Making your fertility preservation decision before starting cancer treatment.
This page aims to help you decide if you want to:
• Have fertility preservation treatment before starting cancer treatment, or
• Start cancer treatment without having fertility preservation treatment.
Some women know for certain whether or not they want to pursue fertility preservation. Other women find making this decision more difficult. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decision. The decision depends on what is most important to you at this time. It depends on the plans you have for your life, after your cancer treatment.
Deciding to have, or not have, fertility preservation before cancer treatment
When deciding to have, or not have, fertility preservation before cancer treatment, you may want to read each of the five statements below and think about them according to what matters most to you. For example:
- Not important
- Slightly important
- Quite important
- Very important.
You may find it helpful to complete this with your cancer care team and fertility care team, partner, family and friends.
Note: If you would like to write down your responses on a printed version you can download this as a PDF here. For a printed version of the full Cancer, Fertility and Me patient decision aid you can also download this here.
Deciding which fertility preservation option is best for me
The fertility preservation options are:
- No fertility preservation
- Freezing
- Ovarian suppression
- Cancer-specific fertility sparing surgery
You can find out more about these options here. This summary table compares the different fertility preservation options.
Below is a list of the different fertility preservation options. Think about your response for each option.
Completing this task may help you think about which fertility preservation option best suits you and your lifestyle at this time. It might be helpful to talk about your choices with your cancer care team and fertility care team, partner, family and friends.
How likely are you to consider each of these fertility preservation treatment options?
Note: If you would like to write down your responses on a printed version you can download this as a PDF here. For a printed version of the full Cancer, Fertility and Me patient decision aid you can also download this here.
