Fertility is something that isn’t talked about much when it comes to breast cancer.
Many women hope to have a child after completing treatment, but chemotherapy might damage the ovaries, which can sometimes cause immediate or delayed infertility.
“There’s a lot of information on breast cancer, but I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on women who don’t have children prior to that diagnosis,” said Sveta Desai.
Desai is one of those women. In October 2019, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer at the age of 36.
Her breast oncologist at Corewell Health’s Beaumont Hospital of Troy, Dr. Mohammed Chisti, said before treatment, he had to be frank about risks for women like Desai who haven’t started a family and want to.
“For instance, there will be chemotherapy that will have an impact on the ovaries and will have an impact on fertility,” said Chisti. “It’s not a promise that after treatment for breast cancer, that there could be good cells to form a good embryo.”
“What I said to Dr. Chisti early on is that ‘You take care of the cancer, that’s your job, but you have to protect my fertility, and I’m going to be an advocate to make sure I do the research, and I understand what my options are,’” Desai said.
Chisti said they do take preventative steps, but it can be difficult.
“When we have enough time to initiate our treatments, then we send them to fertility specialists,” Chisti said. “When you talk about testicular cancer, it’s much easier for men to save the sperm than with women. It’s cycle-based, and you have to have enough time for the specialists to retrieve eggs.”
It helped that in 2018, before Desai’s diagnosis, she froze five of her eggs.
Her treatment lasted about a year and a half, including six months of chemotherapy, bilateral mastectomy, radiation, and reconstruction. While going through treatment, she was prescribed medication that would help preserve her ovaries, but the journey after remission wasn’t easy.
“Those five eggs did not make a thaw, so I did lose all of those in December of 2022,” said Desai. “I did attempt another retrieval at the beginning of this year was not successful.”
She ended up going with a surrogate who is now 18 weeks along. Desai’s child is due in March 2024. She is looking at fostering and adopting in the future.
Her biggest advice for other women in similar situations is to be your own advocate and not give up because being a mother after beating cancer is possible.
“It will not look like maybe what you thought it was going to look like, but it is an option,” Desai said.
For women younger than 40 years old and not qualified to get mammogram screenings, Desai suggests you do self-breast exams and recognize when something doesn’t feel right with your body.
Click here for more information on the resources of Corewell Health’s Beaumont Hospital of Troy.