Beating the odds: Cook County woman overcomes rare form of breast cancer to deliver twins

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - An Arlington Heights woman has beat incredible odds not only to survive, but to thrive.

What Shelly Battista went through is daunting to say the least. But now, after chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and losing her ovaries, she has a lot to celebrate.

Her miracle started back in February 2020 when Battista felt a lump while she was breastfeeding her newborn daughter Emilia.

She thought it was a clogged milk duct, but doctors gave her the shocking news: she had a rare form of breast cancer.

She went through chemo and had a double mastectomy, and it worked, but the chemo caused ovarian insufficiency.

Because she had an increased risk of ovarian cancer, she had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.

Now, before all her treatments began, Battista had her eggs frozen at Northwestern's Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine.

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Despite not having ovaries, she was able to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization. At her first ultrasound, Battista found out she was having identical twins.

"I haven't fully processed it yet, I don't think. But I'm really excited, and it really is like a true miracle that this happened, and we have two babies exactly two years cancer-free. My heart is very full," Battista said.

Two years after it all started, Battista was declared cancer-free on the same day she delivered her twins, Nina and Margo.