Their 17-month-old daughter is at risk of not being able to have children, they make an extremely rare decision

Tallulah Cox’s parents have made an exceptional decision: their 17 month old baby girl is battling a brain tumor and risk, with the treatments, of not being able to have children when she reaches adulthood. They therefore decided to remove an ovary to freeze itso that she can one day, if she wishes, become a mother.

An operation before any chemotherapy session for Tallulah

Tallulah will therefore be operated just before starting chemotherapy sessionsbarely two months after the diagnosis of this very rare tumour. The little girl will become the youngest patient in the UK to undergo the procedure. Despite his joie de vivre and his resistance to the frenetic pace imposed on him by medical appointments, the chemotherapy she is about to receive is terribly aggressive and risks damaging her ovaries.

His parents, Zoé and Richard, aged 35 and 36, were particularly shocked by the announcement of the tumor diagnosis. “When we were told that chemotherapy could make Tallulah sterile, that’s what scared me the most, next to the brain tumor. So the fact that he was offered this opportunity to freeze his ovary is awesome.‎We have hope for its future, explained Zoe to the Mirror, ‎She always smiles and she takes everything as it comes. The fact that she can still having the chance to be a mom means the world to us.”

For his part, the doctor who took care of their daughter was particularly confident about the operation. Tim Child, director of TFP Fertility and ovary freezing expert indeed told the Mirror “It’s an exciting technique and offers a lot of hope for families. It’s not widely practiced yet and it tends to be in adults and girls who are post puberty. We know it can work in older patients. There have been cases where babies have been born after ovarian tissue has been transplanted.”