Saturday, September 13, 2008

Conclusion

September 13

After a long silence, I am finally updating the blog – three months after my last entry. As those closest to us know, Andrés has recovered completely from his surgery. All that’s left as a reminder that anything happened is the scar that cuts across his now flat abdomen and the half a pill he takes each day to prevent acid buildup in his stomach. He lost a total of 30 pounds and has not regained them, which he welcomes as a bit of a bonus for having gone to hell and back. He looks and feels great, and he’s eating and drinking the same variety of things he did before, but with a slightly diminished tolerance for greasy food. What can I say? He is just very lucky that way. Not everyone comes out of this surgery with the same luck.

On the in vitro front, we obviously took a break while he recovered and my stress level went down post-surgery and the ensuing infection that sent him back to the hospital in July. I went on a hormone called DHEA, in pill form and taken three times a day for a minimum of two months, which helped increase my ovarian reserve of follicles month to month. I continued to go to the clinic to see how many follicles I was making on day 3 of each cycle. At one point I got up to 8, but since I had not been on the hormones for the minimum required months, we decided to wait till the next cycle.

That cycle happened at the end of August. I had only five follicles when they checked. They put me on the pill for four days for scheduling purposes and when I went to check again, I had one more follicle. With six we were good to go and the hormones started.

Back at the beginning of the summer, the four of us had sat down and decided that October would be our deadline to make this work or cancel the process. We had never thought we’d get stuck on this stage of the process for so long, and we just couldn’t expect Sheona and Jon to put their lives on hold indefinitely while they jacked up my dose of hormones month to month in hopes of better luck. And then there were our own limits. There is only so much failure one can take before you say enough.

This cycle was unsuccessful, like all the others. It seems the more stimulation drugs I’ve had to take, the less stimulated my ovaries have been. Finally, on day 7 of this cycle, just last Thursday, we canned it and called off the process entirely. We had reached our ‘enough’ moment, almost two and a half years since we had first uttered the word “surrogacy” and meant it as an option. I can hear your collective sighs of relief.

We have experienced a really full range of infertility in the last 8 and a half years, from early miscarriage, to late miscarriage, from therapeutic abortion to the inability to conceive, albeit in vitro. I have to say that the in vitro process has been the most draining, the most heart wrenching, the most stressful. I don’t think that I got anything positive from it. For all the strength and reason that I discovered I had with each of my losses, I didn’t discover anything new about myself or my quest for motherhood with this process. All I am left with is the knowledge that we left no stone unturned, and the comfortable numbness of defeat, the one you experience before the floodgates open and you start feeling again and thinking again.

This has been in many ways a very public experience, between the blog and the conversations with friends, even neighbours. Many of you thought that we should have been more private about it. Perhaps you were right. Living this process out in the open definitely added pressure that we could have done without. But on the flip side, the blog was a place where I could unload and keep everyone up to date with news, avoiding having to tell the same thing over and over again. I think it served its purpose. I have no regrets.

In the coming months we will probably get back on our feet, shake off the dust from our last fall and see what we will do next. The obvious step is adoption, but this is a new and long journey ahead with its own set of rules, pros and cons. Not one that I am ready to embark on this very moment. There will be a host of info sessions and courses before we arrive at that crossroads.

In the meantime, it’s always a good idea to decompress and chill. We’ll be trying to head out on a trip or two before the end of the year and to spend some money on something fruitful for a change. We haven’t taken a vacation this year and I think we deserve it more than ever.

1 comment:

Judy Bailey Sabari said...

dear patty and andres
i just want to say that i have been reading this blog off and on for a while and though i mainly stay silent, my thoughts are often with the two of you. and although mny experiences can never be compared to yours, the way you write, patty, makes me understand you very well. you can be sure that you are a terrific writer and thinker and person.
i hope you have a great trip whereveryou go. and may you both enjoy life for a while. love to you both,
judy