On her daughter’s sixth birthday party, Sarah Pieper did what she has grown accustomed to as a mom of four kids. She held it together, masking the devastation she felt after getting life-changing news just a few hours earlier.
Pieper, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom living in Summerville, kept busy during the party. Navigating through the maze of rambunctious 5- and 6-year-olds, she wondered what her world would look like and how the child gestating in her womb would be affected by it all.
Earlier that morning, doctors at Trident Medical Center diagnosed Pieper with stage 3 squamous cell carcinoma, a rare form of head and neck cancer that affects the tongue.
She was 14 weeks pregnant with a baby boy.
“It was probably the hardest thing for me to do,” Pieper told The Post and Courier.