Aplastic Anemia

[ayleen]

My English is don't good, I'm sorry for this. I try to work with a Little School-English and thanks to sides like translator and with this forum come up clearly.

I am 23 years old. I have the heavy Aplastic anemia and my Doc. want to give me a marrow. I would know with pleasure whether, or better said how many have still become pregnant after the "low" measured chemotherapy and radiotherapy?



I would like to know:

how many are after the chemotherapy as well as after the radiotherapy still the possibility had to become pregnant.

Or how many of you have still become pregnant?

Always there it is a "low" dose. My doctor says the chances I has are good, because I am Jung.



So he knows from threeteen people two on natural away have become pregnant. It is quite a little. In addition one must say, most were older patients as well as Patiente already had childrens and wanted no other children.

[squirrellypoo]

Originally Posted by ayleen

my Doc. want to give me a marrow.

Do you mean a bone marrow transplant? Or a bone marrow biopsy? or ATG?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to point out any faults in your English, but we'll need to understand what your treatment will be in order to assess what your chances might be... Can you maybe describe the process so we can figure out what the English words for it would be?

[ayleen]

I have the ATG therapy already behind myself before 3-4 month.
They have supposed that this may my marrow in addition stimulates again by itself to work. But has not functioned.

Now they have found a suitable donator with a Miss's match. They want to transplant me.

My biggest wish was always to be got it children. After the Chemo it can come maybee in addition I cannot become pregnant any more. Now I ask myself how many people the sufferings under it, could become pregnant.

I hope this was OK and you understand me

[Neil Cuadra]

The bad news: Chemotherapy and radiotherapy can prevent you from becoming pregnant later, if you don't plan ahead.

The good news: You can plan ahead. There are doctors who can help. But you should see this type of doctor now, before you have more treatment. You should get advice about which treatments are better or worse for future pregnancy and about what your choices are.

This medical field is called "oncofertility".

Here are website with information about oncofertility:

MyOncofertility, with a chart of female reproductive options

Fertile Hope

I hope you can find oncofertility information in your own language. What country are you in?

[squirrellypoo]

Hi Ayleen.

Yes, I understand now, thanks!

Neil is right, though, the chances of a natural conception after the chemo and radiation involved in a BMT are very low (maybe even zero?). When my doctors told me that I needed a transplant, they also asked if I ever wanted to have children, and then immediately started the process for me to go through IVF to freeze embryos. In the UK, if you do not already have children and your fertility is threatened like mine was, the first IVF cycle and freezing storage for 5 years are completely free. Since time was very important with my failing health, everyone moved very quickly and the entire process took about 5 weeks, from the first injection to the egg harvest at the end. Since this was done in conjunction with my donor search, my transplant was not delayed at all by the IVF stuff.

I'm really glad we had to option to freeze embryos, too, because now that I'm ~20 months post-transplant, my hormones are still very very wrong. As expected, I am in early menopause without the medication I'm taking, so I can't imagine I'd be able to conceive naturally anymore. And I even had a "mini transplant" with no radiation, too.

There's only about a 20% chance of a live birth for each frozen embryo (the chances are much, much lower for frozen eggs), but I feel that that's still much higher odds of having children than if we'd not done it. Only time will tell if we're lucky enough with our 7 "popsicle babies".

[JayVee718]

I can relate to your situation. I have received atg treatmet twice with no success. Also my doctors were not able to find any bone marrow matches for me. Right now they are in the process of finding a cord blood match. I was diagnosed 6 months ago but before that I used to go to the gym 5 days a week and was very healthy. Nobody knows how I got aplastic anemia