Actress and playwright Jacey Powers faces a difficult decision when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer just as she discovers she's pregnant.

Jacey Powers is an actress and a writer, a stand-up and a storyteller. Jacey started acting at the age of five, when she appeared in the classic drama, The Chicken and the Man. She played the chicken. Her only line was “Cluck, cluck, cluck.” In the end the man ate her. Since then she has been seen performing off-Broadway and regionally. Some favorites include Our Town (Barrow Street Theatre), Falling (Minetta Lane Theatre) and Band Geeks! (Goodspeed Opera Company). She played the lead role in Picking Up (DR2 Theatre), which she also wrote. Her newest play, Not About The Cat had a reading in NYC last summer. It featured Kathryn Erbe, John Pankow and Deidre Lovejoy. As a stand-up she’s been seen at The Comedy Cellar/Village Underground, Stand-Up NY, Broadway Comedy Club, Dangerfield’s and more. She delivered the opening speech at the final Avon 39 Walk to End Breast cancer this past fall, and her story: “Army of Women,” aired on NPR last spring. She is a graduate of NYU and believes Nutella is the way to world peace.

This story originally aired on August 28, 2018 in an episode titled “Abortion: Stories from doctors and patients - Part 1.”

Story Transcript

There was a lot going on when this whole thing happened.  There was my dad’s sudden death and my mom getting sick and then this unplanned pregnancy, so it’s hard to really know where the story even began, but I know where the story ends. 

The story ends in the happiest place in the world, the recovery room at the Planned Parenthood in Manhattan.  If you've never been there, you don’t get to judge. 

For twenty beautiful minutes you sit a room with a lot of ladies in recliners and everyone is drinking orange juice and eating cookies.  Everyone just seems happy.  Everyone seems relieved.  Everyone seems like they are aware they are meant to be.  It seems like they're staring at a new beginning. 

I guess the beginning of this story is technically sex, like five weeks before I found myself in the recovery room.  Sex was sort of a rarity in my eighteen-month relationship which is something they don’t tell you about like death that it will affect you in weird ways.  I felt guilty about having sex for a while. 

So two days after this sex, I felt a lump in my left breast.  Not really a lump.  Like a density.  I mention it to my boyfriend.  I didn’t think it was a big deal but he insisted that I go in and see a doctor. 

So when you get into doctors it gets into a lot of logistical bullshit.  I didn’t have any insurance so I called Planned Parenthood.  They told me that they wouldn’t give a mammogram or a breast ultrasound to a woman who was only twenty-five years old without first having a physical exam, which would be $100 which they couldn’t schedule for another two weeks.  If I needed another test that would be another $300 and that could be another month of waiting. 

So I made some other calls and eventually I found a breast cancer navigator at a hospital in Harlem, and she said she could see me the next day. 

Then she passes my call over to this nurse who starts asking me a barrage of questions.  What’s your birthday?  How much do you weigh?  Blah, blah, blah.  When was your last period?  Well, there's an interesting question that I don’t have an answer for. 

A few months before, a friend of mine had bought me a bag of pregnancy tests as a gag gift.  She thought it was hilarious that you could get three of them for a buck at the Dollar Tree.  I think she thought it was funny because she was like a twenty-five-year-old virgin.  I don't know but I think that’s funny. 

Anyway, she gets me this bag and as I’m staring at these tests I’m not that nervous because I had a scare once or twice before but it always ended up with just me being crazy.  That’s what I thought this was going to be.  I’m like I’m going to end up with a negative pregnancy test and this lump in my breast that only exists in my imagination. 

So I try one test.  Then I try a second.  Then I try a third.  Blue line after blue line after blue line.  As this reality sets in, all I want is to not have to make this decision.  I had sort of decided for myself when I graduated from college that even though I was totally pro-choice, abortion was never going to be my choice.  I would just feel…

Anyway, I went to the internet and I Googled ‘ways to not be pregnant’.  I didn’t want to have an abortion or anything.  I just didn’t want to be pregnant.  The best internet advice was to suck on Vitamin C tablets and chew on some parsley like a lunatic. 

Twenty-four hours and twelve pregnancy tests later, I was in the office of the Harlem Breast Cancer Navigator.  She said, “Hey, did you take that pregnancy test as you were instructed?” 

And I said, “Yes, I took two.  One was positive and one was negative.  I don't know if I’m pregnant.” 

See, I had to lie.  I had to lie because they told me in the phone that if I was pregnant they weren’t going to examine me because if I was pregnant then the density I felt was probably just a clogged milk duct or something, but I knew that it had been there before I could have possibly been pregnant. 

So the navigator examined me and she felt the density I was referring to and so she sent me across the street to get a breast ultrasound.  I was greeted by a radiology nurse named Moira.  Moira was this beautiful African-American woman with this broad smile and she was just glowing as she entered the waiting room, because she was eight months pregnant. 

She's just chatting me up, “Oh, yeah.  Cysts are real common among young women, especially if you might be pregnant.  I know you don’t know for sure but I was looking at your clipboard and it’s probably nothing.  We see this kind of thing all the time.  If you're thinking of…” 

And then she was silent, just totally silent as she moved the ultrasound wand over my breast. 

I said, “What are you looking at?” 

“A mass.” 

I said, “Mass sounds like not a cyst.” 

She said, “No.  I mean, I don't know.  I'll take some pictures and I'll send Dr. Wilder in to come and talk to you.”  Then she was gone. 

And I lay there in that darkened exam room for the longest twenty minutes of my life.  I just stared at the ceiling and I bargained with God.  I said, “You know what?  It’s totally cool if I have cancer.  Really, it’s fine.  I won’t even complain.  As long as I get to live, it’s chill.” 

I couldn’t believe it.  I hadn’t even considered the idea that I might have cancer.  I had been so busy worrying about possibly being accidentally pregnant.  I just..

So the doctor comes in and he repeats what Moira had said to me and I just ask him point blank.  I say, “Are you telling me that you think I have cancer?” 

Very gently he says, “I think there's a 90% chance that the mass is going to come back malignant.” 

I say, “Okay.  It’s just a lot, you know?  I mean, my dad died six months ago totally unexpectedly.  My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer just last month.  She's had cancer three times so it’s not like I never thought this could happen.  I guess a part of me always thought that I would probably get cancer at some point, I just didn’t expect it to be today.”

Moira was standing in the back of the room and the doctor shot her a look as she started to cry.  Then he scheduled a bunch of other tests for me, mammogram and a biopsy. 

All day long, Moira was by my side and at some point she apologized to me for crying.  She said, “You know, it’s just I lost my daddy real suddenly too just like you and besides I’m so hormonal with being pregnant and everything,” which of course I was really conscious of. 

Every new doctor I went to I had to add this addendum.  “Hey, what if I might be pregnant?  Can I do this test?”  “Hey, what if I have to get an abortion?  Is that going to affect this?” 

After the twelfth time I had used the word ‘abortion’ in front of Moira, I started apologizing.  I said, “I’m so sorry.  I’m sorry that I keep having to talk about terminating a pregnancy when you're here and you're pregnant.” 

She stopped me and she said, “Girl, I've had two abortions.”  She said, “You know, when I was younger, I was with some men and I knew that I didn’t want to be with them for life.  I knew that they wouldn’t be the fathers of my children.  The second abortion was right before my daddy died.  For a while I felt bad about it.  I felt like maybe I had robbed him of grandbabies or something.  But a few months after his passing, I met the father of my children.  This is my second baby now. 

I’m just saying you got to do what you got to do to take care of you.  You know, you've already done the most important thing.  You got yourself here.  You are catching this early.  No one should judge you for that.” 

So I took care of me.  The first thing was seeing all of the doctors.  I saw an oncologist and a breast surgeon and a plastic surgeon and eventually a fertility endocrinologist.  If you are a person who wants to have babies at some point and has to have chemotherapy they send you to someone to help you preserve your eggs against the damaging effects of the chemotherapy. 

I went to Dr. Schmidt, this endocrinologist and he didn’t know what the hell to do with me.  He was like, “Well, I've never had a patient who was already pregnant.  I don't even know if I can stimulate egg growth in someone who’s going to have the levels of pregnancy hormone that you will have even after the termination.  Have you considered keeping the pregnancy?” 

I said, “Yes, I have.  Do you think it’s a good idea?” 

He said, “Honestly, no.  You're young, it wasn’t planned, it’s obvious you can get pregnant.  It’s hard for me to say because it’s my job to get people pregnant.  That’s what I do for a living.  But I think we’ll be able to protect your eggs and right now you should spend all of your energy focusing on treating your cancer.” 

Perfect.  Now, two doctors had told me that there was no real decision to be made.  My oncologist the week before had told me that technically it would be possible to keep the pregnancy.  It would involve me having immediate surgery for my cancer and then delaying chemotherapy and then beginning chemotherapy while I was still pregnant and then inducing an early labor.  It would compromise my treatment significantly.  It was obviously not ideal. 

She also thought that because I was only four weeks pregnant that the stress of this whole situation might cause things to resolve themselves.  But here I was a week later and the scope of my uterus show that I was five weeks pregnant. 

I would learn that at Planned Parenthood, when they performed these scopes, they faced the screen away from you and they used terms like ‘viable pregnancy’.  But in a fertility clinic like this one, they face the screen towards you and use terms like ‘the baby has a heartbeat’. 

So my next call was to Planned Parenthood.  Even with my newly acquired Medicaid and a medically necessary abortion, there was no way to cover it.  Planned Parenthood was the only way to go, according to my doctors. 

I expected more red tape when I reached the operator but I didn’t even have to tell them that I had cancer.  I told them I wanted an abortion and they said, “Can you come in tomorrow?” 

Now, I want to know whose job it is to pick up the TV programming in the waiting room at the Manhattan Planned Parenthood.  It must be a really hard job figuring out what should be on the screen as women sit there considering the complicated situation they found themselves in.  The morning I was there, the TV was playing Space Jam.  Looney Tunes and jerseys are running up and down a basketball court, R. Kelly crooning in the background. 

I quickly identified different kinds of women in the waiting room.  Half the women were really young, teenagers basically, embarrassed, staring at their shoes, regretting some mistake they made one night.  And the other half of the women were women closer to my own age staring you down, daring you to judge them.  This was not their first time at the rodeo. 

But I was in either of these groups.  I just floated above it.  This whole thing was out of my hands. 

And from my perch above the fray, I noticed one woman sitting in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped room shouting into her cell phone.  “Jason.  Jason, I ain’t having you baby.  Jason, there is no baby.  I’m at Planned Parenthood right now.  Alexia brought me here.  Oh, you can come down.  You're going to get a lot of mad in here anyway so I don't know what…

"Jason, I ain’t having your baby.  There is no baby.  Jason, Jason.  You strike me in the face and you want me to have your baby?  I saw your ID when the cops came.  You said you were thirty years old, you’re forty fucking two years old.  I ain’t having your baby, Jason.” 

And I thought, “Thank God for Alexia.”  Thank God for Planned Parenthood, otherwise Jason’s girlfriend would be having the baby of this man who lied to her and hit her. 

Anyway, a few minutes later, I found myself in the recovery room at the Manhattan Planned Parenthood sitting back, drinking my juice, happy, relieved, where I was meant to be, a new beginning. 

I looked around the room for Jason’s girlfriend.  I didn’t see here there.  I wonder if she felt the same hazy relief that I felt, that all the women around me seemed to be feeling.  I wonder how long that feeling lasted for them.  Other women I know who have had abortions have feelings about it.  They feel self righteous or proud or guilt or usually guilty that they don’t feel more guilty. 

But I didn’t feel anything because I didn’t make a choice.  I had to have an abortion.  But so did Jason’s girlfriend, right?  It’s easy to say that this choice wouldn’t be your choice when the possibility of being pregnant by your abuser or pregnant and unemployed or pregnant and fighting cancer seems totally impossible and remote. 

Anyway, that’s where my story ends.  I left holding on to my recovery-room glow without ever having to ask the question, “Do you want to have this baby?  Do you want to be a mom?”  But the funny thing is I know the answer to the second question.  Yes.  More than anything. 

Somewhere in a freezer in Minnesota, the eggs that I froze with Dr. Schmidt are laying in wait.  They are waiting for the day that I am ready to embrace that answer.  They are waiting for the day that I choose them.  Knowing that makes me feel happy.  It makes me feel relieved.  It makes me feel that I am where I am meant to be.  It feels like a new beginning.