Wanting Kids and having breast cancer

KL38

I am 38, engaged with no kids.  Me and my fiance want to have children.  The doctor gave us 2 options.  1. Invetro - which she said is very risky since they would pump me with hormones that could set off the cancer (in my breast and if it is elsewhere in my body) or a new treatment where they take your whole ovary out and would freeze it until science catches up (estimate 10 years) and then try to have a child.  I really would want a child sooner than 10 years but are the risks involved with invetro worth it?  Has anyone with bc done invetro?  How did the hormones effect you?  Did it make the cancer worse?

Anonymous

KL38....I'm sorry that no one has answered you yet. I adopted my daughter and don't have plans or the desire to get pregnant, even if I could, but plenty of women here have. I think you'll find almost none of them did in vitro though, especially if their cancers were ER+. Most of us spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid excess estrogen for fear of a recurrence! Is there any reason why you can't get pregnant naturally once your treatments are over? I only ask because so many have. For example, you'll find posts from motherof3 over on the 'Moving Beyond...' board and she gave birth to her 3rd baby within this past year...naturally. You may have heard of or even read the book Why I Wore Lipstick to my Mastectomy, by Geralyn Lucas..? It's the story of her journey from diagnosis through treatments (including chemo) and eventually to the birth of her first babay. Last year, she had her second.

The other place you might want to go to get more feedback from young BC survivors is here:

http://www.youngsurvival.org/community/

Good luck!

~Marin

CaNatalie

Hi KL,

 I know where you are coming from! I was just dx on 8/31/07 and my husband and I were just getting ready to start our family. Because my cancer is triple negative I was given medical clearance to harvest my eggs. I am now getting injections and will have my eggs retrieved on the 7th or 9th, fertilized with my husbands sperm and frozen till we are ready. I will only be on hormones for 10 days and start my chemo immediatlely afterwards. From my own research embryos tend to fair much better than eggs alone. However on another post another survivor seemed to have good results with freezing her eggs. I also researched that a huge risk factor is if your tumor is affected by hormones. Do you know your path report? I think in the end, only you can decide what risks you are willing to take.

A great website to check out is:

http://www.fertilehope.org/

It specifically deals with fertility concerns and cancer.

Best of luck. Please email me if you would like to talk. nrw8680@yahoo.com

Take care,

Natalie