After all the crazy stories of fertility treatments gone mad and nutty grandparents trying to extract sperm from the dead, it's refreshing to hear about the everyday miracles advanced reproductive technology can bring to parents who yearn for a child.
Chris Biblis, now 39, was just 17 when his family and doctors encouraged him to freeze sperm for future use; he was undergoing treatement for leukemia at the time, and some of the drugs used were known to cause sterility. This was in 1987, five years before the successful injection of a sperm cell into a human egg. As anyone knows who's had "the talk" with their child, pre-teen or teenager, this subject matter can cause massive embarrassment on both sides. Thank goodness, then, that Biblis's mother was courageous and humane enough to broach the subject because last month Chris and his wife had baby Stella, born to a father now cancer-free for 20 years.
The Biblises have five frozen embryos in case they want to attempt to have more kids. But for now, I'm sure they're still amazed at how fortunate they are that science -- and Stella's grandmother -- could see into a future for that teenager fighting cancer.
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