Monika Kozlowska, a business coach in Royal Tunbridge Wells, opened about how her grim cancer diagnosis turned to hope when she found the love of her life and got pregnant.
Kozlowska, now 31, recounted how she moved to London in 2010 where she took up a bar job before landing a marketing position in the city. However, Monika’s trouble with her thyroid gland had taken seed in her teens when she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease – a condition in which the body’s immune system turns hostile towards the thyroid gland. According to her tell-all piece in The Sun, this meant that she would have to be on thyroid medication all her life.
As Kozlowska found out in 2019, the worst was yet to come. A routine check-up in September, 2019 showed that she had developed a nodule that was possibly cancerous, and her doctor called her in for a biopsy. “Despite having a flatmate and some great friends, I felt very much on my own as I waited for the results,” Monika admitted.
The following week, she received the dreaded call confirming that she indeed had cancer and would need to undergo a thyroidectomy – a procedure involving the removal of the thyroid. She was also informed that the procedure may affect her fertility. “I collapsed on my kitchen floor in tears.” Just four days after she got the news, she had to move to a place of her own, as she had signed a lease in advance. The COVID-19 situation was not making things any easier. Kozlowska’s mother was unable to fly to her given the stringent global restrictions.
While friends stepped in to offer all the support they could extend, she couldn’t help but feel the absence of a partner. Apart from the physical strain of recuperating alone at home, she felt the emotional toll of the situation. Unwilling to resign to the situation any further, Kozlowska decided to get proactive and signed up with the dating app Hinge. Here, she found Andy, a 44-year-old content designer, and started chatting with him. They went on their first date a month after her surgery and hit it off right away.
While the lockdown did happen around the same time, they roughed it out, staying in touch on texts and video calls. They finally started seeing each other face-to-face when the lockdown eased in July, and to their surprise, they found out that they were pregnant in September. Kozlowska attributes all this good fortune to her cancer diagnosis, saying that she believed her diagnosis was what led her to meet Andy. “Cancer made me realize I could have the life I always wanted – I just had to go after it,” she said.
Now living in their own home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, the couple is expecting the new addition to their family in May, 2021. “If the cancer does return, it will be very different, as this time I will have Andy by my side,” affirmed Kozlowska.
Source: The Sun