Laura's primary concerns when first diagnosed with breast cancer

When I was first diagnosed, my primary concern was “had my cancer metastasized anywhere else throughout my body?” And being that I was single and didn’t have children, children were the first and foremost thought, I’ve got to be honest, in my mind. I wanted to know whether the cancer had attacked any other organs, I wanted to know if it attacked any of my bones, and when I found out my cancer had not metastasized, you kind of breathe a sigh of relief, and again, when you talk to your doctors and they reassure you that life will go on after cancer and after treatment, you feel a whole lot better.

When I was initially diagnosed, I didn’t have much time to really think about fertility preservation. The reason being is that you go from talking to your doctor, talking to your oncologist, and talking to your plastic surgeon, all of that took less than 10 days. That was barely enough time for me to tell my family and friends what was going on, more or less try to find out anything about fertility preservation. And again, I didn’t find much on the internet and going to the library I read books and books on breast cancer and the chemotherapy and the side effects from the chemotherapy I would be taking but I didn’t see anything on fertility.

I think that one question that I would have asked my oncologist is “Am I allowed to have children after chemotherapy? What are the effects of chemotherapy on my ovaries? Was it going to shut them down completely? Was I going to be in menopause forever? Did I need to harvest eggs? You know, I really wanted to get my head wrapped around the idea of maybe never having children or the possibility of harvesting my eggs or getting in vitro fertilization after chemotherapy. But I wanted to know what the effects were since I am a cancer patient, at that time, subsequently now a cancer survivor, what effects does that have on my fertility and was harvesting my eggs my only option?