A woman in England, 31-year-old Sam Davies of West Lancashire, didn’t realize that her birthmark was cancerous until it exploded while she was in labor with her fifth child.
According to The Sun‘s Sophie Roberts, who first reported the story, Davies went her entire life with the “unsightly” birthmark on her forehead before the incident. Up until the point at which it exploded, revealing three tumors hiding behind it, she was reportedly under the impression that the mark was not life threatening.
Davies was quoted by The Sun as having said that kids at school used to call her “unicorn” and that she “just learned to live with it.”
The kids at school used to call me the unicorn. I managed to cover it with my fringe and I just learned to live with it. It was like a little red dot.
During her pregnancies, all five of them, her birthmark reacted to the changes within her body. According to her own account of her pregnancies, the birthmark would “itch” while she was pregnant.
It’s like a pregnancy test for me – when it starts to itch, I know I’m pregnant!
Following the birth of her first child, a dermatologist recommended that she have her birthmark removed with a laser. Despite the dermatologist’s recommendation, England’s National Health Service (NHS) reportedly refused to provide funding for the recommended treatment.
She was quoted by the Daily Mail as having said that “it would start bleeding” while she was at work and that it “really” got her down.
I worked as a teaching assistant and it would start bleeding at work, quite suddenly. It really got me down and I begged the doctors to help me
It wasn’t until she was in the thirty-second week of her fifth pregnancy that her birthmark finally exploded. Following the rupture, she was immediately transported to the hospital by ambulance where surgeons stitched up her forehead.
Prior to the explosion, all of her children had been girls. But her fifth just so happened to be a boy and according to her physicians, the boy’s “male hormones” may have been “the trigger.”
As my bump grew, the birthmark grew too. It was like a monster. My doctors believe that the male hormones from carrying a boy were the trigger.
In 2014, Davies underwent a life-saving surgery in which surgeons removed all three tumors. Testing the tumors, doctors discovered that one of them contained a small number of cancerous cells.
Davies, who is currently awaiting reconstructive surgery, has started to recover after undergoing what has already been a year of treatment. According to her doctors, her tumors are completely gone.
All things considered, she says she doesn’t plan on having any more kids, “just in case the monster wakes up again.”
