'It gives you hope': the fight to save the fertility of children with cancer

Young cancer patients face uncertainty, aggressive treatment – and a risk to their future fertility. Can a cutting-edge procedure offer a solution?

It started with a cough. Polly Melville was 14 years old, an athletic schoolgirl living just outside Tain in the Scottish Highlands. She had always felt fit and healthy, but was now struggling to fight off what seemed like a chest infection. She lost weight. Her lymph glands were terribly swollen. After months of tests, she was given a devastating diagnosis: she had Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer.

For four-year-old James, it began in April last year, with a headache. Within a month, the pain was so bad that he was punching his head to make it go away. His GP thought it might be childhood migraines. Then scans revealed a large brain tumour at the back of his skull. A neurosurgeon explained to James that there was a black ball in his head, and they were going to take it out. “So I won’t have a sore head any more?” his mother, Lynne, recalls him asking. “Oh yes, high five!”

Now, we expect to cure 90% of children with leukaemia. That’s happened in our lifetime

His team could take a strip of her ovary and put it in a freezer, and in 10 or 20 years, they could stitch it back

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2rLszWt