Twin Cities Couple Plans For Having Kids After Cancer
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Twin Cities couple is talking about something very personal -- infertility.
Scott Trenda and his wife, Alexis, have a menagerie of adopted and fostered dogs.
"They're the fur kids, they're fur beasts," Alexis said. "They know it and they're spoiled."
They have a menagerie of rescue pets in their Brooklyn Center home, but this 30-something couple is ready to take their caretaking to the next level. They say they are ready for kids, and they would like two or three.
After six years of playing and saving, the time has come. But so has another life event.
"When I first hear 'malignant,' yeah, my stomach dropped out," Scott said.
A seemingly innocent fatty lump in his leg is Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that often goes to the bones.
And the treatment hits this couple at their core.
"I've heard that [chemotherapy is] really bad for fertility, and so that's when, you know, we realized that we'd have to start putting things in place to preserve that," Scott said.
So they have a short time to secure their long-term dream.
"Every last opportunity that I can before Sept. 1, I'm spending sperm banking," he said.
It is a personal dilemma they have decided to make public.
"He's like, 'I have an appointment on Tuesday at one o'clock,' and I'm like, 'I know what you're doing Tuesday at one o'clock (laughs),'" Alexis said.
Scott has health insurance, but it doesn't cover fertility -- so they are asking others to help cover them.
"We don't have anything to lose by being more open about it," Scott said. "We have just everything to gain."
Sometimes it seems you have to put it all out there if you want to have it all.
"I just want to have some kids running around, and [Scott] running around," Alexis said.
Scott gets a port put in next week, and then chemo starts the day before his 33rd birthday. He is hopeful his cancer is treatable.