A nurse diagnosed with a rare, stage three brain tumor at 20 weeks pregnant put her unborn baby’s life before her own, refusing an abortion and refusing chemotherapy. A year later, she’s still alive, and her baby is thriving.
Tasha and Taylor Kann of Mio in Michigan, both 30, are parents to 2-year-old Deklan and 9-month-old Gracey Joyce. Mrs. Kann is a registered nurse while her husband is an Oscoda County Sheriff’s deputy and real estate agent. When Mrs. Kann found out she had cancer while pregnant with Gracey, she let her faith take the wheel.
“There was nothing that was going to make me kill my baby. No illness, nothing,” she told The Epoch Times. “At that moment, that’s all I could think of: ‘If I don’t make it, that’s okay, but my baby can.’ That’s what I told the doctors.
“I’m a Christian, and I knew abortion wasn’t the step I was going to take. I was going to go home, I was going to pray, I was going to research, and I was going to find a doctor to help me. That’s exactly what I did, and here I am a year later. I’m still alive, and my baby is 9 months old.”
Mrs. Kann’s ordeal began in June 2022 when she had a seizure after going to bed with a migraine. She went to the emergency room, where staff performed a CT scan and found a large mass. The expectant mom was 20 weeks pregnant.
The next day, she was transferred to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor for an MRI.
“They could see the large mass,” she said. “With further imaging, they could tell it was cancer. They performed a biopsy about a week later. It came back as what they told me was astrocytoma [a cancer that can develop in the brain or spinal cord], and they said it was grade three.”
Mrs. Kann, a hospice nurse, was terrified, having seen many patients succumb to brain cancer. Her husband was scared but supportive, and “a little more hopeful” since he lacked her medical insight. Next came the doctors’ recommendations.
Mrs. Kann said: “They told me that they didn’t think I would survive my pregnancy, so I needed an abortion then to continue with chemo and radiation as those would be my only options. They gave me a prognosis at that time of five to eight years if chemo and radiation worked.”
But being pregnant with her baby boy had been “a gift,” and, pregnant with Gracey, Mrs. Kann felt the same way.
Refusing an abortion and medical treatment for her cancerous tumor that could have harmed her unborn baby, Mrs. Kann went on with her pregnancy. She had no complications with Gracey besides some nausea and some neurological changes that she managed with vitamins and supplements. Still, her doctors called weekly.
“They told me I was making a mistake, and that we would both most likely die before I delivered my baby,” she said.
Mrs. Kann gave birth to Gracey at the University of Michigan Hospital on Oct. 18, 2022. With her precious baby girl in her arms, she looked on her birth experience as a true victory.
“It was a real ‘I told you so’ moment because I did it,” she said. “Even just going in there, when I registered to give birth, it was like, ‘Here I am, and I’m alive! My baby, she was alive and healthy the whole pregnancy.’”
Mrs. Kann was having scans at the hospital every two to four months, followed by meetings with her oncologist. For months, no growth in the brain tumor had been detected. Suddenly, in May 2023, that changed; the doctors found that the cancer is growing from her central nervous system and has already invaded three lobes of her brain
“They concluded that the cancer is still slowly growing,” Mrs. Kann said. “They changed my diagnosis to gliomatosis cerebri ... diffuse and spread out. But, with that diagnosis, my prognosis went from five to eight years down to 12 months.”
After doctors told her chemo and radiation were no longer an option for this highly aggressive, treatment-resistant cancer type, the 30-year-old mom of two turned to the internet to research more natural alternatives. She found encouraging studies on Fenbendazole, an anti-parasitic drug, and started a regimen alongside high-dose vitamin C and a clean, ketogenic diet.
She also enrolled in an experimental gene therapy program at Burzynski Clinic in Houston, Texas, with “no side effects beside fatigue,” paid for out of pocket.
“I’ve been keeping up on all my minerals, supplementing, and blood work,” Mrs. Kann told The Epoch Times. “I haven’t had any shrinkage to the cancer ... but physically, I’m doing better. ... My faith in God is what’s kept me alive. The doctors are telling me I should be dead, and I’m living as normal as I can be for my situation.”
Bolstered by faith, family, and her hardworking husband, Mrs. Kann is striving for improved health and loving every moment with her kids.
“She’s thriving. She’s crawling. I look at her and it’s God every time,” she said of her baby girl. “I listened to God and this is my gift, I listened to him, and I’m doing great, and I truly, one hundred percent believe it’s because I decided: life. I chose life.”
The mom of two advises anyone fighting a similar battle to seek God, stay strong, and lean on family.
“You need to advocate for yourself,” she said. “I think that’s one of the most important things. You have to advocate for yourself, because if I wouldn’t have, I would be dead, and so would my baby.”
