‘Postcode lottery’ to freeze eggs, Padiham cancer survivor says

A woman from Lancashire who had stage four blood cancer said she is fighting for NHS-funded fertility preservation treatment.

Mollie Mulheron, 28, said she was unable to freeze her eggs before chemotherapy because her cancer was so aggressive she needed urgent treatment.

Although she has since recovered and is cancer-free, NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board said it would not fund egg freezing because she does not meet its eligibility criteria.

Mollie said: “It’s clearly unfair because the funding is there before chemotherapy, so it doesn’t make sense that it’s not available now.”

Mollie, who lives in Padiham, was travelling in the Galapagos Islands after university when she said she started to feel ill.

After travelling back home to get checked out, doctors found a melon-sized tumour, which was “crushing my heart and left lung,” Mollie said.

It took approximately 800 hours of chemotherapy, over 150 days, for Mollie to be cancer-free.

“It was hell, but I did manage to beat it,” said Mollie, who runs a language academy in Lancashire.