Doctors had warned for years there would be difficulties.
When Rhea Watson was diagnosed and treated for leukemia as a young woman, she had been told the chemotherapy and radiation could impact her ability to have children. She successfully completed treatment and became a cancer center nurse herself. She specializes in helping young patients navigate treatment to best protect their chances to have kids.
So when pregnancy tests kept coming back negative for Wilson and her husband Zach, they were prepared for a hard path of fertility treatments ahead of them.
Then, when they least expected it, everything changed.
“I had decided I was going to call the fertility doctors to line up an appointment, and was taking the test just to rule out I was pregnant. Then it came back positive,” she said. “We were so shocked.”
Watson goes into this Mother’s Day a mom-to-be. She is due to give birth to a baby boy in July. Her unique background as a patient and now a nurse has helped her appreciate how blessed her family is, and she relishes the small moments that brought her here.
“It’s been kind of nice for me to have a purpose, after going through cancer at such a young age and physical therapy and everything else,” she said. “What I’m doing matters, and now I’m able to show hope for some patients, that their future could really be normal.”
Inside their Bargersville home, the Watsons’ new nursery is taking shape.
They chose a soothing green for the dominant color. The crib has been assembled and set up in a corner near the window. A gliding rocking chair sits in another corner, waiting for late night feedings and rocking baby Nash to sleep.
Now all Rhea and Zach Watson have to do is wait.
“I can feel him move constantly. So we’re starting to get really excited,” Rhea Watson said.
That had not been the journey to this point. It had been one filled with many highs and unbelievable lows.
Watson was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on May 15, 2009, at the end of her senior year at Center Grove High School. Prior to the diagnosis, she had suffered an increased number of colds and small illnesses. She was a standout softball player, but seemed to grow increasingly fatigued.
At her senior prom, she had only enough energy to dance for two songs.
Two weeks later, Watson suffered a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop. The situation was bad enough that her parents took her to the emergency room, where she was given nasal spray. A second uncontrollable nosebleed forced doctors to do a battery of tests. Those confirmed she had leukemia, which affects the bone marrow’s ability to produce healthy white blood cells that fight disease. If left untreated, it can spiral out of control quickly.
Though she was already 18, doctors at Riley Hospital for Children felt she’d be more comfortable and better treated among younger patients. She transferred to the hospital two months later.
Her treatment plan called for chemotherapy every week for the first eight months. By July 2009, Watson was in remission. But since cancer cells could still be in the body undetected, the most effective course was 24 months of cancer-killing drugs.
Watson suffered complications from the drug regiment, including her liver failing at one point. She received more than 20 spinal taps and lumbar punctures to check if leukemia cells were showing up in her spinal fluid.
Throughout it all, the kindness and compassion of the Riley medical staff touched her. She was inspired to study nursing at Indiana University, and six years after she first became a patient at the hospital, she became a hematology and oncology night nurse in the cancer ward.
She’s now been a nurse for six years, starting as an inpatient nurse before transferring to the outpatient department.
“The first year or two, I was really trying to get my bearings to being a nurse — figuring out how to be a nurse,” she said. “Then once I was transferred to outpatient, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. That was where I was a patient, I knew most of the nurses there. It’s been really cool to transition from being their patient to being their coworker.”
About two years ago, Riley Hospital for Children started a fertility preservation, or onco-fertility, program. The goal was to help consider how treatment would impact a patient’s fertility later in life.
Chemotherapy and radiation can cause “late” side effects that may appear months or years after treatment has ended, including infertility, or the inability to conceive a child without medical intervention, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Part of the Riley Hospital for Children program includes advising on risk of infertility based on planned chemotherapy treatment, and providing options to preserve the patient’s fertility.
Watson was asked to be part of that team leading that program.
“We, as a fertility preservation program, consult on every age. If they have a new cancer diagnose, we consult on them. We also do breast cancer patients from Simon Cancer Center, younger females where we can help them save their eggs,” she said. “My passion for the program comes from my own treatment.”
When Watson was a patient, she was 18 years old and wasn’t thinking about having kids. But she recalls thinking that chemotherapy was toxic — what would that do to her ability to have kids?
The discussions with her parents and doctors at Riley led to a treatment plan that would be less impactful to her reproductive organs. Still, she fell into an intermediate level of risk that she would be unable to conceive without medical intervention, or hit early menopause.
Having gone through it herself, it helps when dealing with her patients.
“I think it helps some patients, seeing what their future could look like,” she said. “Everybody’s treatment is so different, and how people respond is so different, so you have to take that into consideration. But it’s been really nice to show kids and families hope — what the future could potentially look like.”
Knowing all of that, Rhea and Zach Watson were prepared to need fertility treatment as they took steps to start their own family in 2020. Doctors had initially told her after six months of trying to get pregnant, if they didn’t have success, to start the fertility process.
But they waited.
“We were thinking that we’d push it back until the end of the year, and if it didn’t happen by then, we’d start. Then we found out in November,” Watson said. “It had been so long, and we figured it wouldn’t happen that month either.”
The day that the Watsons found out they would have a child, Rhea and Zach Watson were preparing for Election Night coverage. Zach Watson was in the backyard grilling.
Without telling her husband, Rhea Watson went inside and took a pregnancy test, assuming it would come back negative. She was wrong.
“I just remember thinking, ‘This can’t be right,'” she said. “It was so crazy.”
She told her husband, who likewise was incredulous. Though excited, they were cautious until they could confirm it. Zach Watson ran out to get additional pregnancy tests, which all came back positive.
An appointment with her doctor further confirmed it. The first trimester was stressful, as the Watsons were hesitant to celebrate too much, knowing it was still early in the process. But with each appointment, doctors gave the report of a healthy baby boy.
Excitement built up.
So far, the pregnancy has been without complications. Rhea Watson hasn’t experienced the cravings or nausea or fatigue that can often accompany pregnancy. She still exercises four times a week.
“We joke that I went through so much with leukemia that God is giving me a little bit of a break,” she said.
Though Mother’s Day is this weekend, Rhea Watson is still having a hard time thinking of herself as a mother. Not that she’s apprehensive, just that the concept of “motherhood” is still one that seems foreign to her.
“I’m so excited for him to be here, and for us to be a family of three — four, since I was a dog-mom first,” she said. “But I haven’t really thought much into what it means to be a mom. This is our first one, but we’re so excited.”
