Starting & Building Families After Transplant

#facingtheissues, by Elizabeth Saylor
Many young adults will go through a bone marrow or stem cell transplant in as part of their cancer treatment. BMT/SCTs are intense medical processes that offer lives saving options for young adults but can greatly compromise fertility.
I have been privileged to serve many young adults before and after transplant. One couple, Phil and Jes Koubik are kind enough to share their thoughts on the journey to build their family and to welcome their son Nicholas into the world.
“…I would tell anyone going through cancer and facing many of the same decisions that things may not go exactly as you planned or thought that they would occur…but sometimes that’s when real blessings truly happen and you find out just how amazing life truly is.”
Being a young adult and going through cancer has been one of the most difficult experiences my wife or I have ever had to face.
You [are forced to] deal with…fertility issues, from all the treatments including chemotherapy, radiation, and even getting a stem-cell transplant.
Now the doctors told us that I’d most likely be infertile from everything I went through and, while there’s a small chance that my fertility might return, I’ll likely be incapable of having biological children for the rest of my life.
So a couple of years ago, I went through testing and found out that I am incapable of having my own biological children.
Then towards the beginning of December 2013, my wife and I decided we wanted to explore options for having a child by other means as we did not want to wait hoping that my fertility might come back and then find out that we waited too long that my wife eventually lost her ability to have children.
After talking about the various options, my wife and I decided that we would use donor sperm and IVF to fertilize my wife’s eggs.
So we officially started our journey towards parenthood Christmas Eve 2013 by having our first appointment with the fertility center Shady Grove.
We acquired our donor sample and proceeded through one round of IUI which did not work. We had one vial of our donor sample left and thus made the decision to go straight to IVF.
Well it turned out to be the right decision as my wife got pregnant on the first try in April 2014.
Finally, our dreams of becoming parents was finally coming to fruition.
I must admit that since we used donor sperm, I did have some concerns about how I’d feel going through this.
However, I must say that the concerns started to disappear fairly quickly and by the last few months of our pregnancy, every single concern I ever had completely disappeared and even felt strange to me as though those concerns were from another person entirely and not myself.
This was going to be my son, biologically or not and nothing was going to change that.
I’ve learned that family and especially parenthood isn’t just a matter of biological relationship but whether there’s love and the willingness to be there for the child and make every attempt to give them the best life possible.
I’ve heard the quote about it taking more than biology to be a parent. It takes someone willing to be there day in and day out striving to give their child the best life possible.
Knowing this, it never became more real then the day my son was born which was December 23, 2014.
There are no words or expressions which can do accurate justice to the pride, happiness, and elation I felt that day my son was born. That day instantly became my favorite day and experience EVER making the day I married my wife fall into second place.
So while this journey has been a long and arduous one, it has been well worth the wait.
While my son Nicholas shares no biological factors or similarities with myself, he is my son nonetheless.  There is no one who can take that away from me and now I’m living the dream of being a parent.
It may not have been in the way I always thought it’d happen growing up and certainly didn’t plan on cancer entering my life and making changes to how I thought my life would go.
However, I wouldn’t change a thing as having gone through everything we’ve been through and struggling to achieve something many take for granted, has made my wife and I so incredibly thankful and appreciative for everything God has given us.
We’ve realized the incredible gift that becoming parents to a child truly is and neither of us take our son nor our experiences for granted.
So I think my wife and I would tell anyone going through cancer and facing many of the same decisions that things may not go exactly as you planned or thought that they would occur….. But sometimes that’s when real blessings truly happen and you find out just how amazing life truly is.
Never give in and never give up!!!
Sincerely, 
Phil

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2019-07-25T13:24:42-04:00
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