What seems like a million years ago, I was confronted with the decision of choosing between surgery or chemotherapy as the first step on this thing called my cancer journey. The choice was put forward to allow me to decide about babies.
I could start with surgery and have a window of a few weeks to make decisions about harvesting eggs, stimulating oestrogen and doing some further potential damage to my hormones. I was offered an emergency appointment with the fertility clinic as I had decided to go with surgery first, giving me approximately four weeks, back in July/August to try to gain information on this whole unknown area.
Fertility, pregnancy and babies was not something at 28 years of age that I had spent a great deal of time thinking about. So I waited for an appointment, juggling the pros and cons around in my head, soul searching to see if children was something I badly wanted.
Ask me pre-cancer diagnosis my attitude towards children and I would have probably have said something dismissive and non-committal. Sure I have loads of time to be thinking babies...not until I'm mid-way through my next decade do I need to seriously consider 'The Baby Question'.
I had loads of time, more time than I actually needed to think about this issue. My appointment for sometime in July, arrived and was not timetabled till the end of November, months after my surgery window. So all the potential for egg harvesting etc. was pretty defunct as I am now three quarters way through my chemo and the damage is already done. Tamoxifen here I come. Potential early menopause; no escaping and five years of waiting and seeing.
When I eventually dragged myself to my fertility appointment in November, I had even considered not going and was subsequently in a wicked mood because I was thinking 'whats the point?'. I had resolved myself to the fact that I didn't want babies anyway so it's no big deal and practically pointless even going to the clinic.
But I went anyway.
Rule number one in coming to the clinic... you had to bring your partner. It said so in capital letters on the end of the appointments page...so I think that means that it is capitally important. On my high horse and in a wicked mood, as I already said, I felt totally and illogically slighted. What if I didn't have a partner to bring with me, I muttered in the car, on the drive to the clinic, practically running over a pedestrian or two for good measure. Not only am I in the one boob, no hair department but now I'm potentially penalised for being single and wishing to go to the fertility clinic. As a form of protest, I thought about boycotting the whole thing. I imagined how people who find themselves in this situation and in a moment of desperation much seriously consider kidnapping some unsuspecting man and threatening him with some form of pain if he did not go along with their wicked ploy to deceive their way into the clinic.
Turns out I do have a partner and didn't need to resort to violence or crime, but I still felt in a huff, on behalf of those people.
Though on the day of the appointment I almost did resort to violence...on my partner. Walking in to the clinic he meets someone he knows, a very attractive looking, full haired women (I'm in a very unsightly beanie hat and have very little eyebrows remaining, so not feeling on top of my game in the attractive stakes!). She makes polite conversation and asks if we are going in for a swim (clinic is in a complex which contains a gym, library, coffee shop etc...any of these are plausable reasons to be going in the doors of this establishment would have done). BUT NO. In response to her query my boyfriend replies, 'oh, were just going into the clinic'.
Ground...open up... and swallow me! Now she probably thinks I have some kind of STI or strange mental illness, to go with my crazed look and equally crazed choice of head wear. The prospect of lying and saying were going to the coffee shop, or the library to renew membership...anything, anything but that....had not crossed his mind.
Ughhhh.
At least he is a terrible liar. A good characteristic I suppose.
So, after having a tiff at the reception desk, we make our way to the waiting area. About thirty empty chairs and us. I fill out the forms, all fifty million pages of them, and stare out the window. Disgusted at my inability.
Inability at what, I'm not sure, but I feel like a big let down. I don't know why, it's just that at 28, sitting in a fertility clinic is not the top of you're '100 things to do before I die' list.
Two minutes later I find myself in the office of the fertility man, can't pronounce his name, as its long winded and foreign and I'm too grouchy to ask him to repeat it (normally I'm good at that sort of thing). Anyway I take off my hat and hope that that speaks enough for the situation I find myself, being bald and all, but no, I need to go through in detail my diagnosis and treatment.
We talk about hormones, side effects, oestrogen stimulation and then he draws me a diagram. The body clock 35 self destruct diagram. I mean I subconsciously take on these subjects, through conversations with my older friends, clips from radio programmes, extracts from magazines, I know all about the 35 plateau. things. After 35 years its down hill in terms of egg production.
So he charted out this graph, age on the bottom line, percentage of eggs on the vertical line. Ok, so Im with you Doc. Typical number of eggs and their decline as you approach 35. hmmm I get it, I get it. Then in red pen he draws my line...........Eeekkkkkkkk, really crap line, really really crap line, it goes down, rapidly. and by all accounts post tamoxifen in five years time, I would want to be strapped up to the starting block, having done my warm up and ready to run the baby making race right from the word go.
He mentioned my options and they went like this, stimulate ovaries at risk of messing with oestrogen post tamoxifen if the little feckers are on a go slow. Wait to see naturally if the lights come back on after the extended five year power cut, or take your uterus and plant someone else's fertilised egg in there.
I'm not a prude, I think, and I'm all for medical progression in every field. When he said this I was uncomfortable, someone else's baby in me, not that it would be someone else's baby technically, it would be mine but would it? The room is getting very hot now and I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable. I don't know if I could do that, in fact I don't know if I can do any of that, babies, oestrogen, pushing, melon...ughhhhhh.
We shake hands, I say I'll come back in eight months when I know what drug regime I'm on and we will talk further.
As we leave I pass out through the waiting area. There are three couples sitting there. They all look up as I swing open the revolving doors. Each of them have some kind of soft desperation in their eyes, well, the women anyway, and I understand how hard it is to not be able to do the one thing that you thought you could always do, the one thing that you were made to do, the one thing that others are doing all the time, all around you. For a moment they all look at me and instant pity flashes through their faces and I can literally see it. They think, God, our situation is shite but at least I'm not as bad as her.
I jam my beanie cap back on my head and try not to cry on the drive home. I'm not even sure why, he hadn't told me anything I didn't know already. And I don't even know if I even want children, its something that I've never had strong feelings about.
However...
There is nothing like wanting something you're told you cant have.
