Episode 84: Oncofertility: Donor Eggs, Surrogacy, and Embracing a New Plan

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and when you hear the word cancer, your mind doesn’t automatically go to fertility preservation. But when 30-year-old Tricia Russo learned she would have to go through chemotherapy, radiation, a mastectomy, reconstruction, and begin taking medications that could prompt menopause for her breast cancer diagnosis, her team quickly floated the idea of freezing embryos.

It’s been nine years since Tricia’s breast cancer diagnosis, and her world looks a lot different. Not only is she a breast cancer survivor, she has endured a brain cancer diagnosis and surgery, became a mother through a surrogate and using donor eggs, and detailed her experience through a documentary film.

In today’s episode, we hear from Tricia on her experience and get further insight from her fertility doctor, Dr. Natalie Cekleniak of IRMS.

Guest: Tricia Russo, Filmmaker

Expert: Dr. Natalie Cekleniak, Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science (IRMS)

Host: Dan Bulger

You can watch ‘Love Always, Mom’, on Amazon Prime here.

For more episodes of This is Infertility on Oncofertility:

• Episode 19: Oncofertility: Making Fertility Preservation a Priority
• Episode 20: Oncofertility: Fighting for Fertility Preservation Coverage
• Episode 21: Oncofertility: The Hope Fertility Preservation Can Bring
• Episode 22: Oncofertility: Helping Patients Navigate Between Oncology and Fertility
• Episode 54: Oncofertility: Having a Fertility Benefit that Covers Fertility Preservation

Progyny is hosting a free webinar, Fertility Preservation for Cancer Patients: Focusing on Survival and Your Life After Cancer, with experts from the oncofertility industry (many of which are previous podcast guests!). You can find more information about it here.

For more information visit Progyny’s Podcast page and Progyny’s Education page for more resources.

Be sure to follow us on Instagram, @ThisisInfertilityPodcast and use the #ThisisInfertility.

Have a question, comment, or want to share your story? Email us at thisisinfertility@progyny.com.

Here are some highlights from this episode:

A Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Oncofertility
5:06 – 13:17

Tricia Russo: So, I just started to feel a pain in my breast – I felt a little lump. And I did go to the doctor to have it checked out. And they said that it was from my birth control pill. It was probably just a shift from the birth control. I had got a second opinion from my gynecologist who said the exact same thing. And then a few months later, it is still hurting. It always bugged me even to sleep, I would like roll and it would kind of hurt then I started to feel a pain in the armpit. And so, I went back into the doctor and I will never forget, I told them, I said, remember that lump? Well, it feels bigger, and I have a feeling of pain in my armpit. And he turned just like white as a ghost. And immediately I went in to get a mammogram and an ultrasound to see what’s actually there. After the ultrasound, I scheduled a biopsy, maybe two days later, and the biopsy results came back that it was positive. And I did have breast cancer. I remember my husband was standing there when I got that phone call. I just remember looking at him and he just kind of crumbled. He looked like somebody had just punched him in the stomach. And that’s really what it was. For us. It was a huge gut punch getting that diagnosis.

Dr. Natalie Cekleniak: One of the subsets of care that we give is planning future fertility for cancer survivors, which is basically what oncofertility is talking about, let’s make sure we can do complete planning for your medical care as you complete the staging and the diagnosis of your disease and talk about treatment for that particular cancer. What are the other things that we can do now to make sure that when you’re cured and doing well, you can pick up and resume your life as you have always planned it. So, one of the things that we do is talk to people about treatment options, including freezing embryos or freezing eggs prior to them embarking on cancer treatment.

Tricia Russo: It was very helpful to have a plan like a fertility plan while I started the cancer treatment plan, because I felt like I still have the rest of my life ahead of me. And I still had this this momentous, you know, life milestone that I could actually look forward to.

Brain Surgery and Plan C
14:43 – 16:55

Dan Bulger: This was now stage four cancer and the focus once again had to be on survival.

Tricia Russo: After they found something on one of the three-month scans in my brain, we decided to not take the risks of doing IVF myself. I felt very lost at that point. But then I found a therapy department at Sloan Kettering and was matched with a nurse practitioner who enlightened me on all the different paths to having a family.

Dr. Natalie Cekleniak: As the persistent, incredible, resilient person that she is, she ultimately came back to me to say, Okay, I know that I’ve missed the window of using my own eggs. But I’m doing really well. And we are interested in building our family. And we’d like to talk about using an egg donor and a carrier. And that’s what we did.

Love Always, Mom
17:37 – 26:39

Tricia Russo: You know, I felt so alone during that period of time. But we don’t talk about these things. You know, we don’t talk about our inner struggles and the struggles that we’re mostly experiencing, you know, at night when we turn off the light. And finally, it all rushes in and it just breaks you down. I know the technology to have a child would change and will change over time. So, making a film about the how to didn’t feel like something that would last through time. But making a film that tackles more of the emotions and journey and the ups and downs of having a child, that’s never going to go away.

It felt very liberating to get a lot of that off my chest, even if it was to a camera that couldn’t speak back to me.

And a big thing in the filming and why I think the film and the story resonates with people is that really juxtaposing life and death, which is really the line that we’re all walking in life every single day, whether or not we know it., We’re mortal, you know. And life and death go hand in hand. And so, you know, seeing him born is really like all this hope in one coming out in the world for me, and balancing out all the death and the thinking of death and all of that stuff that we had to endure.