"Knowledge is Power": Steph's Journey to Taking Control of Her Fertility With Egg Freezing

At just 23, a routine smear test changed Steph Taylor life. With no symptoms and no warning, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer beginning a five-year journey through treatment and monitoring that quietly raised a question she was afraid to ask out loud, would she ever be able to have children? Years later, now working as part of the TFP GCRM Fertility team in Glasgow, Steph found both the knowledge and the courage to take control of her fertility.

Steph’s story

Steph was 23 years old and working full-time at an opticians lab in Glasgow when she attended what she expected to be a completely unremarkable appointment. “It was just a routine smear,” she recalls. “I had no symptoms at all. There was nothing giving me any issues.”

At the time, Scotland was in the process of raising its cervical screening age from 20 to 25, and Steph had been among the last to be called in under the old system. It was a piece of timing that, in retrospect, she considers life-saving.

When the results came back as abnormal, Steph was referred for a colposcopy. Two rounds of laser treatment followed, but the cells remained abnormal. Biopsies were taken, and within ten days of those results, Steph was called in to be told the news: the cells were cancerous.

“It was a shock,” she says simply. “Absolutely unexpected.”

From her abnormal result to her diagnosis, the process spanned around three months. Treatment followed quickly, two LLETZ procedures to remove the affected tissue, and from there, Steph entered a five-year monitoring programme. Throughout it all, the same team of doctors stayed with her.

“There was no swap over in the care,” she remembers. “It was the same doctors the whole time, which really helped.”

“My fertility was never once mentioned.”

Being the youngest in her family, Steph was surrounded by support throughout her treatment. Her parents, her sister and her partner at the time rallied around her. But there was one thing she didn’t share with any of them, a growing, quiet worry about what all of this might mean for her future.

“At the time I was only 23, so it wasn’t the first thing in my head,” she explains. “But as time went on over those five years, it definitely crept in more. I’d think, will it ever happen for me? Is this something that’s going to be taken away from me?”

What made it harder was that the subject never came up in her clinical appointments either. Despite being in and out of hospital for five years, on first-name terms with the staff, not once was her fertility or the option to explore it privately ever mentioned.

“My fertility was never discussed,” she says. “Not even options for doing things privately. Nothing like that at all.”

She kept those fears to herself, not wanting to add to the worry her family and friends already carried. It was a weight she would carry alone for years.

In January 2021, Steph joined the team at TFP GCRM Fertility in Glasgow. It was a new chapter following her long-term relationship ending, and she threw herself into her role supporting patients through their fertility journeys.

It was in this role that everything shifted. “I think working here pushed me to get my AMH checked first of all,” she says. “And when it came back so low, it was only 4.1 which I did not expect at all. That’s what made me decide I wanted to freeze my eggs.”

A low AMH result after cervical cancer treatment wasn’t a surprise in theory. But seeing that number in black and white brought up a lot of the fears Steph had kept quietly buried. “It definitely upset me,” she admits. “It stirred up a lot of thoughts and feelings that I’d kind of put to bed.”

But rather than a blow, she chose to see it as a wake-up call. She had the knowledge, she was working in the right place, and she had just come out of a long-term relationship, there was no reason to wait.

“It felt like the timing was perfect, I’d been through all of that, and then finally ended up here and knew a wee bit more about it. And I thought, I’ve been given this opportunity.”

The decision also felt deeply personal in another way. “It made me feel like I had the choice to be independent and do this,” she says. “I didn’t need someone to be there to do it with. I could do it on my own.”

“Even when you know what to expect, it’s a different ball game when it’s you.”

Before starting her first cycle, Steph’s consultant Dr Marco Gaudoin recommended she take DHEA supplements for three months to support egg quality ahead of stimulation. She followed his advice without hesitation, she says “I wanted to give myself the best possible chance.”

Her first egg collection cycle began in October 2022. As someone who had spent months supporting patients through exactly this process, Steph expected to feel prepared. In some ways, she was. In others, the experience caught her off guard entirely.

“I didn’t expect to be as nervous waiting for the results of the monitoring scans,” she admits. “We hear patients waiting on results all day in the office. But when it’s you waiting on it, it’s a completely different ball game.”

At one point during her first cycle, her follicles had plateaued and the team faced a decision, cancel the cycle, or push a few more days with additional medication. Steph was clear about what she wanted.

“The thought of cancelling was just not in my head,” she says firmly. “I was quite happy to be pushed as long as I physically could be on the medication. It’s a short-term loss for a long-term gain.”

The perseverance paid off. Coming round from sedation after her first egg collection, Steph heard the news, 17 eggs had been retrieved. The corridor outside was buzzing.

“I remember hearing all the girls outside like, oh my gosh, you’ve got 17! It was lovely. Everybody was cheering me on.”

Of those 17 eggs, 11 were mature enough to freeze. A year later, Steph returned for a second cycle, collecting a further 10 eggs, seven of which were frozen. In total, 18 eggs in storage from an AMH of just 4.1.

“To get 18 eggs from that AMH was nothing that I expected,” she says. “I would have been happy with 5 or 10. To get 18 was beyond my wildest dreams.”

“It gave me so much more peace of mind.”

Steph’s egg freezing journey has been made possible in no small part by the support of her family. Her parents, who had already helped her through cancer treatment, stepped forward again without hesitation when Steph sat down with them and told them what she was considering.

“My dad just said simply, the money’s there tomorrow if you need it no questions asked,” she recalls warmly. Having lost savings during the pandemic after being made redundant, that support lifted a significant weight. But Steph is clear, she would have found a way regardless. “I was so set on doing this,” she says. “Had they not been in a position to help, I would have looked other options to make it work.”

Today, those 18 eggs sit in storage and Steph is navigating more uncertainty: a recent abnormal smear result has reopened her cervical health journey and is under current care of her gynaecologist again and awaiting further follow up appointments.

Even so, she has no regrets. “Even if I don’t ever use them, I don’t for one second doubt what I did,” she says. “Knowing they’re there gives me so much peace of mind. I’m so glad that I did it.”

“Knowledge is power — and I just didn’t have it.”

Now an egg freezing champion within the TFP GCRM team, Steph is passionate about ensuring other women don’t go through what she did, years of uncertainty, with no one pointing them towards the options available.

“I always thought egg freezing was something you’d seen on the tv and something celebrities done, she admits. “I didn’t think it was something readily available to people like me. I didn’t think you could do it 10 minutes down the road in Glasgow.”

Her friends felt the same. “Some of them mentioned, I didn’t even know you could do that here,” she says. “It’s just not spoken about enough. Certainly not for my generation.”

She also wants to reach women who assume the decision isn’t theirs to make alone. “People think that if you’re not with someone, it’s a waiting game,” she says. “It’s not. You can be completely independent in doing this. You don’t need to be with anyone at all.”

And to women who might think it’s too late? “Someone in their late 30s who thinks it’s over, it’s not,” she says. “If you give yourself a chance, it’s definitely something worth exploring.”

Her final message is perhaps her most personal: “Get your smear tests. That one test potentially saved my life. I had not one symptom of anything untoward, and it showed up straight away. If I could shout that from the rooftops, I would.”