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In 2013, Emmy Pontz-Rickert, then only 24 years old, was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. She’d discovered a lump in her breast just after attending the funeral of one of her aunts – who’d died from breast cancer.
Just two years prior, Pontz-Rickert had had to help her father recover from a heart transplant surgery and lost her mom in a car accident.
Rather than let all of these tragedies bring her spirits down, Pontz-Rickert was only more determined to come out on top. “I wasn’t going to let [breast cancer] kill me. I fought for my life,” she said. “I didn’t just want to live. I wanted to start a family.”
Not long after Pontz-Rickert received her diagnosis, she took charge of her own life by freezing her eggs and reaching out to the man she dated in college and who she calls “the love of her life,” Kelly.
The two very quickly reconnected and decided that they wanted to get married and have children together. Their first daughter, Grace, is now 17 months old.
Sadly, just after Pontz-Rickert underwent a bilateral mastectomy to treat her breast cancer, her doctor advised her to undergo an oophorectomy, ovary removal surgery, because she was at high risk of developing ovarian cancer.
“[My doctors] recommend[ed] I do that between 32 and 35-years-old,” Pontz-Rickert said, “so that’s why we’re trying to have kids as quickly as possible.”
She and her husband are now expecting their second child, a son, on November 17 this year. Pontz-Rickert is now 27.
Thankfully, her second pregnancy has proceeded smoothly thus far, and she is extremely grateful for all that she has in her life and with her family.
“You got through hardships and it makes you appreciate things on a whole other level,” she explained. “Being told that it was possible I wouldn’t be able to conceive has made pregnancy such a gift.”
