A mum has described her devastation after being told she has to choose between her life-changing medication and having another baby. Rebecca Sayers suffers from the lifelong chronic skin condition psoriasis and finally found a cure.
However, the 23-year-old from South London was told that she can't have another baby as long as she is on the medication and is now dreading having to face the choice between having another child and going back to being "depressed" because of the severity of her psoriasis.
The skin condition affected her from head-to-toe and left her hoovering constantly to get rid of the dead skin. In March 2021, the mum-of-two started taking Cyclosporine with her psoriasis - and she noticed her skin clearing within days of taking the new meds, MyLondon reports.
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"In the beginning when my skin started clearing up I was really happy, I was over the moon," she said. Rebecca described how within just two weeks her skin had totally transformed, giving her a new-found confidence she'd never had before. "I never thought I’d see myself with normal skin, just to dress normally and look normal and be a normal adult," she explained.
But the young mum said it wasn't long before she began noticing some severe side effects from the medicine, which is an immunosuppressant. "I’m forever getting ill all the time," she said. "I had pneumonia on Christmas Day. I got a lot of cold sores in the winter. I have a lot of problems with bleeding all the time."
Rebecca said the medication also left her tired, with less energy to play with her two young kids, who are two and four. Moreover, what she didn't realise was she would be unable to try for another baby while taking the medication. Rebecca claims she only recently discovered she couldn't take Cyclosporine and get pregnant at the same time, after a discussion about its side-effects with her doctor.
She said a well-meaning relative payed for her to have a private appointment at Shirley Oaks hospital, a private hospital in Croydon, but not for her treatment. The mum-of-two claims her dermatologist at Shirley Oaks didn't fully explain about not getting pregnant when she chose to begin taking the medication.
Rebecca said: "Only recently I asked him about the children situation, what would happen in the future if I wanted more children, and he said to me you’d have to come off the medication and let your skin flare up again really badly."
Rebecca, who hopes to have another baby in the future, says at some point she will have to face the choice between staying on the medication and feeling "happy," or expanding her family. "I’m very unsure in my life now," she explained, "like I’m happy at the moment, I’m happy with the way I look and with my skin, but what happens when things go wrong again."
"When I think back to what I had to deal with, I don’t want to go through that again," continued Rebecca, who insisted: "I don’t think it’s right to be told at such a young age that either you care about how you look or you can have kids."
The young mum said she feels particularly angry about the situation because her doctor apparently told her all about another medication that would clear up her skin as well as allowing her to try for children - but wouldn't prescribe it.
She said her dermatologist gave her " false hope" by telling her all about the Cimzia injection. Rebecca said he told her it was an "amazing injection" that "works really well" - only to admit the medication is rarely prescribed to patients because it costs thousands of pounds.
"I’ve said to the doctor before, what does it take for you to give out that injection? Because you said I’m the worst you’ve ever seen," said Rebecca, who added: "What’s the point in telling somebody about a medication if you’re not going to give it them to help them?"
Rebecca said she feels like the repeatedly let down by the state of healthcare in the UK to treat skin conditions like hers, describing how various health centres have "messed me around my whole life giving me steroid after steroid after steroid. They’re just giving me the cheapest option."
She added: "I’m not a guinea pig to be tested on that many times - one day they say try this, the next they say try that. They all come with risks... [but] someone that’s been suffering for years will of course jump to stop that, to make themselves happy."
A spokesperson for Shirley Oaks Hospital said: "We are committed to the highest standards of patient care for the thousands of patients we treat each year. While we cannot comment on an individual patient, we will examine thoroughly the issues raised."
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