard it is to be a mom and know that she’s sick and there’s nothing you can do?” before sobbing uncontrollably.
It’s challenging, Jenni admits. “I have no idea how much longer this will last, and I just want it to be over. I guess that is why I haven’t been able to get much done. “.
The family reported that the tumours had started to recede by March of this year.
Jenni flashes a brief smile for the camera in an early May lace dress for her prom.
She wears a silver headband and has hair that is less than an inch long. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair lost colour as a result of chemotherapy.
Nathan Wittman, her lover, is hugging her from behind and is dressed in a black dress shirt and slacks.
A few weeks before finding out about her diagnosis, Jenni started dating Nathan.
They continued to fall in love despite her having cancer, which put their relationship to the ultimate test, chemotherapy, which made it difficult for her to move from her living room to her bedroom, and rumours spread at school.
The rumours that Nathan was only with Jenni because she had cancer began to circulate, according to Jenni’s older sister Ashlee Lake, 20, and the young couple decided to disregard it.
In their dreams, they owned a restaurant or a gallery one day.
Back then, Jenni worked as a trainee at a nearby tattoo parlour. She resembled his younger sister, according to the proprietor Kass Chacon.
On the other hand, Jenni started going to the grocery store less frequently in May.
She frequently vomited and suffered from excruciating stomach pain. One early morning, she and her partner visited the emergency room; when she got home, her family members woke up to the sound of crying.
According to Kaisee, Jenni’s 19-year-old sister, she could be heard sobbing in her room.
An ultrasound revealed the fetus was ten weeks old, and she became pregnant.
The journey was no longer Jenni’s to take.
Her mother claims that she was told from the beginning of treatment that the radiation and chemo could make her childless.
Because we had confirmation that she couldn’t get pregnant, Nathan, 19, said, “we didn’t worry about it.”.
The third of her parent’s eight children, Jenni, had always desired to have children. When she saw Dr David Ririe, her oncologist, in Pocatello two days after learning she was pregnant, she had already decided to keep the child.
Mrs He told us she wouldn’t be able to continue the therapy if she got pregnant, Phillips continued. She would have to decide whether to abort the child while still undergoing treatment or to stop treatment while still being aware that the tumour might recur. “.
According to Ririe, Dr Oncologists will weigh the advantages and disadvantages of continuing treatment, such as chemotherapy, when a cancer patient is expecting a child. However, she wouldn’t talk about Jenni’s care out of respect for her privacy.
Dr Ririe emphasised that, in some cases, the advantages of chemotherapy for the mother and the fetus outweigh the risks, citing breast cancer as an illustration. In some other situations, the chances are more significant than the advantages.
Nobody knew the course Jenni would take. It’s possible that neither her parents nor Jenni considered it a straightforward life-or-death choice.
They believed she had a good chance of giving birth, returning to therapy after the baby was born, and the tumours had already started to regress.
Her mother said, “I guess we just expected her to go back on the chemotherapy and get better after she delivered the child.”.
Jenni and Nathan gave Chad Michael the name in honour of their fathers. Legal custody of the child is granted to Nathan, primarily looked after by his mother, 51-year-old Alexia Wittman.
Nathan will raise him, she said.
According to her family, Jenni didn’t express regret for her choice as her condition worsened or grew weaker in the last few weeks of her pregnancy.
Jenni’s father remembered her last words as her son was finally placed by her side. She reached for the infant and said, “I think I saw him.”.
