We were on vacation in Oregon when the phone calls
started. It felt a bit like being
repeatedly pummeled in a boxing ring with an opponent who outweighs you by
fifty pounds.
Brian has no FSH or LH hormones due to his cancer as a baby,
and, even with fertility meds, has zero likelihood of ever producing a child.
“Complete testicular failure” they called it.
I am a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. There will always be a
chance that I could have a baby with CF, even using a donor, because they are
unable to screen for every possible mutation.
My blood work came back showing my low “ovarian reserve.”
This is a number between 1-5 that rates how many eggs you have left remaining
based on your age, etc. I came in at
0.48. I could tell by the surprise in
Jennifer’s (Dr. Slater’s nurse) voice that she was stunned by the results as
well. By all accounts I am perfectly
healthy. I have regular cycles and always have. However, my likelihood of
having a baby is very small.
So, the options for me include an ever-increasing drug
cocktail of several different fertility meds and multiple ultrasounds every
month to see if they worked. Also, we still had the daunting task of deciding on
a donor and then face the realities of the risk of having a CF child.
The cost became the deciding factor. All of the drugs and
procedures would be enormously expensive-and it might not work. If we were going
to go to that much trouble- if we were going to put my body through all of
that- we wanted a guarantee.
Later on, it became about more than the money. How do we
justify spending all of that money on a pregnancy? There are millions of
orphans around the world in need of homes and parents who love them. We began
to feel very convicted about pursuing infertility treatments.
Based on all of this, we closed the door on a pregnancy for
me. When I told my mom, I told her that we would not be having a baby because I
was broken, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment