Kelsey Taylor was able to freeze her eggs before receiving therapy toxic to her ovaries. By Meredith WadmanIn 2014, Kelsey Taylor of Norwood, Massachusetts, was 19 years old, ill with severe sickle cell disease, and about to be treated at the Clinical Center, the research hospital at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
But the toxic drugs and radiation used in her treatment were likely to injure her ovaries and leave her infertile.Even at 19, Taylor knew she wanted the chance to have biological children someday. “For me that was huge,” she says.
She was fortunate: NIH was just starting to freeze patients’ eggs before fertility-damaging therapies, so that women might start a pregnancy after their medical odyssey.