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for those of us with ovaries we have the most eggs we will ever have while we're still in the womb we're born with about a million of them and that number only goes down from there we'll release about 300 to 500 of those eggs throughout our lifetime but there are lots of things that can make that number even smaller and one of those things is cancer now cancer is a really scary thing it's an overwhelming wave of tests diagnoses treatment options and then there's a cherry on top of all of the extra stuff there is to worry about stuff like fertility what happens is that the chemotherapy can cause the eggs that are currently active in the ovary to undergo basically cell death and that can lower a person's egg supply
more quickly than what happens naturally the word chemotherapy actually means any drug used to treat any kind of illness but in the context of cancer treatment these are drugs that are targeted at eradicating cancer cells and these drugs may not only affect active eggs but they can also degrade the backup pool of eggs that's stored in the ovaries for future ovulation and chemo isn't the only kind of cancer treatment the other two most common are radiation and surgery and then there's options like immunotherapy hormone therapy bone marrow transplants and lots of other emerging medicines radiation in the pelvic area can also directly harm your eggs and any destruction of hormone-regulating parts of the body like the ovaries can trigger
some pretty drastic changes including the onset of menopause-like symptoms before age 40. but the effect of any of these treatments really depends on the kind of cancer you may be dealing with which in betty's case was acute lymphocytic leukemia my oncologist told me if i would have not been diagnosed for two more weeks i probably would have not survived that's how quickly it was escalating every kind of cancer is relatively unique so treatment is going to be tailored to the stage and type of the disease and the age and general condition of the patient so after hearing all of that it's understandable that fertility planning is actually a pretty big part of someone's cancer journey my oncologist explained that the
chemo would potentially put me in early menopause or give me issues conceiving so he was very clear on explaining to me what could happen and the possibility of me having a child some of you may already know this but in my last relationship my long-term partner was diagnosed with a really aggressive lymphoma and everything i just said about ovaries is also true for male reproductive equipment chemotherapy can damage sperm and sperm generating parts of the body so before treatment he needed to consult a fertility specialist for those with testes that means deciding whether you want to collect and store a sperm sample but for those with ovaries it's a little more complicated there are a variety of options
the most commonly used option is egg freezing where a patient undergoes an ovarian stimulation cycle to try to get all the eggs that are present in the ovaries for that month to grow together we would then do a procedure that's under sedation to remove those eggs from your ovaries just using a needle that goes through the vagina takes about 15 to 20 minutes and you go home the same day and we can freeze all of the mature eggs that we get to use in the future either uh to carry yourself or to be carried by someone else and that whole process takes time like at least a couple of weeks an even more recent option is ovarian transposition this is where the ovaries are actually surgically moved
higher up into the abdomen so they're out of harm's way if radiation is being aimed in that direction the ovaries are movable who knew not me but sometimes things actually progressed too fast some patients like betty don't actually have the luxury of time to explore all their fertility options before they urgently need to start treatment for their cancer unfortunately due to the rate of the cancer growing and how fast i was deteriorating i was given the option to freeze my eggs but it would postpone treatment for two months which would make my prognosis very bleak so me and my ex-husband made the decision to go ahead with treatment because we already had our newborn it's a tough decision to face but luckily there are some exciting
advancements on the horizon like artificial ovaries this is where the patient's own ovarian tissue can be removed and frozen a technique known as cryopreservation it can then be used to create a scaffold seeded with their own ovarian follicles and all of this can then be prompted to function as an ovary and produce eggs outside the body like we're living in the future dude it can then be transplanted back into the body where the hope is that it could resume function as a normal ovary again this research is still in its early stages and has only been trialled in lab animals so far but it's a promising future option other experimental ovarian cryopreservation techniques have been tried successfully and have resulted in live human births
plus something that's just as important as these advancements is who exactly will have access to them a patient has to be aware that these services exist if they don't ask for it themselves and so empowering our cancer specialists to know about the ways that we can assist patients to preserve their fertility and just kind of spreading the knowledge amongst the practitioners and we can't forget that all of this costs money i wish i could say that fertility preservation was free but there's also some great societies out there that provide grants for patients to help offset some of the costs and so we try to meet patients you know kind of where they are to get them the care that they want depending on the kind of cancer and the
kind of treatment experts recommend that cancer survivors wait anywhere from six months to five years before trying for kids this waiting period reduces the chance of a cancer recurrence and gives the patient adequate time to recover both physically and otherwise now there are lots of folks who complete cancer treatment and go on to have low risk pregnancies and healthy children like betty who got pregnant shortly after getting the green light from her doctor without any fertility help i never expected to get cancer as a new mom at 30. i never expected to have a second child after i was told that i possibly could not have another child so stay positive do your research figure out what you want for your life in your future and
where you stand and always advocate for yourself because no one else is going to do it better than you if you or someone you know is looking for support when dealing with blood cancer then check out the leukemia and lymphoma society they provide patients with free one-on-one support and opportunities to speak with highly trained oncology professionals so to learn more about them check out the resources we've left in the description below thanks so much for watching body language if you want more topics from this series then check out season one here and if there are any other health topics you think we should cover then let us know in the comments below i really hope you learned something new in this video and i'll see you next time
