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Keri describes how her family's history of cancer affected the fertility decisions she made.
Keri:
My mother’s mother, so my grandmother, had died of colon cancer, and my mother had breast cancer and she was treated and she is cancer-free now. But my fear was going to, taking fertility drugs and what the long-term effects would be, and if it did increase my risk for developing breast cancer where I already have this predisposition or this increased risk from my mother.
So when talking with the fertility specialist, at the time, he told me that it didn’t increase my risk at all. I didn’t really feel comfortable with that answer. I did some research. There is no research out there that says that there is a direct correlation; however, the studies that I found were short-term studies. What our biggest concern was, was realizing 10 or 20 years from now after I did the drugs to say, "Oh yes, there is a correlation between taking hormone replacement or fertility drugs and breast cancer." So that was our, my biggest concern.
I didn’t want to change anything or potentiate anything that would increase my risk of developing breast cancer because that is something that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. If it happened naturally because of my risk later on in life, that is something that I could deal with, but if somebody had told me that there was a correlation, I would feel really bad that I had these children and now look what I did. So, that was my concern and that’s how I was looking at it at that time.
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