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lucky that my breast surgeon, Dr
Kylie Snook, was open with me from
the start and was well schooled in all
options available to me. She was the
one who made me the appointment –
she was like my case manager.
‘Straight after my first surgery she
told me I would need to do a round
of IVF as an ‘insurance policy’ as
chemotherapy was the only treatment
for my type of cancer and she made
me an appointment to see the IVF
doctor. And then of course, my IVF
doctor recommended I take Zoladex
during chemotherapy, which turned
my ovaries off through the duration of
the treatment and protected my eggs.
‘Even though Travers and I were
in a long-term relationship, having
children was way down the list of
priorities for both of us at the time.
We had just moved to Singapore
for his work and I was about to
start a two-year master’s program.
The doctor recommended creating
and freezing embryos as there was
a higher success rate when it came
to implanting them. Obviously, this
was not my area of expertise, nor my
partner’s, so we basically went with
what the doctor recommended.
‘And so, I had a lumpectomy
followed by one round of IVF, which
took about two weeks. The following
week I started chemo. The most
painful part was having to deal with
the fact that suddenly I was staring
down the barrel of a future I’d had no
part in writing.
‘In terms of the medical side,
I basically became a human pin
cushion. There were daily injections
for two weeks to stimulate my
ovaries, along with blood tests and
ultrasounds every couple of days to
track my progress. This was followed