I'm not a Heroine Addict But If I Was I'd Be Good At It

It was an early nondescript weekday morning that I found myself entering an unassuming four story building the purpose of which was to deposit yet another sperm sample for doctors and embryologists to ogle.  Don't ask me why they need so much of my sperm, I can only assume that their sending it all over the country as examples in medical schools of what you don't want to see under a microscope. Posterity.  So, I walk into the office, write my name on the little sheet (even though I was the only one there), the receptionist hands me forms to fill out and turns to the nurses behind her saying, "The sperm freeze is here."  This is my life now.  I no longer have a name.  I'm just "the sperm freeze."

Being known around town for the state of your sperm is an interesting place to exist.  Most people don't know what to say or how to react when they ask how things are going or are unfortunate enough to make some quip asking "when are we going to have a baby" and are met with a stony, if not irritated, response. Being "the sperm freeze" brought it to a whole new level.  The nurses in the back kept repeating it to each other (to spread the news I guess) and I felt a tinge of frustration that was followed by incredulity and eventually ended in subdued acceptance of my new identity.  I guess there are worse things in the world to be known for...  And besides, this first step in the IVF process was but a small penance to pay for the insanely unfair position my partner would be in.

This week on Intervention...

I've been carrying around a fair amount of guilt over all of this.  I'm the one with the problem and she gets to endure all of the poking, prodding and monumental discomfort IVF entails. She's the lucky winner of shiny new nightly injections and a veritable cocktail of pharmaceutical magic.  And I get that this is just the practical piece of how this has to happen, I do, but man if I don't wish I could account for even a small piece of the shit end of this stick.  For now, I'll pay my penance by gearing up for lots of puke and poop clean-ups and attempting to find a way to be able to do those things without adding my own adult-sized vomit to the mix; no small task as my gag reflex is notoriously sensitive.  I still can't eat peas without an immediate involuntary heave.

So anyway, for about two weeks I stuck my partner with needles in order to entice her ovaries to produce as many follicles as humanly possible.  After more monitoring sessions in which I slowly watched her ovaries grow to the size of baseballs it was time for the retrieval, which of course meant more pain and torture for her.  This would require a doctor to stick a needle through the uterus and into the ovaries to suck out the follicles in which reside the eggs.  It all sounded very medieval to me.  They did at least put her under anesthesia for the surgery which probably doesn't mean much when you can't really stand up or walk for a few days afterwards.

All of this is a horribly abbreviated flash forward through a process that is about as satisfying as learning there is a cure to some long-standing grief that requires you to intensify and transform said grief in new and varied ways.  And of course it all ends with more waiting; waiting that can feel so interminably long that you almost forget you've already been trying and failing for years to have a child on your own. So we do the only thing we've been able to do and wait.  There are moments when we dare to hope and moments when we feel like we need to prepare ourselves for the worst but never a moment when we aren't acutely aware how long we've been waiting.  I guess, in a way, it's fitting.  Here we are in the middle of a season of waiting and we wait.  Small consolation at times but at least its helpful to be reminded that we're not the only ones in the world waiting for something.