Topeka woman shows tenacity after pregnancy turns out to be rare cancer

TOPEKA (KSNT)– Imagine getting ready for baby number two. You go three months into your pregnancy just to find out it was never real. It was actually a tumor that would lead to a long journey of battling cancer before the age of 30.

That was the reality Sarah Lundry had to go through within the past couple of years. On a regular day, you can find Lundry in the halls of Advisor Excel in Topeka, interacting and chatting with staff and her team since she is in charge of the employee experience.

Lundry has had a lot of fun times since she came back to Topeka and started working for Advisors Excel. When she was younger, she took some time away from the city. She didn’t have any intentions of staying long as she wanted to be a musician and move west. But then she met a boy and fell in love.

“We got married on October 7, 2017,” Lundry said.

And as the rhyme goes, first comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

“We have a four-year-old little boy,” Lundry said. “His name is Brooks and he is wild! He is all boy.”

In 2020, she and her husband, Garrett, were ready to add to their family. She got pregnant during the pandemic but she couldn’t get in to see a doctor until she was 12 weeks along. She said she had all the pregnancy symptoms but eventually, she couldn’t eat or keep things down.
Lundry lost a lot of weight before that first appointment. Then finally, when she and her husband got to the doctor something else wasn’t right.

“They tried every source to be able to find the heartbeat and they couldn’t find it,” Lundry said. “And I knew at that time that, I was like, ‘this is not normal’. At 12 weeks, you should be able to hear the heartbeat pretty immediately.”

Lundry found out she wasn’t actually pregnant. She had a molar pregnancy. According to the Mayo Clinic, this is when a tumor develops in the uterus as a result of a nonviable pregnancy. It can have an embryo and sometimes it can’t. Lundry’s case was the latter.

“So we did a sonogram and they actually discovered what was called a complete molar pregnancy, which is pretty rare,” Lundry said.

Within three days, she went from finding out she wasn’t actually pregnant to getting surgery to remove the tumor. She thought that was the end of it.

“By May of 2021, I had what is called gestational trophoblastic neoplasia. Say that 10 times fast!”

The tumor she thought was gone came back and turned into cancer. The Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) hormone was feeding cancer in her body. It came back more than once. At one point it spread to her lungs and uterus. She had to go through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and eventually had a partial hysterectomy.

“We decided to do a hysterectomy in June of [2022],” she said. “Complete chemotherapy, so doing two more rounds, I believe, finishing in August of 2022. And so I just hit my one year of being chemo and cancer-free.”

During her fight, Lundry made sure to stay positive through it all. Not just for herself, but for her family and her little boy.

“I never expected to go through any of this,” Lundry said. “Obviously! It’s not like anybody wakes up one day and thinks, ‘Today…I’m going to beat cancer. I’m going to go through all these things.'”

Before she was 30, Sarah Lundry’s life took a 360 turn. This Everything Woman’s message for anyone going through a change in life is simple: don’t give up.

“I think you just take life as it comes and then you make the best of it,” she said. “And I just want my story to be something that people look at and know that they have the ability to go through that and do it too.”

The Lundry’s are still working on adding to their family. They are raising money to adopt a baby. Milk & Honey Coffee Co. is also helping raise money by keeping a tab open. Lundry said if you would like to help just mention “The Lundry’s” when you’re there.

If you have anyone you think is an everything woman, let us know here. We feature these stories once a month on the last Tuesday, on 27 News at 10 p.m.