A beautiful tale of true love and self sacrifice.

If only all women could be so self sacrificing. This courageous woman was faced with a true life or death situation. If she lived, her baby died, if she died her baby lived.

Mother Delays Cancer Treatments So Baby Can Live
Friday , January 25, 2008

Expectant mother Lorraine Allard learned the devastating news that she was in the advanced stages of liver cancer when she was four months pregnant, according to the Daily Mail.

Allard, of St. Olaves in the U.K., had a choice: Delay treatment to save her baby, or terminate the pregnancy to save herself.

She chose the former, waiting until the fetus was viable before scheduling a Cesarean section.

"If I am going to die, my baby is going to live," Allard told her husband, Martyn, according to the Mail.

The baby came a week early and Allard, 33, gave birth on Nov. 18 to a healthy but premature boy she named Liam.

Exactly two months later, Allard died. She'd begun chemotherapy just after her son's birth. But in the end, it was too late.

Doctors believe Allard had bowel cancer that had gone undetected for years, eventually spreading to her liver. She realized something was wrong after she began suffering from stomach cramps, and tests revealed that her liver was covered with malignant tumors, the Mail reported.

"The doctors said they couldn't do anything because she was pregnant," Martyn Allard, 34, told the Mail. "She told them straight away they were not going to get rid of it. She'd have lost the will to fight."

The courageous and selfless mother was able to get out of bed and hold her tiny son several times beside his incubator before her death. Liam is the Allards' fourth child and first boy; his sisters are Leah, 10; Amy, 8; and Courtney, 20 months.

"Lorraine was positive all the way through," Martyn Allard told the paper. "She had strength for both of us. I can't begin to describe how brave she was. Towards the end we knew things weren't going well, but she was overjoyed that she had given life to Liam."

It's getting down to the wires.

The Iowa caucuses have passed, New Hampshire primaries are tomorrow and Super Duper Tuesday is only around the corner yet many people still seem undecided about who they are going to vote for. Saturday night was the New Hampshire debates hosted by Face book. I think the debates shed a lot of light on exactly where each candidate stands. If you missed the debate the first hour and a half was the Republican debates then the next hour and a half was the democratic debates. Having both the republicans and democrats debate back to back gave people a better chance to compare and contrast the two parties and what they stand for and I think it worked rather well.

This was one of the first debates I actually watched all the way through and it was the first time I've watched the democrats debate during this whole election season. Things got pretty heated during the republican debates. McCain and Romney had a lot of words for each other but I think Romney did a very good job of handling himself professionally and keeping his cool even with all the shots directed at him. After watching the debate I support Romney even more now than I did before. I hope there were some democrats watching Romney during this debate because if there were they'll see that he really does have the best plan to improve the health care system. He is the only candidate on either side who has put into place a health care plan and made it work. Not even Hillary can claim that. The big difference between what Hillary and other democrats want and what Romney did, is he kept the system private instead of making it government run and that is why it worked.

Health care was definitely a big topic of the night but the other big topic was illegal immigration. The candidates all agree that something must be done but many of them disagree on how to deal with it. Of all the candidates ideas I actually support Ron Paul the most. I think this is the only issue he's got right. In the debate he brought to light the fact that while we do need to secure our borders we also need to get rid of the incentives that bring illegal immigrants here. We need to stop allowing illegal immigrant children access to public education, we need to stop allowing medical care at no cost to anyone who comes into an emergency room and we need to crack down on businesses who hire illegal immigrants. If we take away all the freebees we give illegals they will no longer be such an incentive to cross the border illegally. Many people might say that not allowing illegals medical care is inhumane but as Ron Paul pointed out, lets think about the emergency rooms that are being forced to closed because they can't afford to stay open anymore and lets think of the citizens who need care and now can not go to that hospital. Here in Brea there used to be several hospitals open but over the years they have all gone out of business because they could not afford to give out free health care to those who could not pay and the laws prohibit them from turning anyone away. Those laws need to be changed. So long as people know they can come here and get free health care, send their kids to school and find work with out going through the legal process to get here they will continue to cross our borders illegally.

The democrat's debate was a little boring if you ask me. The candidates spent a lot of time avoiding direct answers to questions and arguing about who's more for change. They all claim to be more for change than the other but they didn't really specify what kind of change. They also spent a lot of time talking about how all of the problems in this country are because of the "current administration." One thing is for sure though, I would much rather see Obama get the nomination then Clinton. Obama seems to have a better sense of where people are right now and a more logical approach to dealing with this country’s situations. Hillary is all about big government, higher taxes and running people's lives. She just doesn't get it.

I hope that the nominees for the presidential race will be Romney and Obama. I think it would be a good race and a very close one at that. If you’re registered to vote on Feb 5 please don't be lazy, your voice does count. Besides, if you don't vote then you can't complain if it doesn't turn out the way you want it.