Why I'm happy that we chose emergency IVF

At the time, we were very motivated to have a family, and so we felt that this was something we really wanted to do. I did have some concerns, given that I have a hormone-sensitive cancer, and that I was being given hormones—estrogen, specifically—that it potentially could trigger something to be growing. I was assured by my physician that in the short-term it was safe, and given that I would be undergoing chemotherapy after this hormone treatment, if it did spark anything, the chemotherapy most likely would take care of it, and so that it was safe for me to go ahead with this procedure and medicine and everything.

At the time, it’s hard to think that you’re fertilizing these eggs, and you have embryos, and you’re not quite sure what you might do with them later on. Going through the infertility treatment, you do actually have to go through a whole bunch of legal paperwork to indicate what you want done with embryos that aren’t used, how they should be disposed of, and a lot of decisions that people going through infertility treatments for various reasons have to answer. But it was a little stressful to have to go through all this in addition to dealing with the cancer diagnosis—it definitely took a lot of time and energy to get through it.

I am definitely happy with the decision that we made. At the time we weren’t quite sure what would happen long-term, but it really seemed like—and most likely is—the one opportunity for us to be able to reproduce using my eggs. That’s not the only way that we will have a family most likely, but I’m glad to have saved the opportunity so that we can make a decision now when we’re not so—distracted isn’t the right word—but with so much other stuff going on, now we can make a decision where we’re focusing on family choices and not on desperation and cancer and everything.