Cancer and fertility.

Hi there, myself and my husband have been looking forward to starting our fertility journey. Unfortunately, life has just kept getting in the way for us. My husband was diagnosed with a blood cancer called Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2013 when he was just 17 years old. He was told before he started chemotherapy that he would not be able to conceive children naturally. He has stored a sperm sample with GRGW Plymouth; a great fertility clinic.

Edward's cancer has relapsed persistently through the years and yet again he is enduring chemotherapy, making him very weak and sick and further diminishing our chances of becoming parents naturally. Our only way of having children of our own is through fertility treatments.

When we had got pregnant naturally, by a miracle, we sadly had an early miscarriage; most probably because of the many treatments he has had in the past 9 years. We have spoken to the team at CRGW and the NHS guidelines are very strict for fertility treatment. One of their rules is to be under the 30 BMI limit; anyone over this cannot have free fertility treatment on the NHS. The sad part of this is, that I have reached this goal before Edward's cancer relapsed and just as we were starting the fertility treatment we had to put it on hold when his cancer relapsed. This caused me to develop a binge eating disorder and gaining all the weight I lost back, plus more. I have been struggling for months to loose this weight again and get help for my eating disorder, but sadly as said by my doctor, there isn't a binge eating specialist in Cornwall.

Our only chance now is to pay for the fertility treatment ourselves. We don't have savings and we don't live on very much money. It has been our last and final option to kindly ask others to help contribute towards our IVF. The treatment that has been recommended to us is called ICSI, where a sperm is directly injected into the egg for better chances of embryos being created.

Please help us, we are extremely thankful for everyone supporting us.

Sending our love,

Edward and Emily.

xoxo