My advice to partners of people with cancer and couples going through infertility

My advice to people who are in the same situation that I was in would be to remember that your wife or your significant other is going through a very difficult time physically, but it’s also an extremely difficult time emotionally, and anything you can do to be a positive influence in their life at that time is going to be very helpful. Try to shield…shield as much as you can from any bad news that comes up and try to put your spin on it so that it becomes something that is…something you can deal with. And also be an advocate for yourself, that is huge in health care—I’m somebody who works in health care and we have a lot of connections to physicians where we actually work at the same hospital where we receive treatment. But that said, you still have to really push for yourself and you have to get some of your own information and make sure that your physician knows that you want to know all the options and you want to know everything and you want to be extremely involved with your care.

The wisdom and advice I would have through our experience and from my experience as a health care professional to couples that might be having some problems with infertility, especially after chemotherapy, is again don’t assume the worst, don’t assume that because you’ve had chemotherapy or that you had cancer that it’s just not going to happen. There are options out there, and there are also miracles that happen. I have a couple of colleagues that have thought, no way I’m having a baby, they adopted their first two children and all of a sudden they’re pregnant. So I think just trying to remain positive, don’t dwell on any bad news, and try to see what options there are moving forward, and accepting, you know, trying to build some acceptance as to what limitations there may be, but not assuming that there are complete limitations to everything.