My husband’s Cancer

Two years ago, on my birthday, my husband was in hospital because he had a growth in his nose. He had been ill with what gp’s thought was sinusitis for months, and then he started coughing up blood. A week later he was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma. I remember that after hearing the doctor’s words, I looked at my husband and just felt like the whole room was on fire, but that we were together and somehow we wouldn’t get burned.

He spent months in hospital in London receiving chemo. It was very difficult to be apart for such long periods of time, never knowing for sure that he was going to be okay. How did I cope? I was on a high the whole time, manically sorting things through, focussed on coping, cleaning up sick and convincing everyone that God wouldn’t let my husband die. I look back on that time and see the whirlwind I became.

Just before the chemo started, I started asking questions about how the chemo would affect his sperm count. I started doing a bit of research online about the type of chemo my husband was receiving. Burkitt’s Lymphoma is a very fast developing type of cancer that effects the lymph nodes (that are all over the body) and so the chemo they gave my husband really had to blast it out of the water.

So in the end he had some sperm frozen. The nhs freeze your sperm for a year for free and then afterwards they start charging you, I think, about £100 a year.

Fast forward through recovery, 6 months and then another 6 months and then another 6 months. My husband has had a few sperm tests and they have come back quite positive. The chemo doesn’t seem to have affected his sperm count. However, he does have a slightly lower sperm count than usual. This could be hereditary the doctors say, and that seems to be most likely because his dad also has a lower sperm count and it took them a good few years to conceive.

We haven’t arranged that the nhs continue to store the sperm. We are just going to try for a baby and see how we get on. We don’t know how long it will take to conceive, months, years etc. Something that worries me is that if we can’t conceive, adoption seems impossible, what with my mental health issues. But I have a feeling that we will get pregnant.