What I Thought I Knew - Alice Eve Cohen

Imagine this...
- You're unable to have children so you adopted
- You're on hormone therapy yourself
- You have a higher chance of cancer due to hormones taken by your mother during her pregnancy
- You have have two uterus(es)
- Your mother died of cancer
- You find out you're in early menopause

That is the author's story. She was a DES baby...this means while her mother was pregnant she took a synthetic hormone (Diethylstilbestrol) which was thought to be safe. Well it wasn't and many of these babies were found to have a higher risk for cancer, ectopic pregnancies, and transsexualism. So after years of trying, Alice and her then husband adopt Julia....fast forward some years.
Alice is now happily engaged to Michael - a fellow free lance artist who is about 10 years younger than her. Around this time Alice begins to feel "strange" - meaning that she has an abnormal lump on her stomach, her breasts are tender, she has an increased need to urinate, and she's very lethargic. After consulting various different specialists and gynocologists, Alice learns she has muscle tone loss, an overactive bladder, and possibly cancer (the lump on her lower abdomen). In order to more accurately detect the cancer or tumor, Alice is sent in for a scan - where she learns that she is 6 months pregnant!

She's in her 40's with a VERY high risk pregnancy. For the past 6 months she has had no prenatal care and exposed the baby to multiple medical procedures, hormones, and alcohol. Not to mention, Alice has crappy insurance and almost no one will accept her as a patient!!! So now she must struggle with the idea - keep the baby or abort at 6 months?

She decides to have the baby...and learns that she is going to have a boy. After genetic testing, they find that the baby actually has XX chromosomes...so its either going to be a transgendered boy OR be a lesbian female athlete....so now she wonders "Do I put the baby up for adoption".....Alice is having the baby she always wanted at a time when she doesn't...on top of that she has a million other things to worry about - bleeding to death, premature labor, transgendered issues, exposure to cancer, etc. Most mothers just have to hope for a happy and healthy baby.

This book is a quick and easy read. It's an interesting story that makes you wonder - what would you do in a similar situation? How would it feel to be misdiagnosed for 6 months and be medically unable to terminate a problematic pregnancy? Not having children - I can say that I wasn't able to relate to her situation much, but it does make you wonder "What would you do?"