Mum Dies After Refusing Chemo To Save Baby

A woman who refused chemotherapy to save the life of her unborn baby has died of head and neck cancer.

Stacie Crimm, 41, was told by doctors she would never be able to conceive - so discovering she was pregnant in March seemed a miracle.

But over the months that followed she began suffering from crippling headaches, tremors and double vision.

After being diagnosed with cancer she refused potentially lifesaving chemotherapy to save her baby's life.

In August she collapsed at her home in Ryan, Oklahoma, and was told the tumour had begun to grow around her brain stem.

Shortly afterwards, the baby's heart beat began to drop, and Stacie's own heart stopped 90 minutes later.

It was then that doctors decided to resuscitate Stacie and deliver Dottie Mae by caesarean section, four months early and weighing just 2lb 1oz.

Her brother Ray Phillips, now caring for Dottie, told NewsOK: "We would show her pictures and she would cry and she would want to hold her baby.

"It was quite the ordeal. I felt helpless. I wanted to help her, I wanted to do what I could for her - we all did - but they had told us it was impossible for her to see the child."

However, nurses eventually managed to transfer Dottie to a capsule-like ICU so she and her mother could finally meet face to face.

She was laid on her mother's chest and the pair stared into each other's eyes.

Ray told NewsOK: "Nobody said anything, it got real quiet.

"It was the perfect moment, that's what I called it."

Stacie died three days later on September 14.

Dottie now weighs 5lb and has been allowed to leave hospital to live with Mr Phillips, his wife and their four children.