Alex Powell followed his stepmother’s advice of freezing his sperm at 15 years old after being diagnosed with a cancer. He survived to the disease and 23 years later became a father.
Alex Powell grew up in Australia with his stepmother Patricia. When he turned 15 years old he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and told to start chemotherapy immediately. No side effects related to this treatment were mentioned by doctors so Patricia started doing research about the consequences of the oncological treatments on fertility. For this reason, Patricia advised Alex to freeze his sperm to preserve his fertility which was not very common in the 1990s since a 15-year-old boy does not usually consider being a future father.
Alex survived the cancer, continued with his life, met his wife and decided to have a family together. 23 years later after freezing his sperm and spending one year dealing with fertility treatment, his son Xavier was born on 17 June 2015. He became the oldest baby in the world who was conceived through In Vitro Fertilization.
Stories like Alex’s remind us of the importance of raising awareness among young people diagnosed with cancer about the effects of chemotherapy on fertility. In the same was as young men can postpone their paternity by freezing their sperm, women who are going to undergo oncological treatments can preserve their motherhood with guarantees thanks to egg vitrification. This technique allows oncological patient to use their healthy genetic material once they overcome the disease. Additionally, using this fast-freezing technique, the pregnancy rate is similar to that obtained with fresh eggs.
At Eva Clinics, we are aware of the irreversible damages that radiotherapy or chemotherapy treatments can produce in female and male fertility. For this reason, we offer the Free Fertility Preservation Plan for oncological patients. It is a suitable plan for anyone who is going to be subjected to cancer treatments and want to preserve their fertility with the guarantee of having children in the future.
The oncological patients interested in the Free Fertility Preservation Plan will be able to undergo the egg vitrification or sperm preservation procedure at our clinic in Madrid Velazquez.
