breast cancer<\/a> last year at 29 after discovering a 2.5cm lump while showering.<\/p>\n\u201cIt turned out to be a late stage one, early stage two cancer, which thankfully hadn\u2019t spread,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big shock and disruption to everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once her treatment plan was confirmed \u2013 six months of chemotherapy, then surgery \u2013 Petersen was referred to a fertility preservation team to discuss her options.<\/p>\n
Public funding is available for the retrieval, freezing and storage of eggs for up to 10 years for women undergoing chemotherapy or radiation who are under 40, have a BMI under 32, and haven\u2019t had children.<\/p>\n
Petersen and her partner decided against it, as she would have had to undergo a retrieval before starting her cancer treatment, delaying it by a month or more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a long process, but in the context of just having received a cancer diagnosis with some urgency, your whole timeline for your life changes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were undecided about having children anyway, which played a really big part [in the decision] for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because Petersen also has PMOS and endometriosis, there was \u201cno guarantee\u201d egg freezing would protect her future fertility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we do try to get pregnant in the future and we have issues, I don\u2019t think I will regret my decision. For me and my partner, the priority was my life and my health … ultimately, it\u2019s a price that we were willing to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
After chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy, she\u2019s now on oral chemotherapy targeting remaining active cancer cells, hoping to be finished with treatment by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
While she\u2019s battled debilitating side effects from pain and fatigue to hair loss, her outlook is \u201cpretty good\u201d as her cancer was caught early.<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, she and her partner will take \u201cwhatever happens as it comes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we do end up having kids, awesome. If we don\u2019t, that\u2019s cool too. And if we decide that we want to have kids but we\u2019re not able to have biological children, we\u2019ll look at our options there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost to freeze your eggs in NZ<\/p>\n
The initial egg freezing cycle can cost between $12,000-$14,000, including consults, medications and the first six to 12 months of storage, after which annual fees apply.<\/p>\n
The cost of thawing the eggs, creating embryos with donor or partner sperm, and implanting the embryo is another $10,000 or so, Gupta says. This cost applies even if you qualified for funding for the retrieval and storage for medical reasons.<\/p>\n
She adds it\u2019s important people realise the procedure isn\u2019t a guarantee of conception. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe freezer doesn\u2019t stop the biological clock, it just preserves your eggs at the age you froze them. So the younger you are, the better and that\u2019s well documented, because as we age our egg quality declines with quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis\u2019 real-life stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patients must weigh up whether it\u2019s worth delaying often life-saving treatment to preserve their fertility. The process is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14134,4190,52596,259204,156,4688,2082,44412,5275,226,78,296,3523,111,139,69,39173,39157,223,61,6923,80],"class_list":["post-624843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-decision","tag-demand","tag-egg","tag-elective","tag-entertainment","tag-fertility","tag-for","tag-freezing","tag-goes","tag-growing","tag-in","tag-into","tag-medical","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-preserve","tag-reasons","tag-the","tag-to","tag-what","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}