Embryos

What a day it was yesterday. Thank God Christopher and I went to Mardi Gras this year. I met a women whose daughter was 28 and had cancer. She told me how her daughter had fertility treatments before her radiation and chemo. I would never have thought about doing this unless she said something. My oncologist didn't let me know that my fertility would be impacted until I asked. Although my oncologist is a great doctor, he seems to have tunnel vision regarding everything outside his field. When I asked him about my chances of having kids he said ”you want KIDS?” in a voice that signaled that it was the worst thing ever.

Luckily, yesterday we had a scheduled consultation with a fertility specialist. I knew absolutely nothing about egg retrieval, egg freezing and embryos. The technology for egg freezing is still very primitive and there have been very, very few babies that resulted from it. Since my cycle started 3 days before I saw the specialist, Christopher and I had 24 hours to make a decision about what we wanted to do. If we did take advantage of this cycle most likely egg retrieval would never be available to me again as my surgery needs to happen within a month. The fertility specialist explained everything to us and we opted for egg retrieval and embryo storage. This is the only likely chance that we will have to have children as most likely I will be unable to produce eggs after radiation. After we made the decision we were informed that my insurance does not cover fertility treatments. I was amazed. How can an insurance plan cover Viagra and sterilization, but not cover fertility treatments? The fertility treatments cost about $10K when it is all said and done plus another $2-4K for the medications that are needed. Thess are costs that Christopher and I had to cover before we could receive treatments.
Since these were unusual circumstances the doctor offered to get us the most expensive medications thru a donation. What a help--$3000 of medications!
Besides the cost, I was overwhelmed by all the information and ethical dilemmas that Christopher and I were about to be faced with. What happens to the embryos if something happens to one of us? What happens to the unused embryos after we successfully have children? We were able to discuss this and decided that if something happens to one of us the other will be the guardian of those embryos and the unused embryos will be put up for adoption. Just like the person that donated the drugs for me to be able to have my fertility treatments, I feel the need to pass it forward on to another couple to have a child.