Our experience with fertility upon my husband's cancer diagnosis

Well the cancer and the fertility were correlated and we were lucky in that we were seeing a urologist who was a fertility specialist because he was able to guide me through both and Andy was at that point really kind of numb to everything and was listening to the doctor but I think he wasn’t able to really absorb a lot of the information so I felt incredibly lucky that we were dealing with a medical professional who really specialized in the area of fertility as well as the cancer part of it. Because of that he was able to…you know, the first thing I said to the doctor was, “What can we do to ensure that Andy can produce sperm, now or later?” And the first thing he recommended was during cancer surgery, we will try to do a sperm extraction of the healthy testicle. So that’s exactly what they did, they did a sperm extraction. And he was able to get two vials of what he thought might have some sperm in it from that surgery, from that sperm extraction.

Then, post-surgery we contacted the doctor again and said “Prior to Andy starting treatment for the cancer, what can we do?” We were incredibly proactive about it and he was incredible proactive about it. He’s very aggressive in that side of his profession. He’s a urologist first but fertility is the area that he really focuses on in urology. So, he was aggressive, we were aggressive and we went and did a second sperm extraction prior to Andy starting radiation. So, while in the long run, unfortunately for us, none of that helped to produce a child, I think for many people that has been successful so I’m glad that we went that route. I’m glad that we explored that route because had we not, we would have always wondered.