Diagnosed with Breast Cancer while Pregnant, One Mom Was Told She Had Months to Live. Now, 'I'm Thriving'

Lindsay Gritton was shocked to find breast cancer at 34 weeks pregnant, and even more so to discover it had metastasized. But years later, she is sharing her story to help others

Two years ago, Lindsey Gritton sat down in her daughter Saylor’s bedroom and began the most difficult conversation of her life. As Saylor, then 2 years old and in pigtails, played on the bed beside her, and Gritton’s infant daughter, Savannah, slept on a playmat nearby, the Georgia mom struggled to find the words to tell her toddler that she had cancer — and that she may only have months to live. “I had to explain that Mommy might have to go to heaven soon, that I might have to leave her,” Gritton recalls.

She took a video of the moment, one of many recordings she captured at the time in hopes of preserving final memories for her children. In the video the toddler tells her mom, “I’ll miss you.” And Gritton hugs her tightly. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” says Gritton, a full-time mom and social media content creator.

In May 2022, a week after her second daughter was born, Gritton, then just 29 years old, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and told she had six months to live. But, after months of intense treatment and years of healing, Gritton, now 31, has not only defied those predictions, “I’m thriving,” she says, moments after wrangling her two boisterous girls, now 4 and 2, during a recent photo shoot at their Cumming, Ga. home. “I try to live every day with gratitude.”

Gritton was 34 weeks pregnant with Savannah when she found a lump in her breast. At first she thought it was due to a clogged duct from her milk coming in, but it continued to irritate her. Her doctor told her it was just mastitis, “but I had this gut feeling it might be something more.” She asked for an ultrasound—“and that saved my life.”

Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer, and wanted to begin treatment as soon as possible. At 37 weeks, they induced her so she could start chemotherapy.

The delivery was yet another trauma. “I started bleeding a lot. Towels soaked with blood. They didn’t think I would make it,” recalls Gritton. Her daughter’s heart rate was dropping, and doctors suggested a C-section, but Gritton refused, fearing the recovery would postpone her cancer treatment even further. Her intuition served her well again, and she was able to deliver her healthy baby girl without surgery.

About a week after she gave birth, her cancer treatment began with a PET scan. Gritton was in the car with her husband Spencer, 36, when the results from the scan appeared on her phone: the cancer had spread and she had more than a dozen tumors in her liver.

The news was “gut-wrenching.” She was scared but had an unwavering resolve. “I knew I had to do whatever it took to be here for my family,” she says.

She endured six months of chemo, going to the oncologist every three weeks for three hours at a time, while her husband took time off from his job as a business owner to help care for their newborn and toddler at home. “He stayed up with Savannah every night for the first six months of her life so I could sleep during chemo,” she says. ”He  always thought I would beat it. I held onto that hope.”

The cancer treatments meant that Gritton wasn’t able to nurse her daughter. When her hair began falling out, she remembers feeling overwhelmed: “It was a lot for me as a woman, not being able to breastfeed, losing my hair—having all that ripped from you.”

Through it all, she carried the fear that she may not be there as her daughters grew up. At times, she found herself consumed with writing letters and making videos for them. “All I could think about was, ‘What can I do for them before I die?’ Cancer was all I thought about every day.”

Gritton continues to take immunotherapy drugs and gets PET scans multiple times each year, but now that there is no evidence of cancer, she’s eager to make memories with her girls. “I can actually be present with them,” she says. “I try to enjoy my time with them, make memories, do fun things, take them places and raise them to be kind,"

At one time, she didn’t think she’d be alive for Savannah’s first birthday, “but I’ve celebrated her second.” Recently she got to watch Saylor ride a two-wheeler without training wheels for the first time.

“I’m so grateful I get to be here to see those moments. This has taught me to live in the moment, to just live every day.”

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