When you find yourself facing a cancer diagnosis, it can seem as though your entire world is shifting and changing quite rapidly. You go from thinking about general everyday issues to worrying about cancer treatments and your odds of remission and recovery. One of the concerns that you may have about dealing with and treating your cancer is the fact that you may want to one day have children. However, many cancer treatments like chemotherapy can leave patients unable to have children later on in life. Get to know some of the important facts regarding fertility and cancer treatments so that you can be sure that you are doing everything you can to still reach your goals of having children while also getting the cancer treatments that you need.

Consider Whether Having Biological Children Is Your Goal

One of the factors to consider when you are thinking about your future and how cancer treatments can affect that is whether or not your goals of having children one day means that you feel the need to have children that are biologically yours. In today's day and age, adopting children, using sperm or egg donors, and acting as foster parents to children without homes are all options available to people who wish to become parents.

As such, you need to think about whether or not having children that are biologically related to you is a priority. For some people, having their own children and passing on their characteristics and genes is important, and others would prefer to adopt, while still others have no specific preference. Such a choice has no right or wrong answer and is simply based on your personal desires and wishes.

Contact An Infertility Center If You Do Want Biological Children

If you do want biological children one day or think that you might, you do not want to leave anything to chance. As such, before you begin your cancer treatments, you will want to contact an infertility center or clinic to ensure that possibility.

For women, this will mean that during your next cycle, you will have your eggs harvested and then frozen for future use. The fertility clinic will help track your cycle and give you any hormone treatments you need in order to harvest the largest possible number of viable eggs. They will then test the eggs and store the ones that are viable in cold storage.

Men, on the other hand, have an easier process to go through in order to secure the possibility of having biological children one day. Men will simply go to the infertility center and provide sperm samples to have frozen and stored. Oftentimes, this will require numerous sample donations to be made, though the process is faster than it generally is for women. In the future, men and women will be able to use IVF procedures to conceive a biological child, once cancer treatments are complete and they are ready to be parents.

With this in mind, you can be sure that you are doing the right thing for you and your future while also getting the cancer treatments that you need to deal with your immediate health issues and concerns.