The girl (and I
WILL call her a girl, because she will certainly call me an older
woman) who came into the room to do my first ultrasound was a
pretty young medical intern, a doctor in training whose looks far
surpassed her bedside manner. But I won't hold that against her. I
appreciate socially stunted pretty women. It's a nice anomaly in
life. Like a rooster that doesn't crow.
My mind wanders away from
what I'm about to find out, spending more time wondering about the
young doctor, about her future, her marriage and baby plans (I bet
she'll be smart and lucky and do it right, in her early 30s, with a
great, stable, well-employed guy, I imagine.). I wonder
what she thinks of me sitting there on the stirrup table undressed
from the waist down. Do I look desperate? Am I a sad case to her?
Does she see me in simple terms, a cautionary tale, the one about the
older woman who missed too many boats? Maybe she pulls a life lesson
from me. (Do it right, have babies in my 30s! Don't wait too
long.) Perhaps her bedside manner isn't a personality issue,
maybe she simply cannot look squarely into my hopeful, anxious eyes
because they ask too much of her. They ask her what my future holds.
She was quick. It
didn't take long to count my follicles. One. A nearly barren desert
on the plains of my ovaries. I was expecting about 10. Or more. No, I
wasn't expecting, I was assuming. Of course I would have a high,
healthy, normal count. When it comes to medical tests, ALL of my
numbers are healthy and within better than normal range for people
half my age. I like saying that. Healthier than people half my
age. It's one of the small perks of older age sprinkled about
like confetti. Wait...people half my age are now drinking age adults,
maybe that's what explains why my numbers are better
than theirs...
Anyhoo, as the pretty doctor said, “only one.” It's
you and me, follie. You and me against the world.
I had more fibroids
than follicles, and after the doctor quickly measured and took
ultrasound pictures of my non-follicle formations, she grimly smiled
and left the room. Got the hell out of Dodge. Did she know the news
might at any moment hit the weak spot in my emotional dam? I wonder
how often the rooms in this clinic are backed up due to crying
despondent women. I wonder what the office policy is for how long to
let a lady sob before ushering her out the door.
Initially as I
dressed, as the information sank in, I felt as I always do when I
first get bad news. Stunned, but strong. Courageous. Ready to deal
with it and move on. That's the knee-jerk reaction for me, and it's
probably a protective mechanism, but it's what I do. My mind works
through the new reality with stiff stoicism during this initial
phase.
Zipping up my
jeans, alone in the room, I rolled the idea over in my head to see
how it felt: You are an infertile woman. You are an infertile woman.
You are an infertile woman. It felt Old World. Like when people used
to whisper, She's a frigid woman.
I bolstered myself
with the idea that many great women have been infertile. I thought of
Karen Blixen. The scene from Out of Africa when Blixen
receives the news of her infertility came to mind. She was also
putting her clothes back on as the reality of it sank in, and we
could see the shock and tragedy on Merryl Streep's face. We are a
tribe, the waist-down-naked-women of the world, who learn the
children we dreamed of having are now erased from our futures. I
realized, of course, that modern medicine and fertility treatments
might mean I could still conceive, but I now understood what so many
women before me have felt. The moment you learn such a fate is a
deep, defining, dividing line in a life. There is before knowing and
after. It is two different worlds. I had just dipped my toe into the
scary one.
But knowing that I
might be infertile felt surprisingly empowering all the sudden. The
decision that I had delayed and delayed and delayed for a myriad of
reasons was finally made for me. Oh, shit, I really did wait too
long, was one thought that skittered through my head. But I was also
immediately feeling unburdened to unequivocally devote my energy and
time and desires to other endeavors. I did not have to figure out how
to fit a baby into my life. I did not have to spend the next 18-years
as a food factory, maid, babysitter, chauffeur, and all around slave
to what will surely be an unappreciative human until at least his or
her fist therapy session. There were plenty of other adventures,
challenges, projects and ambitions I could pursue if a child was not
in my future. I was free. That thought propped me up for about five
minutes.
The lump in my
throat started to grow as I waited for the nurse to take my blood. I
stood out in the clinic hallway, against the wall, trying not to be
in the way as the doctors and nurses and patients went about their
business. One thing you barely notice about aging until it's well
upon you is the shift from being the youngest in the room to being
the oldest. I looked around and everyone, all these adults, well into
their busy, full lives, were younger than me. And here I was standing
on the sidelines alone, realizing perhaps I had waited too long to
start the life I wanted. At that moment, I felt the world was moving
on and past me very quickly and without sympathy. I was being left
behind by the machinations of life. I fought back the tears.
The nurse was my
kind of lady. Dry and sassy. The kind of nurse who talks you through
any procedure with competent caretaker humor. She doesn't have to try
at it, it's just who she is. I tend to faint when stuck with needles,
so there's a big note in my chart that says: “Must be supine for
blood draws.” Lying on my back, staring at the ceiling while she
tied the rubber hose around my arm made it easier to confess: “I
just found out I only have one follicle.”
I had to tell
someone. The news was starting to feel like a twisting knife in my
side. I was on the verge of sobbing. I wanted a little sympathy for
my disappointment or at least some recognition of it.
“Well, that's the
magic egg then,” she shot back without a moment's beat, laughing
because I was so silly not to realize that. “Didn't they tell you
we have magic eggs around here? One of those is all you need.”
She made me laugh.
Through my tears. Literally. I didn't expect such irreverent words.
But her simple lighthearted gesture of hope stopped my self-pitying
spiral. It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, and I
love her for it.
I had to make a
decision that week if I would move forward with the process.
Jeanelle, Dr. P's sweet and patient right hand woman who will guide
me through the nitty gritty of treatments, taught me how to take the
two different types of shots I would have to give myself everyday. I
took good notes, completely ignoring the fact that I was terrified of
giving myself shots. It's like dropping a diamond earring into the
toilet. Even a dirty disgusting toilet. You suck it up and you just
stick your hand down in there to grab it. It's just something you
have to do and fretting about it only makes it worse.
I spoke with Dr. P,
and he said it was possible, after injecting my body with the ovarian
stimulation drugs, that more follicles might appear. He said a few
might even be hidden behind the fibroids. He noted, too, that he had
not done the ultrasound, so he could not be sure if the young intern
simply missed seeing teeny follicles that a more well-trained eye
would spot.
Also, as is common
in fertility treatment, I was prescribed birth control pills for 21
days to suppress follicle and egg growth in my ovaries. In a normal
cycle, our ovaries produce several follicles, and they compete to
become the one dominant follicle that will develop into the single
egg that will be released that month. The rest of the follicles and
potential eggs die in the competition. Think of it as The Hunger
Games for a much younger crowd.
The well-proven
theory for fertility treatments is that putting a woman on birth
control will suppress the competition between the follicles so that
none of them become dominant. The next step is to rev up the ovaries
so that every follicle grows into an egg instead of just the dominant
one. It's like cutting back a flowering shrub so that a greater
number of buds per branch bloom next season. Regardless of whether I
retrieve my eggs to freeze or fertilize, the goal is to harvest as
many blossomed eggs as possible in one cycle.
But sometimes, the
birth control, especially in someone my age, can over-suppress
follicle growth. That, too, could account for the desert landscape on
my ovaries.
Despite the bad
news, I wasn't ready to throw in the towel on this cycle yet. I
wanted to give my body a chance to let the ovarian stimulation drugs
go to work and surprise everyone with a basket full of bushels. I
also simply wanted to get this done as soon as possible. But I knew
that one follicle was a truly bad sign. I couldn't imagine spending
the $10,000 - $15,000 (no, all those zeros are not a typo) to go
through the whole process if we'd only retrieve one egg, which has
such a low chance of actually becoming a baby. I needed lots of eggs
to raise my odds of a successful pregnancy.
I had three days to
think about it...
No comments:
Post a Comment