FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A little girl turned six this week and her mom was by her side to celebrate.

Why is this news?

Because when little Zoe was in the womb, her mom found a lump in her breast, and doctors confirmed her worst fear.

Christina Ortega was 19 weeks pregnant when she was told she had a Her 2 tumor, which is a very aggressive, invasive form of breast cancer that spread into her lymph nodes.

“I had a lot of questions about can I keep this baby, and what would be the first step of treatment,” she said.

Both Ortega’s oncologist and surgeon at Memorial Cancer Institute assured her she could keep the baby, but she’d have to wait until she delivered her daughter before she could start radiation and drug therapy.

So chemotherapy it was, with the goal to keep the cancer at bay.

Her next question was as important as her first.

“Will it dramatically decrease my odds of survival?” she asked. “Because I did have a two-year-old at home and we were just struggling with, we don’t want to leave him without a mother either.”

Her team was confident that she would be there for her son, Gustavito, and newborn daughter.

Doctor Atif Hussein said he still admires Ortega’s courage.

“Doctor Ortega made the very brave and risky decision in that, although we were not able to attack what was really causing the cancer, she was willing to take the risk,” he said.

That’s right, Ortega is no stranger to cancer.

She is a pediatric neuropsychologist at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

She works with kids fighting the deadly disease and knew full well, despite her doctors’ confidence, things could go wrong.

“There were a couple of women, there were three who were diagnosed after me, completed treatment before I did,” she said. “I believe they had a different type of breast cancer, had a quick recurrence and then unfortunately passed away and two of those women had young children. So when I would see that, that hit me really hard and that was really hard to cope with.”

She didn’t want to do it.

Ortega said keeping her hair helped her accept what she was going through, but eventually she gave in.

With her husband doing the honors, bald she became.

Ortega hated the wigs, so she went to head wraps.

She underwent six rounds of chemo, once every three weeks, and then gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

It was a happy relief, but it was short lived.

“When I gave birth, I felt all the anxiety really hit me again because now the second baby is here and again, I don’t want to leave her here without a mother,” she said. “So I had made her a playlist because I was thinking, okay she’s a woman being born into a man’s world and I don’t know if I’ll be here to help her navigate it. So the first song I made for her was ‘The Man’ by Taylor Swift.”

And the man in charge of her treatment?

Again, impressed.

“A couple of days after she gave birth to a very healthy baby girl, we thought it’s your turn now and we started giving her the most aggressive treatment that now is actually targeting what’s causing her cancer,” said Hussein. “And she did fantastic. She was so motivated, taking care of her newborn baby, working, taking care of her husband, the other baby at home. I mean this is 3-4 times what I usually do in a day, and taking four drugs of aggressive chemotherapy every three weeks.”

Her treatment, which lasted three years, included chemotherapy, radiation, a double mastectomy and plastic surgery.

Fast forward to the present and Ortega is now cancer free, raising her children, happily married and working with families facing similar challenges.

Her message to all of us?

“Hold on to whatever hope you can hold on to,” she said. “None of us can accurately predict what’s going to happen, so I didn’t necessarily want people to say to me, ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll be okay.’ We don’t really know that. But things happen in life, right? We don’t know that beyond cancer. So I would say hang on to any hope that you can and as cliché as it sounds, really try to take it one day, one step at a time.”

Ortega added that when people offer help, to accept it. Nobody beats cancer alone.

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