Balloons

Exhibit A. That's me in the clouds. Looks like a long way down huh? It's going to hurt if I fall. More on that later. 

Today I get to use the "T" word. Tomorrow. Tomorrow Ginny arrives. I'm not liking just initials (GN) so I am going to call my angel on earth “Ginny”. It's a sweet, happy name for a sweet, happy woman.  I'd suggest it to her if she didn't already have a beautiful name she was using.

Tomorrow is the day she arrives for our first transfer attempt. You may notice that I don't say "The Transfer" and I call it an “attempt”. That's because we've thought we were close before and I’ve learned that you have to watch out for hope. Dr. Two told me he had a 90% success rate increasing a woman's uterine lining using a drug called Trental. I spent nine months on Trental. Every month he gave us hope and told me to try it for three more months. We tried it for nine. Nothing happened. Dr. Six told me that he could fix my uterus with surgery. After the surgery he told me it went well. The hope crept in and lift us. A few months later he did a saline sonohystogram and told me my uterus looked beautiful. THAT gave us hope. I made him print a sonogram picture of my still empty but "beautiful" uterus and stared at it, crying the whole way home. That really gave us hope. I stared at it the way most women stare at the sonograms of their first baby. The next month the lining of my uterus did not grow.

For those of you who have never had a doctor look at the lining of your uterus, it should be at least 8-9mm for the little embryo to snuggle into. Some women can get a nice lining of up to 20mm. My lining maxed out at 6mm, and that was a good month. Last month it was 2.4mm. Pitiful. There is nothing for the embryo to hold onto. No warm safe nest for our baby to snuggle into. It is so sad for me to think that My Love and I can make embryos, most months we probably do, and then they just fall out of me because my uterus refuses to make a safe home for them. I feel like my uterus is killing our children. For this I hate my uterus. I always will. I wish the doctor would take it out. It's useless to me. No, its not useless, it's a mass murderer. My uterus is to embryos what Dexter is to criminals. 

I asked my doctor about for a uterine transplant. Couldn't they just give me a healthy uterus? All of my other girly bits work just fine. All I need is a uterus. They tried to do a uterine transplant in 1931 and the woman died. They did another in 2000 in Saudi Arabia, but it had to be removed after 99 days. No other doctors want to try them. They say that a uterus isn’t a vital organ. Tell that to a woman who doesn’t have one or who has one that doesn’t work. This is where Ginny comes in. She also has a beautiful uterus, but unlike mine, hers does it’s job and holds tight to embryos.

So, back to tomorrow. Tomorrow gives me hope. I hope. My Love hopes. We hope. We hope that someday we will be able to look back and call Friday THE transfer day. We can’t hope too much though. There is only a 35% chance of success for any given transfer. It might just be the first of many transfer attempts. That’s why you have to be careful with hope. If you let that little helium balloon that is hope fly too high you have the potential to fall much further. I can’t deal with other people’s balloons. I have found over the past few years of infertility that when you share even somewhat-hopeful-news, people will tie their helium balloons to you whether you want them or not. See Exhibit A. Their hope can lift you too high and lead to a very long fall. For now I am only allowing three balloons to be tied to me. My own, My Love's and Ginny's. These three balloons keep me upright. If not for these balloons I would be roadkill. I've got to be careful though. Just a little hope. No more than three balloons. Please don't mind me if I pop your balloon.