A cancer survivor told she was ‘99% infertile’ with a 1% chance of conceiving is fundraising £17,000 to freeze her eggs, hoping to ‘get a sliver’ of what treatment took away
A woman given a 1% chance of conceiving a baby after cancer treatment is willing to spend tens of thousands on those unlikely odds.
Georgie Swallow was just 26 when she was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma and underwent aggressive chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Six years on from treatment, she is now fundraising to freeze her eggs in a “chance to even get a sliver of something back”.
Patients are usually offered egg freezing before starting treatment, but as she received her diagnosis so late, she had to have treatment right away. “I got diagnosed on the Thursday and I was in for chemo on Friday, and they said ‘we physically can’t offer it’,” Georgie, now 34, explained.
Describing herself as “very, very lucky”, Georgie, who is based in London, was told that if she’d been diagnosed a few weeks later, there wouldn’t have been anything doctors could have done for her. After four months of remission, she was re-diagnosed and had to undergo further treatment and a stem cell transplant, which is the treatment that “takes your fertility”.
The second diagnosis hit her like a “freight train”. “I was scared I wasn’t going to make it,” Georgie said, adding that things felt “a lot more heavy and a lot more serious.”
However she was grateful for her “incredible” medical team. “I say this tenfold about every doctor, every nurse, every single person that looked after me in that time, were incredible.
“I couldn’t have dreamed for a better team.” Georgie was told that the stem cell transplant was most likely going to leave her “99% infertile”, but says she wasn’t prepared for what that really meant.
“I just wish maybe someone around that time or after my treatment went ‘just so you know, infertility means menopause’,” she explained, adding that she did not think this was her doctor’s responsibility.
Georgie struggled after her treatment with the “lack of understanding what was coming”. When she began experiencing the symptoms of perimenopause, she didn’t realise what was happening.
“I just thought infertility just meant, ‘oh your eggs just won’t work’,” she added. Her mental health was affected and she had a couple of mini strokes in 2024.
She found out she was perimenopausal five years ago after discussing her symptoms with her therapist. Georgie decided to undergo investigations to understand what was going on in her body, when she found out there was still “a chance” for her fertility.
“I just thought, well, you’re infertile, so that’s that’s that. I think that’s just what breaks my heart.”
She had an AMH blood test done, which is used to estimate the supply of eggs in a woman’s ovaries. Georgie’s was “very, very low” but one of her ovaries still had two follicles, giving her a chance of being able to freeze her eggs.
“If you’ve got follicles, there’s a chance,” she said. “You know, you’re told 99% chance you’re going to be infertile, I didn’t realise that there’d even be a chance.
“I think if someone had said to me, get yourself to a fertility specialist and see what’s going on, would I have had more follicles, more chances of egg retrieval?” Georgie is now fundraising to freeze her eggs, with the treatment expected to cost a whopping £17,000.
“You have a lot taken away from you during cancer treatment, and I think if there is a chance to even get a sliver of something back, you got to give it a go,” she explains. Georgie hopes that by raising awareness of her situation via her Instagram account @georgieeswallow, she can help other women facing similar struggles.
“I just think how many women are in a position where they can’t afford the chance to either save or see if they have any fertility after treatment, and that and that kind of breaks my heart,” she said. “If I can keep fundraising, someone else can have it, or a charity that helps women after cancer can have it.
“Fertility stuff is expensive, it’d be amazing if everyone could get that offered.” To find out more about Georgie’s fertility appeal, visit Donate to Help Georgie have a chance with fertility, organised by Georgie Swallow.
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