Free Ten Years Later by Hoda Kotb

when serendipity got her everywhere.
    “On my fourth or fifth call to Stanford Fertility and Reproductive [Medicine] Center,
     someone picked up the phone by mistake. It was five o’clock and she picked up the
     wrong line and got me,” she says, smiling. “And when I told her my story she said,
     ‘Oh. We have a brand-new egg-freezing protocol for cancer patients that just launched.’
     And literally, I went the next day.”
    Hope finally eclipsed despair. She met with Dr. Lynn Westphal, who approved her as
     a candidate for the new protocol. Lindsay was game for anything she had to do to preserve
     her fertility before starting chemo.
    “At that point I felt like I had already turned over my body and my life to medicine.
     My days were filled with doctors’ appointments. I was already being poked and prodded
     every day. So the idea that I got to go to a doctor’s appointment that I wanted to
     go to was hopeful. I was actively planning for my future; all of that was so wonderful.”
    But January 2001 would reveal both wonderful and awful news. Lindsay’s best friend
     from preschool who became her sister, Kristi, was in a fight for her own life. Born
     with cystic fibrosis, Kristi developed an infection in December and was hospitalized.
     By January, her body was so resistant to antibiotics that the infection took over.
     Kristi and Lindsay were at the same hospital, Kristi in ICU, Lindsay going twice a
     day to the radiation lab. Tragically, Kristi died on January 7. One of the darkest
     days of Lindsay’s life included radiation in the morning and Kristi’s funeral in the
     afternoon, followed by a treatment to freeze her eggs. Her mom and Bob were beyond
     devastated.
    “I was going to get cancer treatments and they were going to look at caskets,” she
     says. “It was a very hard time.”
    Because her mom and Bob were dealing with Kristi’s death, Lindsay was on her own during
     her fertility battle. On her first day in the Stanford IVF clinic, Lindsay realized
     she was not the typical patient.
    “This man said to me, ‘Are you an egg donor?’ and I responded indignantly, ‘I have
     cancer, mister.’ His wife told him, ‘You. Don’t talk again.’ She was mortified.” Lindsay
     laughs. “But you can just imagine, here I am, twenty-four, sitting in that reproductive
     clinic. Single.”
    Lindsay’s insurance didn’t cover the procedure, so the clinic got her donated drugs
     and offered the treatment at cost, which she asked her parents to fund. For the clinic,
     Lindsay was only the second newly diagnosed cancer patient to freeze her eggs. Knowing
     her deadline, the staff fast-tracked Lindsay on learning the protocol for IVF treatments.
    “You normally go in and hear PowerPoint presentations. You learn how to use needles.
     Back then you had to mix the medications at home, and so they took me that morning,
     and what a normal IVF patient has weeks to learn, they taught me quickly.”
    Here’s what Lindsay was trying to do in eleven days: Use medication to stimulate her
     body to produce eggs. Those eggs would be surgically removed and then frozen. Here’s
     where she’s unique. The typical IVF patient would not freeze the eggs, but instead
     fertilize them with sperm in the lab. The resulting embryos would then be implanted
     back into the patient’s womb and ideally make a baby. But Lindsay was not yet there
     in her life. She was not ready to have a baby. While using a sperm donor and freezing
     her embryos instead of eggs would make for a sturdier unit (an egg has a higher water
     content than an embryo, and therefore is more vulnerable to breakage or DNA damage
     when frozen), Lindsay could not get on board with the idea of donor sperm. Her future
     husband’s sperm would be ideal.
    “Twenty-four, single, in the midst of hell; that was one thing too much. I couldn’t
     add that on. I thought, I’m going to freeze my eggs andI believe in technology. So you guys keep working on the