Cancer Treatment Options Forum - October 8th, 2010 - 3 Comments
Can someone who had brain cancer at age 13 and received radiation therapy for it still have kids as an adult?
My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 9 months now. Things are going very well, we seem to be close. He had brain cancer around age 13 and received radiation therapy to get rid of it. Could this affect his ability to have kids now? He has used the pull out method with every one of his girlfriends whether or not they were on the pill. He’s 37 and hasn’t gotten anyone pregnant yet, doesn’t it seem like he should have gotten someone pregnant by now? We have talked about it and he thinks he has good sperm. Would it be right of me to ask him to get his sperm checked? I would still want to be with him even if his sperm had problems it would just be nice to know.
Yes, because radiation only focuses on one area. There is no way that he had radiation for his entire body because it would have killed him. Unless he had chemo, his germ line cells were not affected.
It always amazes me when people ask questions like this on Yahoo. Obviously this is a question for his doctor.
First off… He probably only had radiation to his brain. If he had local radiation, his fertility is probably fine. If he had total body irradiation, that’s a different story.
It isn’t wrong of you to want to know. If I were in a serious relationship that might end up with trying to have kids, I would want to know if both of us were A OK…
so my suggestion is this… suggest that he go get tested, as will you … to make sure you both have the opportunity to create children if you so desire. That way he doesn’t feel all alone…
Also, you may get him genetically tested, to make sure he won’t be passing along a gene for brain cancer to your kids. The insurance should pay for this, and this is supremely important… He’ll probably understand, as he wouldn’t want his kids to exeriance what he did.