WESTWOOD, Kan. -- Jennifer Smith, 25, of Roeland Park, said she never expected to be at the University of Kansas Cancer Center getting chemotherapy.

Smith said her diagnosis of breast cancer turned her life upside down.

"Because it's one of those things you hear about, but you think, 'That can't happen to me,'" Smith said.

While she was deciding on her cancer treatment, she thought of something that had not crossed her mind.

"Then to be told there's always the possibility I won't be able to have my own children, I just ... it was worse than hearing I had cancer," Smith said.

Smith is engaged to be married. She said she always dreamed of having children, but her cancer is aggressive, and she had to act fast.

More traditional methods of collecting and freezing eggs for later would take too long. But Smith's oncology team knew of another option -- freezing an ovary.

"(It's) a technique that actually slices the ovary and puts it in special freezing material. Then, five or six years down the road, a piece of the ovary is reimplanted into a similar cavity from where it was removed. This is then stimulated to hopefully produce follicles, which produce eggs," said Jennifer Klemp of the University of Kansas Medical Center.

While it is experimental, there has been some success. Kansas City, Mo., television station KMBC reported that there is the chance that Smith's remaining ovary won't be affected by the chemo. The frozen ovary would be her backup.

The University of Kansas Medical Center is one of just a handful of centers in the country offering the ovary preservation surgery.