– Birthday cake, thirty-three candles to blow out. The last one was fading, I made a wish: I will have a baby. It has not come true. Three months later, the nightmare of menopause began – recalls Anka. Today, even a 50-year-old can avoid menopause. Scientists just figured out how.
– Seeing pregnant women blows me away. I hate them. I’m ashamed, but that’s how I feel. Since I was through the menopause. Prematurely in your thirties. Fate deceived me – says Anka, 43-year-old today. – My mother also had it prematurely, just at the age of 43, so I was afraid that it might be my part, I did not foresee that it would catch me until seventeen years before I was fifty – she recalls. Today she could outsmart destiny. It was enough for the doctors to freeze one of her ovaries before menopause. And after a few years, they implanted it piece by piece. – I knew there was something like freezing the ovaries, a few years ago I was watching a show on Discovery. The protagonist was a woman who fell ill with leukemia and had to undergo chemotherapy. After the treatment, the doctors implanted her ovary so that she would regain fertility and she could get pregnant – recalls Anka. One of the American clinics already offers this method to women. Healthy. Simply those who want to prolong their fertility, avoid menopause, or are afraid of hormone replacement therapy.
Too late for IVF
Warsaw, private practice of a gynecologist dealing with infertility treatment, 10 years ago. It was then that she heard from the doctor: too late for IVF. It’s too late for everything. – He said it a moment after the ultrasound was done. I hadn’t had time to get dressed yet, he was already smiling sarcastically, waving the blood test printout I had brought: «FSH 150 ?! Oh ho ho, how old are you? Thirty six?! You’ve got results like a seventy-year-old. Estrogen below the detection sensitivity of the test! » – recalls Anka. She continues to face not only the fact that she will not have a baby anymore, but also the devastation that menopause has caused in her body. She lists: depression so strong that although I fantasized about death, committing suicide was overwhelming me, because it would have to be organized somehow, and first to get out of bed, in which I woke up almost in a pool of my own sweat. All these terms: hot flashes, mood swings are a euphemism. I was having a nightmare. She asked doctors about HRT. Neither agreed. – I am genetically burdened with hormone-dependent breast cancer – she explains. – In the year I entered the menopause, my skin became thin as parchment. In a few months. And sex became painful, unbearable, she recalls. The doctor confirmed that Anka is going through the menopause extremely badly. And it is not very clear why this is so. Is it because prematurely, or maybe it is a question of fragile psyche or genes.
– Today, when the media spread the news that a woman does not have to undergo menopause, that she can actually be forever young, I felt furious. I know maybe I should sympathize with other women who succeed. Apparently there is no so-called ovarian solidarity. Anyway, how am I supposed to be, since my ovaries have not been working for years – sarcasm can be heard in Anka’s voice. What is he talking about? About the reports published by PAP after “Human Reproduction”, an Oxford medical magazine. Women who do not want menopause can postpone it indefinitely. And it’s not because HRT increases the risk of cancer. And thanks to the so-called ovarian autotransplantation – transplant of own, previously collected and frozen ovaries.
Ovary strong implant
It is enough to freeze one ovary, preferably when it is still young, when it is most efficient. After that, it can be defrosted gradually, piece by piece, e.g. in 1 mm slices. The magazine “New Scientist” claims that such a tiny fragment can be functional for 2 years, ensuring the release and maturation of the egg contained in it. One ovary can be cut into up to 20 slices to be implanted one by one, which theoretically may delay the moment of menopause for several dozen years! – I’m furious that I won’t get it anymore. Not badly speaking – for a child, or even to avoid the nightmare of menopause. I am 40 years old and I am already struggling with osteoporosis. They will not even mention the beauty, the old traces of which I can hardly see in the mirror – says Anka. Bo News Scientis quotes 31-year-old Jenny Remington-Hobbs, who also went through early menopause. But the artificially induced ovaries were removed just before the chemotherapy and radiotherapy that awaited her. This patient mentions her menopausal symptoms as tragically severe. Four years ago, she regained her ovaries. And although she initially did not intend to have children, she became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl. She is grateful to fate. And she wonders whether to implant more fragments of the ovary. Not for fertility reasons anymore, but to delay menopause.
Eternal youth and breast cancer
Dr. Claus Andersen from the University Hospital in Copenhagen says that this method can be used by virtually any woman. And almost everyone will stop the menopause. This is confirmed by the observations of 41 women who decided to freeze their ovaries before undergoing chemotherapy. Most of them were fully re-implanted in order to become pregnant and give birth to a child. However, a few patients only intended to get rid of the artificially induced menopause. In two of them, the ovary was implanted after thawing in two and three fragments. What is remarkable is that if a woman wants to avoid menopause, the frozen fragments do not need to be implanted into the woman’s fallopian tubes. It is enough to place them in more accessible places on the body, e.g. under the skin of the forearm. In other words, it is similar to how women are implanted with contraceptive implants.
The oldest woman who has had a piece of her own ovary implanted is 44 years old, but the results obtained suggest that this method may also work for older patients. “We have shown that it works for 10 years, but I would not be surprised if this period could be extended to 30 years,” says Dr. Andersen from Denmark. And the director of the Infertility Center in St. Louis, Dr. Sherman Silber admitted that at his center, the ovaries of 15 women who want to prolong fertility have been removed and frozen in order to continue their thriving career. Some of them intend to use some of the ovarian fragments also to delay menopause.
Is this method completely safe? Certainly more so than HRT. After all, we are dealing with estrogens produced by our own tissues, and there is no risk of rejection of such a transplant. Some specialists, however, point out that indefinitely prolonged fertility itself can be hazardous to your health. Estrogens pose a greater risk of breast cancer. It is also not known whether a patch of young ovaries reimplanted to a 50-year-old woman will be as intense as the one transplanted to a 40-year-old woman. Probably not due to the aging of other body tissues. Doctors may be disappointed, but women don’t. For doesn’t the mere awareness that menopause need not necessarily be inscribed in a woman’s life almost like a promise of immortality?
See also: Gynecologists: Hormones Good for Ladies Over XNUMX