mom Zoe with little Tallulah, who is battling a brain tumor.
In a decision that could mark her for life, a 17-month-old girl has been diagnosed with an illness brain tumor they are going to freezes the ovarian tissues. Her parents decided with the hope that one day she could become a mother.
Is that the cancer treatment could make it sterile Tallulah Cox Why It is highly aggressive chemotherapy. The operation must be done before chemotherapy begins next month, according to Mirror.
Tallulah, playing with a stethoscope. “Your strength is impressive,” says her mother.
The girl will be the youngest in the UK to undergo the procedure, just two months after being diagnosed with an incredibly rare cancer.
Her mother, Zoe, 36, and her father, technician Richard, 35, were shocked upon hearing the news, because the girl’s illness initially appeared to be just a stomach virus.
Zoe says, “We were so shocked when they told us she had cancer. Saving her is the first thing we have in mind, but we’re incredibly grateful for the chance to preserve her ovaries, “she told the Mirror.
“Having the opportunity to have children in your future is incredible. At 17 months you don’t think you’re a mom, but one day you will. I’ve always wanted to be a mom and I want her to have that opportunity too, ”Zoe said.
Little Tallulah’s health problems started after she had chickenpox. They initially believed she had gastroenteritis. “The doctors sent her home, but she was lethargic for a week. Then she looked like she couldn’t move her neck, so we took her back to the hospital, ”remembers her mother.
Doctors feared Tallulah had meningitis and gave her antibiotics and a lumbar puncture test. But an MRI the next morning revealed the presence of a tumor in her brain called an ependymoma, which develops in the fluid-filled spaces of the brain.
Zoe continues: “We have been devastated. We never imagined it would be something as serious as a brain tumor. The only good thing is that they told us it was the size of a grapeand usually when they are discovered they are the size of a plum, so it was discovered very early on, “he told the Mirror.
The battle day after day
Tallulah, who has a five-year-old brother named Robert, underwent surgery the next day and is now a pioneer in trial treatment in Europe of proton beam therapy, which directly attacks cancer, at Christie’s Hospital in Manchester.
mother Zoe with little Tallulah: they will freeze her ovaries so that one day she can become a mother.
Zoe says: “Normally they only give proton beam therapy to babies over 18 months of age, but they gave it to them because it has proven to be very resistant.”
When they operated on her, they thought she would have a long recovery, but she recovered the next day. And the strength of her that she showed the doctors that she, although she was much younger, she could handle the treatment.
Your ovary will be removed
Tallulah will undergo chemotherapy at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, but first her ovary will be removed and sliced for later freezing.
Cryopreservation freezes the portion of the ovary that produces the eggs, called the ovarian cortex. The tissue can be transplanted up to 30 years later to make pregnancy possible.
“When we were told that chemotherapy could make Tallulah sterile, that was the biggest thing that scared me, along with the brain tumor. So the fact that she was given this opportunity to freeze her ovaries is fantastic.” , summed up Zoe, mother.
The last months of Tallulah’s life were spent between medical visits and studies.
The Mirror asked Professor Tim Child, TFP Fertility medical director and ovarian freezing expert, about this technique: “It offers families a lot of hope. It is not yet widely performed and tends to be in adults and girls who are after puberty. We know it can work in older patients. “
“Chemotherapy can damage the ovaries, so the tissue freezes and elThe idea is that in the future it can be relocated to the pelvic area to see if it can produce eggs“.
Dr. Tim Child admits that it is very rare for the technique to be performed on preteen girls. “But even if they’re that young, the tissue can still be frozen. By the time those little ones try to get pregnant, the research will have gone on too. Seventeen months is incredibly young to do it. I haven’t heard of anyone younger than that.” this”.
The difficulty in such a young patient is that immature eggs are extremely small.
He says: “We use a laparoscopy to remove part of an ovary, but before freezing it we examine the tissue for finds the most mature of the immature eggs, using a microscope to see if there are any fluid-filled sacs or follicles that contain them. The piece of fabric has thousands of immature eggs, but we can’t see them because they’re so small. “
“What we’re doing is looking for the ones that are a little less immature. So, in the future, we hope to be able to re-transplant ovarian tissue to give you the chance to conceive naturally. But we are also storing frozen eggs that can be thawed, fertilized and transferred to your womb.
“So we’re using two different approaches to try to preserve fertility and give women and girls the hope of having children someday.”
Source: Mirror
Source: Clarin
