Pregnancy & Cancer
- Angela Kaewell had the opportunity to thank and hug two doctors who were instrumental in treating her breast cancer, saving both her life and her daughter’s. Now, the daughter is named after one of them.
- Kaewell learned that she was pregnant soon after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. She had a mastectomy and was treated with chemotherapy while she was pregnant.
- Although certain types of chemotherapy can damage ovaries and prevent people from having children after treatment, there are several kinds of fertility preservation that can help people with cancer who want to have kids later in life.
Now, she has a child named after one of the doctors who guided her through her battle.
Read More"They both saved me and my daughter. There's nothing I can say to express how I feel about them," Kaewell told 6 ABC, Philadelphia.
Lauren Chiarello thought shed never have children naturally after cancer — now she is pregnant with twins.
How Cancer Treatment Can Affect Fertility
Some types of chemotherapy can destroy eggs in your ovaries. This can make it impossible or difficult to get pregnant later. Whether or not chemotherapy makes you infertile depends on the type of drug and your age since your egg supply decreases with age.
"The risk is greater the older you are," said Dr. Jaime Knopman, a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist with years of experience treating couples and individuals experiencing infertility. "If you're 39 and you get chemo that's toxic to the ovaries, it's most likely to make you menopausal. But, if you're 29, your ovaries may recover because they have a higher baseline supply."
Radiation to the pelvis can also destroy eggs. It can damage the uterus, too. Surgery on your ovaries or uterus can hurt fertility as well.
If you are having a treatment that includes infertility as a possible side effect, your doctor won't be able to tell you for sure whether you will have this side effect. That's why you should discuss your options for fertility preservation before starting treatment.
Research shows that women who have fertility preservation prior to breast cancer treatment, in particular, are more than twice as likely to give birth after treatment than those who don't take fertility preserving measures.
There are a variety of fertility preservation options for women who are diagnosed with breast cancer.
Options For Preserving Your Fertility Before Cancer Treatment
Most women who preserve their fertility before cancer treatment do so by freezing their eggs or embryos.
After you finish your cancer treatment, a doctor who specializes in reproductive medicine can implant one or more embryos in your uterus or the uterus of a surrogate with the hope that it will result in pregnancy. If you freeze eggs only before treatment, a fertility specialist can use sperm and your eggs to create embryos in vitro and transfer them to your uterus.
When freezing eggs or embryos is not an option, doctors may try these less common approaches:
- Ovarian tissue freezing, an experimental approach for girls who haven't yet reached puberty and don't have mature eggs or for women who must begin treatment right away and don't have time to harvest eggs.
- Ovarian suppression, to prevent the eggs from maturing so that they cannot be damaged during treatment.
- Ovarian transposition, for women getting radiation to the pelvis, to move the ovaries out of the line of treatment.
Contributing: SurvivorNet staff
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