An Australian woman who was exposed to asbestos during her childhood is in remission from mesothelioma and is now pregnant with her first child, despite the cancer and the affects of the chemotherapy she received as treatment for the disease.
An article in the Australian newspaper The Age reports that Anita Steiner, age 46, is believe to have been exposed to asbestos at age 6 when her father built a workshop in their backyard and proceeded to tackle a number of do-it-yourself projects that involved the dangerous mineral. She is one of what medical experts are calling the “third wave” of asbestos disease cases in Australia – children who were exposed due to home projects performed by their parents.
Steiner was diagnosed with mesothelioma last year and after doctors removed part of her right lung, she was told she had about a year to live – a normal prognosis for a mesothelioma victim. However, at the beginning of this year, she was declared cancer-free by her doctors after a course of what was meant to be palliative chemotherapy.
After doctors informed her of her remission, she celebrated but then started to feel ill again. She feared that the disease had returned but then discovered she was pregnant.
“My partner and I had been trying to get pregnant with IVF before I got sick and I was told I had a less than 1% chance of it working back then, so we had all but given up,” Steiner told the newspaper.
While she realizes that the disease could return in an instant, Steiner says she doesn’t dwell on it but does continue to have regular medical check-ups.
Paul Mitchell, director of cancer services at Austin Hospital, says although Steiner’s case is unusual, he expects to see more young patients diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases as time goes by.
“Because there’s a latency period of 30 to 40 years from exposure to asbestos to the onset of cancer, we’re expecting the instances to keep increasing,” he says. “We’re seeing people whose only exposure was in the home.”
Medical experts in Australia predict that 25,000 Australians will die of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases in the next 40 years.
Tags: asbestos, mesothelioma
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