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What’s your women’s health ‘thing?’
2x Cancer Survivor, Egg Freezer, IVF-Mom, Lifelong Patient Advocate.
How has your women’s health ‘thing’ affected you throughout your life?
Cancer tried to steal my life – twice – and my fertility. I didn’t want to live if I couldn’t be a mother. I found a way to freeze my eggs, survive, and become a mother. My health “thing” changed everything – instantly and forever.
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What advice would you give to someone dealing with your same women’s health ‘thing?’
My advice to anyone dealing with a health “thing” is to try to distinguish between what’s short-term and temporary from what’s long-term and permanent. For example, when I had cancer, everyone was focused on immediate, temporary side effects – nausea, vomiting, hair loss. Instead, I was focused on the future – what would affect me forever (if I was lucky enough to survive!)? For me, the most important topic was motherhood, so I was focused on permanent side effects like infertility, and took steps to freeze my eggs before undergoing potentially sterilizing chemotherapy. Similarly, when I froze my eggs, everyone seemed to be focused on the few weeks that I was undergoing treatments – shots, retrievals, bloating, emotions. But the goal of egg freezing is to safely preserve your eggs for future use, which means the lab and storage matter – a lot. So it’s important to ask about storage and take steps to ensure you get the highest standard of care available for you – and your frozen eggs – at every step of the process. Don’t be afraid to question the status quo. Just because no one else has asked (yet!) doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t. By asking about these things and using the information I received to take action, I changed the entire trajectory of my life (and the entire field of medicine to benefit all of you too!).
Tell us how your women’s health ‘thing’ shaped your business, the business you’ve helped start, or your career trajectory.
After my own cancer and fertility journey, I founded a nonprofit organization called Fertile Hope that changed the standard of care of both cancer and fertility treatment and catalyzed a new field of medicine called oncofertility. Our movement also paved the way for egg freezing to become non-experimental and, ultimately, mainstream. All of this progress, however, created a new problem – more frozen eggs and embryos in storage than ever before! And that is why today I am the Chief Impact Officer at TMRW where we’re obsessed with upgrading antiquated frozen egg and embryo storage systems with modern tech-enabled solutions that help reduce the risks of errors, mix-ups and loss.
How has your women’s health ‘thing’ shaped your life?
Cancer put life into perspective at a very young age for me. My north stars are clear and I live every day in pursuit of them without compromise. I feared I’d never fall in love, become a mother or have an impact. As I approach my 20 year wedding anniversary, raise our four incredible children, and work hard on a portfolio of work that positively impacts the world, I am incredibly grateful for the health “things” that brought such purpose, clarity and focus to my life.