Having life-saving cancer treatment at the age of 21 would be hard enough for anyone. Erin Lavery was told she may never be able to have children too. She didn't get the chance for egg preservation before starting her treatment.
Now she faces a race against time - and an £8,000 bill - for post-cancer fertility treatment if she is to have a chance of a baby in years to come. Erin, from Cambuslang near Glasgow, says it's an immense decision for any young woman to have to make about their future. "It's me having kids or not.
It has to happen now," she says. More stories from Glasgow & West Scotland Erin, now age 23 and cancer-free, is campaigning for NHS egg preservation to be more readily available for those who have come through their treatment. She told BBC Radio Scotland: "I underwent six months of chemotherapy and a month of radiotherapy, it was really difficult.
"I spent so much time in hospital, something that was at the back of my mind all throughout my treatment was my fertility. "Unfortunately, after a very long diagnosis process, it was too late for me to preserve my eggs before I began treatment. "It meant I had to just go ahead and hope for the best on the fertility front." Cancer treatments often have side effects and for young women one of the most significant can be reduced fertility.
The main treatments - chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, hormonal therapy and targeted therapy - can affect fertility in different ways. In many situations the NHS may provide egg freezing and storage for free, but it can typically take up to three weeks. If cancer treatment needs to begin immediately there may not be enough time to complete this process.
It's the situation Erin found herself when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma in August 2024. She says: "I was unwell for a year-and-a-half and was consistently going to my GP for a year with symptoms that were adding up by the minute "Unfortunately, it took all that time to get the diagnosis. "It's a frustrating one, because if they were able to diagnose me when I first started going it would be such a different situation to what we are now in.
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