Infertility can be a devastating side effect of breast cancer treatment in young women because of the sensitivity of a woman’s eggs to anti-cancer drugs. The effect of treatment on fertility depends on your type of cancer, where it is, your age, gender, the type of cancer treatment you undergo and your response to treatment. Some breast cancer therapies may cause women to stop menstruating, either temporarily or permanently, and women who continue to have normal menstrual cycles may go through menopause earlier or may be less fertile following chemotherapy. In addition, while standard hormone-based cancer therapies do not typically cause permanent infertility, they often require years of treatment during which women are advised not to become pregnant.
This is not to say that there aren’t women who do go on to have a healthy pregnancy after breast cancer. There certainly are – and I urge you to take hope in…
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