Don't Label me Infertile! How I got here

How I got here:
I met Kevin when I was 16 years old. I had a summertime babysitting job and they happened to have a car for sale and it was listed in the paper. I happen to answer the phone one day and it was someone interested in the car. I told him he would have to call back to speak with the owners. The very next day, he called again. And again, I told him to call back. He persisted, everyday for about a week, calling about the car. I was at the house the day he came to look at the car and I was head over heels in love immediately! Due to our age difference, nothing ever became of this except a high school crush. We eventually found each other again and started dating when I was 19 years old. It was May of 1998. I was in nursing school and Kevin had just bought a house. On Valentine’s day,1999, Kevin proposed!! I was so excited to say yes!

The summer of 1999, we had our engagement party and planned to get married the following year, July 15, 2000. That was the exact Saturday between our birthdays. I had planned to continue in college full time while Kevin worked. I wanted to be a nurse practitioner. We had our life’s plan. Kevin started to not feel well and had to go to the doctors several times that summer. By Kevin’s 25th birthday (August 1999) he had been diagnosed with Leukemia. I felt the world around me come crashing down. Here I was, planning my dream wedding, he had bought our dream home, we were
planning the rest of our lives together and now this. Due to the severity of his leukemia, Kevin needed to have a bone marrow transplant as soon as a donor was found. His brother turned out to be a perfect match and Kevin was scheduled to enter the hospital on Monday, October 11, 2000.

The Wednesday before the Monday he was to be admitted, we had been driving home from one
of his appointments and Kevin pulled over. He was crying. He turned and looked at me and said these words that I will remember for the rest of my life. He said, “Amber, I don’t want to go into the hospital and never have had the chance to be married to you.” We called our parents and asked for their blessings to get married that weekend. Everyone was supportive and between his parents and some family friends, we had a small wedding at his parents cabin in Lake Gaston. We spent only one night as husband and wife before he had to check into the hospital. We only saw each other on weekends so that I could work and try to support our household. Suddenly, I became responsible for our home and paying all the bills. I'd only ever lived at home with my parents and briefly in an apartment prior to getting married! Kevin was in the hospital until December, right before Christmas.

His recovery has taken a long time and financially, took a toll on us. We eventually had to sell our beautiful dream home and it took many years to get back on our feet. More than ten years later, we are still repairing the effects those years took on our lives. There were times I had to make a choice between buying $150 in prescriptions to keep him alive or pay the electric bill. Many times, we chose to live by candles and eat like college kids. We were so young.

In 2006, we were given an amazing gift by a friend that took us to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and things in our lives were starting to look up. I was about to graduate from college which I had been going to part-time since finding out Kevin was sick. Kevin was back to work and feeling stronger. It was Thanksgiving, and I was sitting at a table of 18 of our family and friends and I looked around and it was then that I realized: Kevin’s sister was pregnant, Kevin’s sister in law was pregnant and both of my sister’s were pregnant. And, I mean, pregnant enough to be showing. I grabbed the bottle of wine off the table and locked myself in the bathroom for the rest of the night. This was the first time I had come to realize that my dreams of becoming a mother were probably never
going to happen. I suddenly felt like I was being suffocated and this began to consume me. I realized then for me, it was not OK to not have children and I began to contemplate my marriage. I confided in Kevin that not having children was not something that I could live with.

Luckily, when Kevin found out he was sick, a doctor friend of ours urged us to bank his sperm before he started treatment. There was only such a short time to do this but, I am thankful we did. That December, 2006, I went to see a nurse midwife friend of mine and told her about the events of Thanksgiving dinner. She told me about a fertility clinic called Shadygrove in Maryland. I scheduled an appointment and a friend of mine went with me for the road trip (4 hours each way). We planned to make a day of shopping at the outlets after my appointment. I remember meeting Dr. Levy for the first time and before he had a chance to talk, I asked him only one thing. "Please don't label me infertile! I am not infertile. I just need the egg and sperm to meet each other outside of my body and for you to get it where it needs to be!" You see, it was a simple matter of logistics.

Our lives changed that day I walked into his office. I remember noticing that he had a collection of fertility Gods he had collected from all the countries he had ever visited. One of them caught my attention right away and I pulled from my purse, the exact same one. I had gotten it at a fair. It was from South Africa. The woman who had sold it to me told me that she could tell I needed it and that this one had been blessed. I felt like this was a sign! Dr. Levy pulled out a sheet of paper and he
drew three columns. In each column he wrote out my options and how much it was going to cost me. I started to feel sick and dizzy. There were numbers with numerous zeros and amounts of money that I knew I was not capable of getting. At the end of this, he drew an X over all of them and told me he wanted me to participate in a drug study. This was going to be the best option financially for us. He introduced me to nurse Tasha. What was supposed to be an hour consultation, turned into a three hour appointment. They did all the screening and work up necessary to start the invitro process with my next cycle. This was a Friday. On Saturday, I started my period and with that, the start of the cycle.

Due to the logistics of where the clinic was and where I lived, I found it easier to go up the night before, have my appointments first thing in the morning, and then drive back to town. This was easy 4 hours of driving each way. On the day I was supposed to start my injectables, Kevin’s dad (Bob) had gone with me for the appointment. I had to have someone with me and he was up for the drive.
That morning, as we pulled into the parking lot of the clinic, we got a call that Bob’s mother had just passed away. We sat in the car in silence and I just reached over and held his and. I felt a crushing sensation in my chest as I offered to cancel the appointment and go home so that he could go be with the family, but he insisted I have my appointment. That was one of the longest and most
emotional days of this whole process. At the funeral and burial, we were standing outside and I remember feeling so cold but a strange calmness came over me as we were all standing outside saying our last goodbyes. At the supper afterwards, everyone kept reminding me that when there is a death, there is a birth, and that Gram would take care of us. After that day, with every appointment in Maryland, I notided it would snow the same way it did when we were at the funeral. I always felt like that was Gram’s way of letting us know she was there.

I found out on superbowl Sunday (February) that I was pregnant. My sister had an extra pregnancy test from when she found out she was pregnant and gave it to me. It was in the wrapper but had no box. I peed on the stick and waited for a good 3 minutes since I didn't have the instructions. I saw two faint lines. I remember from my teenage years that two lines generally meant pregnant but these were two different colors. One was blue, one was pink. I walked into the garage and said to Kevin, "I think I'm pregnant". He asked me if I was sure and I laughed and said, I didn't know since I didn't have the instructions but there were two lines!!! Since I worked for a doctor at the time, I went in early the next morning and had my blood drawn. That was one of the longest hours ever! I could hear the fax ring a mile a way and I jumped in anticipation for that white piece of paper to finish printing. I was crying before the paper could even cool off. There it was, in black and white. Three digit numbers.

Since I had participated in a drug study, they followed my pregnancy until I was 12 weeks. On the day of my last appointment with Shadygrove, they gave me a check for all of my money back stating the drug study had been funded in full. I will always wonder the true circumstances of why they
refunded my money.

To bring this story full circle: the baby was due October 18, 2007. On
September 11, the baby (Bambi is what we called it because we didn't know the sex) decided to try and make an appearance early and I was put on bedrest and medication to slow the pre-term labor. Rachel was born on October 11, 2007 at 5:20pm. Exactly 8 years from the date that Kevin checked into the hospital for his Leukemia treatment. She has been a blessing to us. We absolutely feel our lives are complete with her. She is 4 years old now and we are so thankful for the experience of being parents.

We recently decided we’d like to try for another baby. We live in Dallas now and have found a clinic that was recommended to us by Shadygrove. We need to participate in another drug study to assist us financially. My next blog will be about my first appointment with Center for Assisted Reproduction in Bedford Texas.