Santoecha: Is pregnancy still for me?

"When I was 26, the doctor said to me, 'Mrs. Rangai, you have breast cancer.' The first thing I exclaimed, 'But I still have a desire to have children.' I hardly knew anything about cancer and its treatments, but I did know that there was a chance I would become infertile. After I expressed my desire to have children, the hospital made appointments for me at the fertility clinic. I was lucky that egg freezing was fully covered by my health insurance as early as 2013.

For three weeks I injected myself with hormones. After that, eight eggs were harvested. I specifically chose to freeze only eggs and not embryos. Should my relationship end, I still had the option of choosing someone else as the father of my children. Imagine not being able to like or see someone after a relationship breakup but that person is the father of your children.... Along with the eggs, I also put my desire for children in the freezer. Those were worries for later. First I had to beat the cancer."

Ailments and risk of relapse

"By now we are eight years down the road. Now I don't know if I will ever again proclaim my desire to have children. This is because I have been left with many ailments from the treatments, some of which I also don't know if they are permanent. For example, it may be that after the 10 years of anti-hormone therapy, some of these ailments will go away. For example, my fingers sometimes contract so that I get so-called claws and I can't use my hands. I will be bothered by the nerve damage in my fingers and the lymphedema* in my arm for the rest of my life. I find it a grim thought that I bring a child into the world, but may not be able to take care of it and would be dependent on my environment to do so. Nor can I afford to hire an au pair.

Even worse it seems to me to bring a child into the world who may have to grow up without a mother. Because what does not work in my favor is that my tumor was 90% estrogen sensitive and I still had active cancer cells in my body after the chemotherapy. Of course, I also received radiation and had to take anti-hormone therapy for a total of 10 years. But there is always a small chance that the cancer will return. A pregnancy increases this chance and I don't know if I am mentally and physically able to go through the cancer treatments again. Because I really experienced that as hell. Therefore, if I am honest, all of this makes me a little afraid of getting pregnant. I may never have been pregnant, but I can imagine that pregnancy can also be a drain on the body. And hasn't my body already had enough to endure in recent years?"

Biological clock

"Rationally, therefore, it is not wise for me to start having children. But my body thinks otherwise. Since I passed my thirties, it's as if my uterus has been screaming at me to make a child. It is, I think, my primal instinct telling me to reproduce. Perhaps so that something of me will be left behind, should I ever die. To make sure that something of me does remain on earth, I have begun to write a lot. Because as the saying goes, he who writes, stays. As I get older, it seems to dawn on me more and more that having a child is not on my horizon. After all, my biological clock is ticking too.

A desire to have children is one of the many things that cancer has taken from me. Because I think, had I not gotten cancer, I would have had children. Or at least, the choice to have children would have been completely in my hands. Now I have to weigh incredibly many things against each other and I don't know what the future will hold for me. But as they say, reason comes with age. I realize now that if you feel the need to mother or foster, you don't have to have a child of your own to do so. For example, there are still so many children waiting to be placed in foster care or adopted."

Written by Santukha Rangai

*: Lymphedema is the accumulation of lymph fluid in the tissues that can cause swelling in various parts of the body. This condition can be congenital or acquired. In the latter category, the lymphatic system may be affected by surgery, cancer treatment, trauma or infection. Source Article fromhttps://www.uzleuven.be/nl/lymfoedeem