Fertility

Breast and ovarian cancer survivors, especially those with, hormone-sensitive cancers, may worry about using ovarian stimulating hormones either during fertility preservation prior to cancer treatment or during survivorship. For fertility preservation purposes, embryo or egg banking are options for many young women. In this process, hormones are used to induce the ovaries to produce multiple eggs in one month (normally an ovary produces a single egg per month). Clinical hormonal stimulation protocols have been modified to work for women with hormone-sensitive cancers. The one study that looked at cancer recurrence rates for breast cancer survivors who underwent this procedure, found that these women did not have an increased risk for cancer recurrence compared to those who did not have ovarian stimulation.

Survivors of hormone-sensitive cancers may also discuss using this protocol with their fertility specialist. However, they may first wish to examine their ovarian reserve, the number of immature eggs in their ovaries, as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for cancer treatment may have significantly reduced this number.

I saw a Reproductive Endocrinologist, Dr. Randall Dunn, in Houston, Texas.

It wasn't necessarily difficult, all things considered, but it was expensive and time consuming.

Nurses educated my husband and I on all of my fertility drugs and injections and we had to fill out documents that stated who would possess the frozen embryos in the case of death or divorce (very surreal).

During the couple of weeks of injections I had regular ultrasounds and blood work done so that they could monitor follicle growth leading up to egg harvesting.

Once I had enough mature follicles we set up the egg harvesting. Egg retrieval was done as an outpatient procedure and we chose to fertilize the eggs and freeze embryos.

I did 2 rounds of In Vitro Fertilization prior to starting chemotherapy. The first round was not very successful which is why we did it twice. In the end we were able to freeze several embryos.

We considered a number of options including ovarian suppression, egg harvesting/freezing and In Vitro Fertilization.

Not exactly a "perfect" fit but hopefully of some use

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/7-reasons-breast-cancer-survivors-shouldn-t-afraid-193300661.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us

There have been many studies ob fertility in women who have in women have undergone chemotherapy. However, many of these studies have used a woman's ability to have her period as a measure of fertility. This may underestimate the fertility impact of various treatments.

Menstruation does not equate to fertility. Sometimes after treatment, a patient may go into menopause early.

http://www.fertilehope.org/tool-bar/risk-calculator-women-type.cfm has a risk calculator by type of cancer and the treatment used.

I would advise speaking with your doctor about your treatment and how it will affect your fertility.

It depends on the type of chemotherapy, your age, and if you have other health problems.
Make sure to communicate with your physician that you want to consider having children in the future.

Make sure you do not get pregnant during chemo, which could cause adverse issues with the fetus.

Another option that women are considering is to freeze their ova.