Pregnant woman, 29, diagnosed with terminal cancer after scan 17 weeks into her first pregnancy

A 29-year-old pregnant woman has been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer after developing a searing pain in her arm just weeks into her first pregnancy.

Laura King, a nursery director from Surrey in south east England, beat breast cancer in 2017 after several aggressive operations.

Once she got the all-clear, she and her husband of three years Drew decided they wanted to start a family.

Everything went smoothly until, just under three months into her pregnancy, she developed an agonizing pain in her arm.

Concerned, Mrs King pushed for an x-ray which revealed a shadow on her bone. An MRI confirmed the worst: she had secondary bone cancer which is generally deemed ‘incurable’ since it is incredibly difficult to treat.

She immediately started a course of targeted therapy on the bone, but cannot explore other options such as clinical trials because they could be harmful to her unborn baby – and some effective treatments are not available on the NHS.

Her friends and family are now scrambling to raise money on GoFundMe to support her during sick leave and maternity leave, and to afford emerging treatments once the baby is born.

‘For a long time I thought it was muscular. It wasn’t until I started to experience increasing and constant pain,’ Mrs King told the Evening Standard.

‘My strength and range of movement was starting to deteriorate rapidly too which made me really think something wasn’t right and pushed me to request an X-ray.’

Secondary cancers are cancers that have spread from the original site to another part of the body as cancer cells break from the original tumor and travel through the bloodstream.

Mrs King and her husband of three years Drew decided to start a family after getting the all-clear