Breast cancer diagnosis is overwhelming for you and your family. It seems like everything in life is on pause, and your focus is on your own health and getting better, as it should be. But if you want children, the very treatment that saves you could potentially render you infertile.
Infertility post-cancer treatment is a risk. Many of the therapies used to treat breast cancer impair or cause permanent damage to your ovaries and disrupt ovarian function. The medicines used in breast cancer treatment can cause premature menopause, effectively shutting the door on your fertility. That’s where egg freezing comes in.
Many women opt for freezing their eggs before beginning treatment for breast cancer. Egg freezing is a safe way for cancer patients to preserve their fertility, and studies support that. The National Cancer Institute confirms that egg freezing, also known as cryopreservation, as well as pregnancy after treatment, has no negative impact on prognosis or survival rates.
How Egg Freezing Works for Breast Cancer Patients
Before you decide to freeze your eggs, consult with your doctor. Your cancer care team and your fertility specialist can coordinate a schedule that supports your decision to preserve your fertility. The process itself takes about two to four weeks.
After your consultation, you and your doctors can determine when your egg freezing process begins. Your fertility specialist assesses your ovarian reserve to confirm your egg count. After that, you’ll take medication, usually by injection, to stimulate your ovaries for 10-14 days. The medication helps your ovaries produce multiple eggs for egg retrieval.
Next, your fertility team schedules regular blood tests and ultrasounds to monitor egg development. Once your doctor determines the eggs are ready, your doctor orders a special hormone shot called human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, that triggers ovulation.
36 hours after your hCG shot, your doctor performs the egg retrieval. This is a fairly quick outpatient procedure performed while you are under mild sedation. Your fertility specialist inserts a needle, guided by ultrasound, through the vagina and into your ovaries. The needle uses gentle suction to draw out the mature eggs from the follicles.
Once your doctor collects all of the mature eggs, the doctor sends your eggs to the lab, where a technician assesses their viability. Next, the lab freezes your eggs using a process known as vitrification. This process rapidly freezes the eggs using liquid nitrogen. Then the lab stores the frozen eggs in a cryopreservation tank until you need them. Preservation of your eggs using this method has a high success rate.
After the procedure, you’ll go home and rest. Expect to experience some mild cramping along with bloating and fatigue. You’ll take it easy for a few days to avoid any complications, and your doctor may prescribe antibiotics to avoid infection.
When You’re Ready to Grow Your Family
Down the road, after your breast cancer treatment, once your oncologist gives you a thumbs-up, and when you think the time is right, you’ll pursue IVF using your frozen eggs. Your doctor thaws the eggs and fertilizes them with your partner’s sperm (or donor sperm), typically using ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection). Your doctor (or an embryologist) injects one sperm into one egg for fertilization. This method is highly effective.
Your resulting embryos undergo careful monitoring in the lab. After about five days, you may opt for preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). This ensures the embryos are healthy and don’t suffer from any potential birth defects or genetic abnormalities, which may result in loss of pregnancy.
Before implantation into your uterus, your doctor may prescribe a hormonal support medication that prepares your uterine lining so it’s very receptive to the embryo and ready to support your pregnancy. If you aren’t able to carry a pregnancy, you may opt for a gestational carrier. In that case, your doctor transfers your embryo to your gestational carrier.
Some Important Facts to Note
Obviously, treatment for breast cancer is an all-consuming journey. Your focus is on getting and staying well. But don’t let that journey minimize your fertility preservation process. You’re sure to have questions regarding timelines and success rates, for example.
It’s important to remain positive on both fronts: breast cancer recovery and your future fertility. To that end, please note that, depending on your age and overall reproductive health before cancer treatment, egg retrieval is highly successful. In many cases, your doctor retrieves up to 15 eggs. Your eggs may remain safely in cryopreservation for years without deteriorating or losing their viability, and, because of the freezing process, the thawing process results in fewer lost eggs.
Peace of Mind
If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and you’re concerned about your fertility, please reach out to LA IVF today. Our compassionate and caring team is eager to answer any questions you may have and help ease your mind as you begin your journey.
