Growl- or Dry Drowning, Part 2.

For the past few months, I have laid low.  Very low.  I have barely spoken to anyone outside of my immediate family and have probably spoken the most to my three year old.  

He's quite the conversationalist.  

But I haven't just laid low, I have been low.  Very low.  I have been antsy and angry and felt complicit and uncomfortable and subtly anguished.  Desperate.  My illness is, pardon the pun, eating me alive.  My self doubt and loathing batter at my doors with disquieting strength.  Some days are better than others, some days are worse.  Most days I find joy in my boy.. but otherwise these past few months have seen a quiet disregard for myself and a pained, if inevitable, leaning back into grief. 

Hours before we received the news
I stared in delighted awe at all 
these hopeful ribbons tied 
to a bridge in Aveiro, Portugal. 

A little over a year ago, I went through the initial phases of IVF treatment.*  I took the antibiotics, gave myself the shots, braced myself for all the things.**  All the emotions and hormones and feelings and feelings of tentative hope and wild fear and failing and failure.  Neither myself nor my husband have a fertility problem.  No- we have a cancer issue.  I have written about it previously and don't feel the need to dip back into that.  Suffice to remind- my husband carries a genetic mutation on his TP53 gene.  It is not a guarantee that he will get cancer- but it is basically a guarantee that he will get cancer (and he has).  And it is autosomal dominant- any offspring he has will have a 50-50 chance of also having this mutation.  Again- see previous posts, but the worst two weeks of my life were waiting to find out whether our baby had gotten it.  

We lucked out with him.  

We wouldn't take the chance with number two.  

You see, we could hedge our bets a little this time.  With E, while I was pregnant, we had no idea that Steve had this mutation (chalked his astrocytoma up to bad luck, hey).  We had no idea that our little creature could be in some sort of genetic danger.  No idea he could or would be tested.  But after we found out, after at very long length we decided to grow our family one more time, we made sure to throw the kitchen sink at this damned gene.  This awful thing.  

And so we devised a plan.  

I would go through IVF- what embryos were successfully fertilized would be sent to a genetics testing lab where they would be carefully combed over for any signs of TP53 or BRCA2 (Steve has both).  The healthiest would be implanted, a much wanted pregnancy would ensue and ta-da! baby number 2.  The first two, we checked off the list.  Then we took our family of three to Portugal for a holiday and a little more rekky while we waited for the genetics lab to do its thing.  

Of the 13 eggs they harvested, 11 were viable.  Of those 11, seven were then successfully fertilized.  Of those seven, only three were sent to be tested.  

All three had the genetic mutation.  All three had the cancer gene.  None would be implanted.  None would be grown and delivered and held.  Three little faces I would never see.  Three people, three individuals I would never have the privilege to meet and know and love.  Three babies lost at once.  

I fractured.  Into a million pieces I fractured.  In that moment, and so many of the moments afterward, I felt such anger, such hatred.  I was angry at my husband- I hated his genes.  I was angry at the fertility clinic and the genetics lab and everyone involved in my treatment from top to bottom.  And I hated myself.  I blamed myself.  

And I mourned.  I mourned for those three babies.  I mourned for our family.  I mourned for myself.  I had not told many people what Steve and I were doing, what we were planning on doing.  And so I did not tell many people about the results.  

About the aftermath. 

In the very quiet moments, silent with my grief, I felt alone in a way that I had not felt since the worst of my worst relapse.  I felt alone in a way that I still cannot describe.  I felt sadness that I cannot describe.  Not adequately.  Never adequately.   

So here I am a year later.  A lot has happened.  A lot, actually, has happened.  Some of it means something, most of it means we are alive and moving forward- which is a different sort of something.  But here I have been so low.  And it took me a while to pinpoint it- 

Not long after the news.
He was- and is the best balm 
for heartache.

I am not over it.  Where I thought I had started to heal, to knit those three lost parts of my soul back together and back into myself... I am still not entirely- no, not entirely.  I am still not at all healed.  Not really.  I drop E off at his little school three days a week.  There are other parents- each with their own stories and sadnesses, their own trials- so many with a second or third or fourth baby on their hip.  There are other mothers, dancing with their littler ones while sending their little one off.  Or pregnant.  Or talking about pregnancy.  

My husband's disease is doing it's own thing.  My son is, as ever, North on my compass.  I am grateful for every second I have with them both.  (Well... E is going through the treacherous threes...).  And in my most vicious moments, it's not 'wanted' but 'want' to have another baby.  

The first question that people tend to ask after they find out all of the above is "well why don't you just do IVF again?"

That is not an option.  The emotional toll it took on me nearly broke my family.  

Adoption is an option but given the upcoming move to Portugal, there are a few kinks to work out.   

And Steve's cancer is back in a very real way.  And something he said to me the other day cut like a knife in a very real way.  He lives with the possibility that he is not going to see our child grow.  He lives with the weight of cancer relentlessly trying to drag him down.  We are his buoy.  But what would he do? think? feel? about leaving behind not just me and E- but me and E and another one?

And here we are.  Here we have been.  There we go.  

*I want to take just a heartbeat here to recognize every family who has had their own unique IVF journey.  Ours did not work out- some do not.  Some do.  To all of you who have been through it- good, bad, ongoing- I tip my hat.  Forever. 

**To be fair- my mom gave me a lot of the shots.  Steve was away and she spent her entire career as a pediatric nurse.  She is considerably more practiced at the art of the painless needle than I or anyone else I know.