How should one decide when to get a hysterectomy, if the doctor is giving you the choice?
So here's the situation: my wife has uterine cancer.
Fortunately, it was discovered very early on. So she is able to do fertility sparing treatment and attempt to conceive naturally when she is in remission. However, it is a given that eventually a hysterectomy will be needed. Now, the oncologist has basically said that we can try for as long as we want until we are done having kids, or the cancer comes back (and it will come back eventually if she doesn't get a hysterectomy). But that creates a bit of a conundrum. Because the Catholic teaching is that we should welcome as many children as God gives us. But we also don't want to just wait for the cancer to come back either. The safest thing to do is to be proactive about the hysterectomy and have it done after the first child is born, since we would consider ourselves very lucky to get just one. But is that not an inherently willful approach to family planning? Looking for insight since my wife brought this up and I didn't have a great answer.