Free Ten Years Later by Hoda Kotb Page B

about this. I
     realized, No one knows. I am essentially telling them they are being sterilized right then. They did not know it. I remember this guy in the room, and he was asking me questions
     like, ‘What do you mean? This is sterilizing me right now? I could have banked my
     sperm?’ I remember him turning to the nurse and saying, ‘Are you telling me that this
     thing in my arm right now is sterilizing me?’ ”
    A breast cancer patient who was receiving chemo every week for fifty-two weeks was
     also stunned by what Lindsay was sharing.
    “She was already a mom and wasn’t interested in more kids, but said, ‘I can’t believe
     they didn’t tell me. Did they assume that I was done having children?’ ”
    Lindsay finished all her treatments in April 2001. The five-month medical marathon
     was over. A week later, she moved back to her apartment in New York City. Her parents
     were concerned that she’d feel alone, but Lindsay had gotten through the tunnel and
     now needed the light.
    “Really, after being in their home through surgery and healing, then my sister’s death
     and all my radiation and chemo, and everything in that house and bedroom, I thought, I don’t want to stay here for another minute .”
    Lindsay had received a severance check from Jupiter Research while she was still at
     home. The company had downsized, and her position—which she never filled—was eliminated.
    She says with a smile, “Never one day on the job, and I got a huge check.”
    As spring moved into summer, Lindsay began to think. Ever since the realization that
     other cancer patients were not being informed about options to protect their fertility,
     she felt like she had a secret that needed to be shared.
    “You get car insurance, but do you drive around hoping you get into an accident because
     you have it? No. It’s the same with frozeneggs. You hope that you never have to use them, but if you do, you’ll be really glad
     they’re there.”
    She began researching whether it was standard practice to inform patients that infertility
     is a potential side effect of cancer treatment.
    “I really felt in my head for a long time, Am I making this up? Is it even an issue? Was I totally high on pain meds? Am I making
     a mountain out of a molehill? I didn’t fully trust myself on it yet.”
    The more Lindsay read and the more people she talked to, the more her concern was
     validated. She began to write a business plan for a foundation that would spread the
     word. When a friend found out what she was doing, he e-mailed her and encouraged her
     to meet a cancer survivor he’d seen speak at an event for the American Cancer Society.
     He told her the survivor, Doug Ulman, had started a foundation to support and educate
     young cancer survivors.
    “I called him and said, ‘Hey, I heard you started this nonprofit,’ ” she says. “ ‘I
     have this inkling about a problem around fertility and I want to run it past you.’ ”
    Coincidentally, she had called Doug during his first week as director of survivorship
     at the Lance Armstrong Foundation. He told her no one was addressing the issue, and
     that Lance and his wife Kristin would be interested in talking with her.
    “It was interesting because at the time, Kristin was my hero,” she says. “Lance has
     a good story, but Kristin answered all my hopes and fears. In an article I read, I
     learned that she met and chose Lance after his cancer. She talked a lot about how
     many of her friends thought she was crazy, like, ‘Why are you falling in love with
     this man who almost died?’ And she said, ‘I’d rather have one year of wonderful than
     a lifetime of mediocre.’ And I thought, Oh, my gosh. It’s possible for someone to love me. There may be a boy version of Kristin
     out there who will take the risk. ”
    Lindsay continued to write her business plan and planned to have Kristin write the
     foreword. Her former mentor at Gazoontite helpedLindsay