Sunday, August 31, 2008

Almost unimaginable

When I was first diagnosed, my oncologist talked seriously with Noah and me about whether we wanted to have children. Chemo often puts women around my age--late 30s and up--into early menopause. Sometimes it's temporary, just during treatment (as it turned out in my case); other times, it just keeps going after treatment.

We were advised to consider carefully whether we wanted to pursue egg harvesting or in vitro before I started chemo. It took about 2 seconds to decide that no, if the dice rolled that way, we were perfectly willing to adopt one of the many children out there needing a family and a better life; let's get going and cure me now, thank you.

As easy as that decision was for me, I'm sure it's quite tough for many women. And it seems unimaginably agonizing to think of learning you have breast cancer while you're already pregnant. The NY Times' latest thought-provoking breast cancer article is a long piece about the current state of treatment. It's really amazing--it appears that pregnant mothers can receive chemo through most of pregnancy without apparent harm to the developing child. Nonetheless, the depiction of new mothers--having just given birth, dealing with a newborn, and now going through more rounds of chemo--just makes me shudder. It is hard to go through cancer treatment. I stand and salute the women who do it with that much more at stake, and that much more to make it tough!

1 comment:

Ryan Armbrust said...

I didn't want to send this to you via your comment section, but I could not find your contact info.

Love your blog.
I was diagnosed with Stage IV Hodgkin's back in December of 2006 and have just finished 10 months of chemo. I took time off from my day job to get through this whole "Cancer" thing. In my spare time, I created an online T-Shirt and Swag shop called http://www.funnycancershirts.com.

They are selling really well, but any exposure I can get would help. Can you please add my banner to your great website? Link info can be found in the lower left corner of the website.
I was sick and tired of looking for "Cancer" t shirts and only finding "Feel Good" stuff. My shirts are for the young hipster cancer set. Please give them a look. http://www.funnycancershirts.com

For more of my story, visit my fancy cancer blog. http://igotthecancer.blogspot.com


Thanks for your consideration,
Ryan Armbrust