That started the nightmare, the feeling that you were falling, falling downward and away. That this would take away everything you had. That this would be a lifetime and a short few years of life and saying goodbye.
I wanted a child, I didn’t want this. I just wanted a family and it felt like I had done this to myself. I didn’t imagine that in doing this, I wouldn’t know how long I’d live.
Even if I had not, how did I miss the hardness for so long. How had I deliberated on feeling it and put off getting it checked out. Why didn’t I run to the doctor? Why didn’t I check more regularly. I don’t even remember how long I had felt the hardness for, was it this year, or was it last year as it slipped into this?
How could I have been so stupid, so blinded by hope, so infallible? Why didn’t I see the risks, why wasn’t I less brave?
In truth, I was always fearful. When we made the decision to finish the transfers and move on to donor eggs, I had thought that this meant getting off the fertility roller-coaster. I thought it meant a new beginning, healing, never having to go to the hospital again.
I ached in knowing that I was wrong, that I was going to spend much more time there, in the scariest parts of the hospital. Why me. Why did all this happen to me. Why is this happening to me. Isn’t three years with infertility bad enough?
I don’t know if I would be non-reactive to estrogen or progesterone. I don’t know if it would make me feel better if it did. Would I have been destined to get this at this age and would I have done life differently if I did? Or would I feel just more stupid for feeding it with a year of IVF treatments and estrogen. I don’t know if it was the stress of everything that has happened in the past. If it’s my inability to not think. Does it matter?
All I know is that my life is changed forever.
I don’t know what will become of me. I am so scared of so many things, the diagnosis, the pain, the financial cost, the curtailment of our lives, the fact that I will never be able to carry a child. I am frightened that I am 33 and women who face this are over 40, or 50.
I don’t even have children. All the blogs I read of young cancer women were mothers, of two, of three. What was going to give me the will to struggle or fight.
I imagined stopping blogging about infertility, that it wouldn’t be a condition that defined me. Not to continue blogging on a cancer blog. It was over, in the most horrible way. It was over and not even begun. I was terrified and already tired.
Would it even be responsible for me to ever think about having a child? I can’t answer that right now. My mind whirls just thinking about it. All this journey to end up here. Why, God. The grief is overwhelming.
It was so large, so large, so vascular. So very scary. I had little hope. I know that when cancer strikes young, it is more deadly and aggressive, and despite all the doctors I didn’t believe the prognosis was good. I was scared for my life. Scared for what my life would become.
More pain, more procedures, feeling really really sick and slumped over a bathroom. In an instant my life changed and I felt bad for Zhan. What children would he have to comfort him, what path had he chosen, how would we manage, what kind of life would this be. I didn’t want to live without him, or want him to live without me.
It felt unreal, surreal, like this was happening to someone else. Someone else’s husband and parents were crying. I felt horrible, every minute, every day of the next following days.
I read blogs, I read articles. I stopped reading because it scared me. I was too scared to read. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. It was like my world had come crashing in and I could barely breathe.
I might not live past 5 years or 10 years. I didn’t believe the doctors that I was going to be fine. What is fine? Once you have it, it is always there. Fine for how long? And what is fine. I was going to suffer, I was going to maybe survive, for what?
To really, really feel afraid. In an instant, it shook and changed every perspective I had. It was nothing, nothing compared to what I felt now.
The days were a nightmare. As reality sank in, it was a bad time. I was tired, fatigued. Why was it always a struggle, the news never got better. But even going to the grocery store was a privilege. That’s how it is when you realize you can’t take anything for granted.
People say life goes on, but I wanted life to stop. I wanted life to just rewind a few days to before I had any cares. When I thought I was troubled, when I was hopeful and looking forward to our plan. When it was possible to plan anything at all.
How did I have this growing, active thing for all the time that I’d been healthy. All the time that I thought I was fit and exercising and eating healthily. What was wrong with me. There are so few women who do IVF and get cancer or are young and get cancer. Why did I have to be in that minority statistic. Why did I have to keep fighting. Why.
I didn’t want to struggle some more, or mourn some more or grieve some more. I was done with that. I was so hopeful that was coming to an end. I don’t want to have to pay a hundred times more for treatments to fix treatments from before, that weren’t even successful. Why.
As the reality set in, I was dizzy with disbelief. I ached everything, nothing I heard made sense. I was so scared. I was so scared for my husband.
I felt like IVF was this robber who had taken my beautiful health, my beautiful life. And I had duplicioustously allowed it.
Conceptually I knew that people would have to live alone for some point in their lives, I had seen this play out in older couples, but when I thought about life, I didn’t think about how much life I had left. I wanted to create and give life, not death.
I stopped reading, because it all made me feel sick to my stomach. In fear, in loathing and disgust. For what I have, for what I’ve done and for what I don’t yet even know.
