I was only 32 when I found out that I had stage 2 invasive carcinoma – cancer in my right breast. It was then I began my life-altering journey of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and endocrine treatment. I signed my life away in a contract with the medical team before I began my treatment process, and somewhere there it said that I might never be able to have a child naturally. At that time in my life, staying alive was my priority. Everything else seemed unimportant. I did not want to die. Having only one breast, not being able to go out in the sun without proper protection, or even having a baby was not on our minds.
Before cancer, my husband and I never talked about planning for a baby. We knew we wanted children someday, but we never thought our ‘someday’ would have to be planned and decided by doctors.
My cancer treatment involved chemotherapy for six to eight months, radiotherapy for 15 cycles, and then endocrine treatment for 10 years. Chemotherapy would kill all good and bad cells, including any healthy or unhealthy eggs in my ovaries, making me unable to conceive naturally. Endocrine treatment would involve taking a tablet daily that would stop the production of oestrogen in my body. Most breast cancer is caused due to the excess production of oestrogen (the female hormone) in a person’s body. Therefore, by stopping the production of female hormones in my body, the chances of breast cancer relapse are slim. But this also meant I couldn’t get pregnant, and I would get menopausal symptoms. Thus, my medical plan involved taking medications for three years without a break. After this, I would stop taking the medication, wait for six months for the drugs to leave my body, then try to conceive. Once the baby was born, I would have to get back on my medications again. All this had to happen ASAP. Unlike others, we did not have the luxury of time to keep trying to conceive, putting us under immense pressure.
I was advised to freeze some eggs before I began my treatment so that in vitro fertilization (IVF) would be an option later on. Therefore, before my chemotherapy, I initiated the process of egg retrieval. After a few injections and a small surgery, we had 14-15 healthy eggs that were put in a freezer.
My body responded well to the treatment process, which means I had terrible side effects. Medically, if your body rejects chemotherapy drugs, it means they’re working! Although my treatment process lasted for about eight to nine months, it took me an additional 18 months to physically start feeling better. It took even longer to feel better mentally.
Three years later, when there was some stability and normalcy in my life, it was time to get to work.
As we all know by now, getting pregnant is not very easy. This is something you find out when you start trying. After examining me, the doctors told me that my ovaries were asleep and might never wake up. My husband and I were forced to have the conversation. Since there was no connection between having a baby and the risk of cancer relapse, I was assured that it was totally safe. My husband and I did our research and came up with five options:
- Natural conception
- IVF
- Surrogacy
- Adoption
- No child
We wanted a baby but we were ready to discuss the other options available to us, and we decided that those options were all equally good. There wasn’t a single moment where I felt like not being able to naturally conceive would make me less of a woman.
It took us almost eight months to a year of trying before we finally decided to choose the IVF option. At one of my consultations with the IVF doctor, we found out that I was already pregnant. It was naturally conceived, but unfortunately, it was an ectopic pregnancy. So at a routine checkup, I had to be rushed in for surgery to remove my right fallopian tube. A few months after recovering, we were at another consultation with the IVF team. Again, we discovered I was pregnant. Nine months later, our daughter was born.
People ask me if I feel blessed and complete. Blessed? I am eternally grateful for what I have in my life, and this includes my daughter. Complete? No. I love my baby with every fiber of my being, a feeling only a parent can understand, but that does not mean that my daughter completed me.
Our society still puts pressure on women to have babies. They say it is natural and the duty of every woman. But it is also natural to choose not to have babies, a decision that should be respected. Our duty as people is to be kind to others and the environment and to strive to be happy, healthy and truthful to ourselves. We need to practice being more sensitive to people’s choices around parenthood. People’s choices should be respected whether they choose to have children naturally, whether they decide to adopt, or whether they opt not to have children at all.
Writer details:
Suvekchya Ghimire is an author, life coach, who has dedicated her life to raising awareness and speaking about early detection and survival during and after breast cancer.
