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Home › Articles › Conditions Affecting Conception and Pregnancy › Fertile Hope: Cancer Patients and Fertility

Fertile Hope: Cancer Patients and Fertility

Giving Cancer Patients a Resource for Reproduction Help

By Teri Brown

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"I wouldn't want to do anything else, and at the same time I can't believe I am doing this!" she says. "I hear the success stories of the people who have come to us, people who have beaten both cancer and infertility, and I know I am doing what I am supposed to be doing."

For Nohr, Fertile Hope is both her passion and her career. For the people who are going through cancer treatments with the possibility of infertility, Fertile Hope is what guides them through the often confusing world of fertility options.

"Fertile Hope addresses a need that otherwise slipped through the cracks," says Nohr. "There are several organizations addressing cancer and several addressing infertility, but where the two overlap there was nothing, and everyday patients were left unaware, uneducated and unknowingly infertile."

Fertile Hope is the type of organization Nohr wished she had had when trying to navigate simultaneously through both fertility and cancer treatments.

Sobering Stories
Joyce Dillon-Reinecke also wishes she had been able to find an organization like Fertile Hope when she was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of soft-tissue cancer found in her stomach. She had to have major surgery on her stomach and the surrounding lymph nodes and was advised to undergo chemotherapy treatments. As almost an afterthought, a staff oncologist mentioned to Dillon-Reinecke the chemotherapy would probably leave her infertile. Until that point the possibility had not been conveyed to her in any way.

"I was shocked that my oncologist knew so little about what impact particular chemotherapy agents would have on my fertility," says Dillon-Reinecke. "When we were first discussing a course of treatment, I tried to find out which agents could possibly be avoided or which ones might be less toxic to my reproductive system, but I wasn't able to get clear answers."


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