Northwestern doctors save pregnant Illinois woman and her baby after finding grapefruit-sized tumor
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A family from central Illinois is spending their first Christmas together with their baby on their farm, months after Northwestern Medicine helped a pregnant mother when doctors discovered she had a rare tumor.
MaKenna Lauterbach said she developed a cough last December, and it continued to grow worse over the next few months.
Lauterbach, 26, lives on a farm in Washburn, near Peoria, about 120 miles from Chicago. When she mentioned the cough to her local doctors, they were reluctant to perform chest scans while she was pregnant, due to possible radiation exposure.
By the time she was 36 weeks pregnant in March, she started throwing up while coughing, and was hospitalized for shortness of breath. That's when doctors found a grapefruit-sized tumor in her chest.
She was flown to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where doctors needed to perform an emergency C-section.
"We had to act really quickly. This was not something that could wait for a Monday morning," said Dr. Lynn Yee, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine.
Lauterbach's baby was delivered healthy on Easter Sunday.
"I woke up, and the first thing I saw was my husband walking into the room holding our new baby," Lauterbach said. "I was happy that we were both there."
Northwest Medicine said the baby boy, Colter, is healthy and thriving.
The doctors later diagnosed Lauterbach with stage 3 melanoma, a type of skin cancer. She will continue immunotherapy treatments for one year.