Egg Freezing » Freeze Human Eggs

Cancer Patient Freezes Eggs

eggfreezing — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:12:54 +0000

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.

Cancer Patient Freezes 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.

Press Release

eggfreezing — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:00:03 +0000

Press Release: "Frozen Egg Bank Network Expands Coast to Coast to Help Prospective Parents Start a Family"

Orange County, CA (PRWEB) November 12, 2009

Frozen Egg Bank, Inc. (FEB) has launched a new era in reproductive medicine as a group of charter member IVF centers in six states – California, Nevada, Utah, New York, New Jersey and Tennesee – join the national provider of human egg freezing and thawing services. The network is designed to provide fertility preservation by freezing the healthy eggs of young women for medical or elective reasons.

Share Your Story

eggfreezing — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:35:44 +0000

Share Your Story with Our Readers

The Frozen Egg Bank is interested in hearing about the changed lives of our former patients. With the upcoming birth of our highly anticipated 50th frozen egg baby we would like to reach out to all our patients who we’ve had the pleasure of helping. We invite you to share your story and possibly inspire someone that may be in a similar situation that you have overcome. We look forward to hearing from you!

Frozen Egg/Blastocyst Culture

eggfreezing — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:00:50 +0000

Another Happy Frozen Egg Mom-to-be Tours The Embryology Lab

After their first OB-Ultrasound; Stephanie, her husband, and her parents proudly hold pictures of the newest member of their family.

Stephanie, her husband, and her parents are seen here touring the egg freezing laboratory with Dr. Diaz and Embryologist Antoine La. Antoine is showing the family where her frozen eggs were kept for 6 months.

The Frozen Egg Bank would like to celebrate our newest frozen egg pregnancy. Stephanie and her husband came to us in 2008 with high hopes of finally starting their family. In planning Stephanie’s IVF treatment, she expressed concern regarding surplus embryos from her cycle. Traditionally, extra embryos created from a fresh IVF cycle are frozen and kept for future frozen embryo transfers. This is one of the main reasons couples find egg freezing to be very beneficial. For personal and ethical reasons she requested to freeze her extra oocytes instead of freezing any embryos from her IVF cycle. From Stephanie’s fresh cycle, 28 eggs were retrieved and 15 of her eggs were mature enough to utilize in her IVF treatment. Stephanie and her husband decided to inseminate 3 of her eggs, and freeze the remaining 12 eggs to use in the future. Out of the 3 eggs that were inseminated with her husband’s sperm, 2 fertilized and were used in her embryo transfer.

Two weeks after her fresh embryo transfer, they received news that they weren’t pregnant but were determined to try again. Three months later Stephanie and her husband were prepared to proceed with another cycle, this time with her frozen eggs. They decided to thaw half of their frozen eggs, inseminate them and transfer the healthiest looking embryos. Unfortunately, they received the same news and although they were heartbroken they knew they had one more chance. Another three months passed when they were ready to proceed and decided to thaw her remaining 6 oocytes to try one last time. Her eggs were thawed, inseminated and all 6 fertilized. This time they decided to culture their embryos for 5 days instead of the normal 3 days to allow the embryo to further develop. A 5 day embryo culture is referred to as a blastocyst culture which allows for the selection of the best quality embryos. After waiting eagerly for two weeks, Stephanie and her husband were overjoyed to find out they were finally pregnant. This marks our 62nd pregnancy from the Frozen Egg Bank, Inc. Congratulations to Stephanie and her family, we are excited that your dreams are finally coming true.