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From Tragedy to Triumph
Fighting for Fertility During Serious Health Issues
By Teri Brown
Tracy Rasmussen of Pottstown, Pa., thought conceiving children was going to be a breeze, but Rasmussen and her husband began having fertility problems soon after trying to conceive. Eventually, it was determined that she had endometriosis.
"I thought I had a lot of time to conceive, so we tried some conventional therapies to shrink the endometriomas (the tumors associated with endometriosis) but it didn't work, so I was recommended for surgery," Rasmussen says. "The surgeon told me that he might have to do a hysterectomy if things looked really bad."
Though they didn't have to take her uterus or ovaries in that surgery, a second surgery took one of her ovaries and left the other one unable to function. Rasmussen had been sure that the second surgery was going to work, and once it became clear she wasn't going to be able to conceive on her own, she was devastated.
"I felt horrible," says Rasmussen, who is now the adoptive mother of twins. "I was depressed and cried a good deal of the time. I'm sure the hormonal imbalance caused by my very sudden and early menopause didn't help, but I was devastated."
There are many personal health tragedies that could potentially leave a woman unable to conceive. Lindsay Nohr Beck of New York, N.Y., was diagnosed with tongue cancer at the age of 22 and then again at 24. The second time, it spread to her lymph nodes, and aggressive treatment was needed. When Beck realized that the chemotherapy could leave her infertile, she was overwhelmed with loss.
"The potential of infertility was more devastating than my cancer diagnosis," Beck says. "Although life threatening, cancer was temporary and treatable. Infertility, on the other hand, was incurable and permanent. It had the potential to drastically change the rest of my life and in addition to cancer seemed unfair and impossible."
Beck cringed at the thought of being 24, single, infertile and a cancer survivor. She realized the only thing she had any control over was infertility, and she decided she couldn't sit back without taking precautionary fertility preservation measures. After much research, she found that freezing her unfertilized eggs (oocyte cryopreservation) was indeed an option. In spite of the expense and the added medical procedures to an already full schedule (radiation treatments, doctor appointments, etc.) Beck decided to go ahead with the procedure.
"Adding fertility preservation to the list was daunting, but I did not see it as a choice," says Beck.
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