What if we choose to do nothing before treatment?

There are many valid reasons why you may decide to do nothing about your child’s fertility before he or she starts cancer treatment. Maybe the doctor wants your child to start treatment right away, and you just don’t have the time to do anything. And of course, you want your child to be healthy as soon as possible. There are many parents of cancer patients who decide to do nothing about their child’s fertility and focus first on their child’s treatment and recovery.

The truth is, not all cancer treatments are the same and each carries a different threat to fertility. In addition, fertility in children is very difficult to measure. There are no clear statistics available regarding the likelihood of fertility loss in each child if fertility preservation is not performed before cancer treatment.

Fertile Hope, an organization dedicated to providing reproductive information, support, and hope to cancer patients and survivors at risk of infertility, can provide a general idea about what the threat to your child’s fertility could be. Fertile Hope has developed a customized Risk Calculator to assess each patient’s individual level of fertility risk. The Risk Calculator takes into account gender, cancer type, and treatment regimen to determine the risk of infertility in the form of a percentage. This information may be helpful in deciding whether or not to pursue fertility-preservation options before your child begins cancer treatment.

After treatment, doctors can closely monitor hormone levels and determine whether girls have lost their menstrual period or if boys have developed azoospermia (no sperm production).