|  |  | Will I be able to have children when I’m older? |
As a young person, becoming a mother or a father may have been the last thing on your mind even before you were diagnosed but you need to know that some chemotherapy and radiotherapy regimes can compromise fertility in both men and women. If you haven't had total body irradiation the chances are that your fertility will not be affected in the long run but ask your specialist about the impact of your treatment on fertility and any options that are open to you.
Unfortunately, nearly all people who have total body irradiation prior to a stem cell transplant lose their fertility. There is no way to preserve fertility in these cases but when the decision to transplant is made, it is because it gives the best chance of cure for the patient.
Radiation therapy may also contribute to reproductive problems. In some women it can causes ovarian failure and lead to early menopause. This requires treatment with hormone therapies until the ‘normal’ menopausal age.
| Can anything be done? |
Men can have their sperm frozen to be used at a later stage as part of IVF. This option should be offered to all males at diagnosis. For women the options are fewer and less routinely practiced, usually because they take much longer than sperm collection. For women who have a steady partner or husband, it is possible to harvest her eggs and fertilise them with her partner’s sperm. The resulting embryos can then be frozen and stored for use as part of IVF in the future. This is much more effective than simply freezing a women’s eggs, although this is carried out in some cases . Freezing of ovarian tissue may be available to some women as part of a clinical trial, but this is far from routine practice.
Sometimes there is just not enough time to consider fertility preserving procedures, and rapid treatment is the priority.
| Does my treatment affect the chances of me having a healthy child? |
People who have had chemotherapy and radiotherapy often voice concerns about the impact of their treatment on the health of their future children. You can be reassured that studies of children born to parents who received cancer treatment show no excess of abnormalities or of childhood cancer in their offspring. |
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| | "One of the hardest things for me to accept was the possibility that I wouldn't be able to have kids in the future"
"I was offered fertility testing after I recovered but I declined because it is not an issue for me at the moment"
"It wasn’t until this year when I went for my annual check-up that my doctor asked if anyone had ever spoken to me about fertility. It was only then that she said that the treatment I had probably hadn't affected my fertility"
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