Hodgkin's Lymphoma Cancer Patient Freezes Eggs
Being told you have cancer can be one of the scariest diagnoses a patient will ever receive. Young patients that haven’t had the opportunity to start a family, may fear losing their ability to one day have children. Although chemotherapy and radiation can be life saving, they may also cause difficulties becoming pregnant when a patient wishes to start their family. We recently had the opportunity to work with a young woman diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma who would like to share her journey with you today.
Twenty-three year old Brie was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma three weeks before her first visit to West Coast Fertility Center. She wished to learn more about our egg freezing process and was interested in preserving her eggs prior to starting chemotherapy. Dr. Diaz shared our egg freezing thaw/survival rates and 52 healthy live births, two very important factors to investigate when you are considering freezing your eggs.
Since Brie was due to start her chemotherapy later in the month, she decided to proceed with her stimulation protocol immediately. During her frequent visits to our facility, she was truly a delightful patient and our staff developed a great deal of respect for this courageous young patient. She persevered through 14 days of injectable fertility medication with remarkable good humor and close attention to detail. Ultrasounds and blood tests were performed to assess her follicle development. During this period there was ongoing communication to and from her oncologist to coordinate and assure her cancer treatment was not compromised. On the day of her egg harvest, 13 eggs were retrieved and of these eggs 11 were mature enough to freeze. Although Brie has a long road ahead of her, she was able to start chemotherapy knowing her ability to one day have children may have been preserved.
We are pleased to offer our egg freezing services to patients who have unfortunately been diagnosed with cancer. West Coast Fertility Center helps by reducing some of the costs while working closely with Fertile Hope (affiliated with the Lance Armstrong Foundation), a non-profit organization that offers emotional support to cancer patients. Our industry partner, EMD Serono provides free medications to our patients. This helps make egg freezing more affordable to these patients whose medical treatments may pose a risk of infertility. To learn more about egg freezing please contact the West Coast Fertility Center patient care coordinator.
