There are stories that, despite being hard, end in a happy ending, such as Alex Powel, who at 15 was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer for which he had to start receiving urgent chemotherapy.
At that age, a teenager rarely considers having a child, but on the advice of his father's wife, froze his sperm, survived cancer and 23 years later became a father. The child has become the waiting born baby preserved for longer.
A difficult matter to discuss between a woman and the son of her teenage husband, but Patricia, her stepmother, had known the case of a person with cancer and considered one of the adverse effects of treatment: infertility.
He did not hesitate to tell Alex who agreed to freeze his sperm, something that in the 90s was not usual. Fortunately, the cancer subsided, Alex recovered completely, continued his life and the time came when he met a woman, married and wanted to start a family.
After a year of fertility treatments, Alex and his wife little Xavier was welcomed into the world, born on June 17, 2015.
Stories like these fill us with hope, but they also highlight the importance of informing young patients diagnosed with cancer about their future fertility options. Similarly, health systems should consider financing the high costs of both conservation and fertility treatments.
