Cancer and its treatment procedures
Cancer and its treatment procedures sometimes cause temporary or permanent infertility. In cases of temporary infertility, it may take about 2-4 years to recover from radiation treatment.
On average, children from cured cancer patients and the healthy population have no significant differences when it comes to susceptibility to various medical conditions. It means cancer or the treatment doesn’t affect your children. However, it is advisable to wait between 6-24 months after treatment before you try to have a baby.
After treatment, you may want to track the chances of impregnating your partner or your future prospects. You may have stored your sperm before your treatment, which can help. But if you didn’t, the tracking process can take years.
After about 24 months visiting your fertility clinic to check your progress is the best option. They may also use other fertility tests apart from the usual ejaculation-into-a-cup method to track your progress. They should also check for other conditions that can reduce your chances like ejaculation retention or blockage of pathways.
However, some men resent going to fertility clinics. It raises the stigma they face, plus it isn’t very comfortable to visit a room, do your thing and then hand over the cup to a technician.
There are apps that have been designed to remedy these situations. Now we have a device (costs about $5) that can be connected to your smartphone, and then you can track your improvement from home.
You will have a disposable slide where you put your semen sample. You then insert it into your smartphone, and the camera measures your sperm concentration and movement. In some instances, sperm quality may be obtained.
Tracking your sperm count after cancer through an app is seen as a great option in societies where masturbation is a taboo. It will also shift the blame from women since it has been discovered that about 30-35% of infertility issues stem from the man.
Visiting a physician from time to time to track your improvement is the most appropriate method. However, if it is too stigmatizing, the app is an alternative since it has a 98% accuracy rate.