Jen Arnold Cancer Battle Stemmed From Non-Viable Pregnancy
"The Little Couple" star Jen Arnold has decided to open up about her cancer battle, revealing that it all started with a non-viable pregnancy in September. Fans of the TLC series will be able to see Jen and husband Bill deal with her illness on the new season of "The Little Couple."
"The one time I get pregnant, I get cancer," Jen told People magazine. "There are moments I feel just terrible. I can't believe it is happening. Other times, I feel like this is just a bump in the road."
Jen learned she was pregnant but the embryo had no heartbeat; after she began bleeding, Jen made the difficult decision to see her OB-GYN, who diagnosed her with stage 3 choriocarcinoma, a rare form of cancer. When the cancer did not respond to chemotherapy, doctors performed a hysterectomy.
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"We had wanted to avoid surgery in her case because of her shortened airway and the difficulties she has had in the past with surgeries," Dr. Concepcion R. Diaz-Arrastia told the magazine. "But we felt we had no choice. The disease was not responding to chemotherapy. We had to do this in order to save her life. I called oncologists in Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York, Houston and no one had experience treating this type of cancer in a person with skeletal dysplasia. It was a very rare cancer, rare that it was found in a little person … a very rare situation."
Jen is now doing much better and is still fighting the cancer with everything she has. Her children, Will and Zoey, are the focus of her life and she is determined to see them grow up.
"I am very fortunate as the prognosis is good," she previously told People. "While there is never a good time to get news like this, getting it just as we are building our new family is tough in many ways. But being surrounded by the love of my husband and our two beautiful children is actually in many ways giving me the strength to fight it even stronger."
