Season Seven - Episode Six - Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation

A cancer diagnosis at any age is scary and life changing, but receiving this news the you are at a point in your life where having children, starting a family or growing your family is on your mind, raises a different set of challenges. Saskatoon's Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation charity supports cancer patients when it comes to fertility challenges. 

Helping patients navigate fertility issues during a cancer diagnosis is something Dominique Paulgaard and Lierin Baerg do in their roles as nurses at Royal University Hospital and with their charity, Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation. The charity was started three years by a group of oncology nurses in Saskatoon and today features Jessica Smith, Taylor Huang, Lierin Baerg and Dominique Paulgaard as its members. 

The purpose of Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation is to preserve the ability for cancer patients to have children. As I learned from Lierin and Dominique, this can either be through sperm or egg preservation, and as you are about to hear, it can be quite the journey. 

Lieren as been a Registered Nurse at Royal University Hospital’s Inpatient Cancer and Stem Cell Transplant unit for the past 10 years. Dominique has been a nurse in the same unit for 13 years. They both have families with young children and find the time to run this charity.

How the charity works, why it means so much to them, and what conversations are like with their patients when it comes to fertility are topics we cover in our conversation. We also discuss how overwhelming it is for someone who has just received a cancer diagnosis to think about if they want to preserve their ability to have children in the future and the financial challenges that come with their decision.

Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation has a fundraising event on Saturday, March 15th at Crossmount Cider Company. Tickets are 50 dollars and Saskatoon’s Ross Nielsen will be playing live sets of music. You can learn more by following Prairie Cancer Fertility Preservation on Facebook and Instagram, or click this link to purchase tickets.

You can listen to YXE Underground wherever you find your favourite including Apple Podcast, Spotify, Goodpods or on yxeunderground.com. Please feel free to leave a 5-star review if you like what you hear. These positive reviews help the podcast show up in more podcast feeds so I really do appreciate the support. 

I also want to let you know of an exciting event I am working on with the Remai Modern. Please mark April 17th on your calendar as that’s when YXE Underground will be presenting a movie at the Remai Modern’s lovely theatre beginning at 7pm. This is thanks to Kyle Zurevinski, who runs the theatre programming at the Remai, and his generous spirit. 

We will be showing the short film Molly Schikosky and I made last summer celebrating the podcast followed by the Pixar classic, Wall-E because it’s one of my favourite movies of all time and I think it connects nicely to YXE Underground in meaningful ways. The Remai does this with other community organizations who select a movie for the public to watch for free and it’s really cool to partner with the gallery in this way. Plus, it’s free to attend!

So I would love to see you on the night of Thursday, April 17th, to celebrate the podcast and watch one of the best films of the past 20 years.

Thank you for continuing to support a local, independent podcast here in Saskatoon.

Cheers...Eric 

• Host, Producer