Daneisha Sanders
Mr.Stovall
PSY56
22 October 2014
Chemotherapy:
The Affects Chemotherapy has on Fertility in Women Even though there are about ten percent of women (6.1 million) in the United States who are unable to produce children because of chemotherapy damaging their ovaries and fertilizing their eggs, there are an insufficient number of women who are able to freeze their eggs to save them for good use after chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is very hard to cope with as a woman. The cancer treatments are extremely venomous which sometimes lead to infertility or menopause. Many drugs can cause permanent infertility depending on the doses the woman receives. Alkylating drugs and nitrosoureas drugs such as: Clycophosphamide, ifosfamide, melaphalan, busulfan, procarbazine, chlorambucil, carmustine, and lomustine are all drugs that are most likely to cause infertility (CITE) Chemotherapy drugs do not intentionally harm women’s fertility because of the drugs women take to kill the cancer cells; it sometimes affects the hormones, cells, and other organs. Age makes a difference when going through chemotherapy. All women go through menopause. Women who have been treated before the age of thirty-five are more likely to be able to have children after treatment. Women who are less than thirty-five years of age are more likely to have children because they have fewer eggs in reserve. Many young women who receive chemo before puberty can receive early menopause. It is called premature menopause when women before the age of fifty-one stops receiving their period. Having early menopause is not a good thing. Early menopause causes the ovaries to stop working, which is not good because women need their ovaries in order for their hormones estrogen and progesterone to be made. Although some women period comes back after treatment, that does not mean they are able to have babies because the treatment has already destroyed most of their eggs during the process (CITE). Pregnancy during chemo is very rare. Some women are able to start chemo after their baby is born, but it all depends on the disease, the type of cancer you have, and the treatments that will be needed(CITE) Although the chemo drugs cannot pass through women breast, they are recommended not to breastfeed(CITE) Being