Greetings from India. All is as well as can be hoped for now. Mamayar (mother-in-law in Tamil) is doing decent. She's eating a very limited diet (fruit & rice) in small portions due to severe nausea. She's also got pretty bad vertigo & stays in bed a lot; Vid says she has not left the apartment in over a month. We are meeting the doctor from which they got a 2nd opinion tomorrow for results of her liver & lung biopsy. If they can pinpoint a gene (there are 3) they *might* be able to buy her some time, meaning at most a year. If they can't link her cancer to 1 of the 3 common ones then there's literally nothing more they can do. We are all obviously praying she's got 1 of the 3. However, my faith in general has been severely shaken in the past couple of days not because of cancer, but because of infertility.
This past week, I've had 3 friends experience pregnancy loss & 1 who is in a very delicate state. One friend lost her twins with little warning @ 18 weeks, another lost a singleton @ 9 weeks & yet another a singleton again @ 14 weeks. My friend in a delicate state has a funneling cervix @ 20 weeks of gestation with twins & can use all the good vibes you could spare her.
True, most long time infertiles such as myself are battle-hardened, as we go through cycle after cycle of BFNs. We are very aware of the fact our condition is delicate for the first couple of months & often don't tell people our wonderful news until we're out of the perceived danger zone, usually sometime after the 1st tri is over. And just when we're getting used to the fact this may finally have worked (*gasp*!), we wake up to severe bleeding or go to a routine appt where a heartbeat cannot be detected.
I ache for these women. They've done all they humanly could to give their baby or babies the best possible & yet it wasn't good enough. Why? Saying "goodbye" before you get to say "hello" is so cruel, especially after you've waited so long for that "hello" to finally come.
And it really makes me wonder if I'm cut out for IVF with ICSI? I mean, my RE says it will give me my best shot @ getting pregnant, but then what? Because I don't want to be pregnant if it won't end with a living, breathing being lying on my chest. I'm more than prepared for another BFN since that's all I've ever known, but after 3+ years of TTC I don't know if I can handle a loss. I've actually told Vid I would not be surprised if I ended up in a psych hospital, which would be awkward for many reasons: I may very well see my own patients there or I may have a colleague giving me Haldol injections so I can zone out!
In all seriousness, it's times like these when I wonder if taking a break from all things infertility would be a good thing: a break from message boards, a break from therapy, a break from blogging. Out of sight, out of mind? If only it were that simple. I live in a real world with real people & as much as I'd like to climb under a rock some days I know it doesn't work that way. Doing so won't give these women their babies back. And it won't give me the child I want so very much. Plus, if it were me in their situation, I'd want the support of my fellow infertiles in my most difficult times.
So as much as I'd love to go, I'm staying right here.
