Cancer survivor's battle for fertility funding

A woman from Lancashire who had stage four blood cancer said she is fighting for NHS-funded fertility preservation treatment.Mollie Mulheron, 28, said she was unable to freeze her eggs before chemotherapy because her cancer was so aggressive she needed urgent treatment.Although she has since recovered and is cancer-free, NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board said it would not fund egg freezing because she does not meet its eligibility criteria.Mollie said: "It's clearly unfair because the funding is there before chemotherapy, so it doesn't make sense that it's not available now."Mollie, who lives in Padiham, was travelling in the Galapagos Islands after university when she said she started to feel ill.After travelling back home to get checked out, doctors found a melon-sized tumour, which was "crushing my heart and left lung," Mollie said.It took approximately 800 hours of chemotherapy, over 150 days, for Mollie to be cancer-free. "It was hell, but I did manage to beat it," said Mollie, who runs a language academy in Lancashire.Mollie has started an online petition calling for better protection of young cancer survivors' fertility and to address what she says is an NHS funding gap after chemotherapy.Mollie said her ovarian reserve had more than halved in a year and she had been told she was likely to go through an early menopause.She fears that without fertility preservation treatment she may not be able to have children in the future.The 28-year-old said she was struggling with the prospect of losing that option, particularly as she did not want to feel pressured into starting a family immediately after recovering from cancer."I'd like to have some time after having cancer just to rebuild my life," she said.Updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance says healthcare professionals should discuss fertility preservation with people whose medical condition or treatment is likely to affect their fertility.Mollie said the guidance was not mandatory and could be interpreted differently by local NHS bodies, creating inconsistencies in access to treatment.She said the process had left her feeling frustrated and trapped in a cycle of uncertainty."It's just kind of going around in circles, it feels like, and it's just so unfair," she said.