couples_therapy | 43.5. Family matters
43.5.(36.3.) Discuss your feelings on the possibility of having a family with your partner someday.
[Follows THIS]
Sperm washing.
How stupid does that sound? I can’t shake the image of a bunch of people in scrubs carrying an armload of sperm in baby blankets and putting them in little baths with rubber duckies and bubbles. That could be part of the reason I can’t stumble over this mental block in my mind to consider this whole thing clearly. It has been nearly three months since I found out I was Positive and I keep waiting to wake up one day and my whole life to have some clarity.
I’m still waiting.
Right now my brain just feels like the slushy remnants of a tepid cup of coffee sloshing around in the bottom of a dirty mug. I can’t see anything clearly no matter how hard I try, and my relationship has been the biggest casualty in this whole thing.
No one can ever foresee crap like this happening to them. It always seems like it should be happening to someone else. As a doctor, you know what precautions you need to take to stay safe from work injury. Rubber gloves, face masks, contam waste bins, hand-washing… But this? I have only just started to realise I didn’t deserve this and it wasn’t my fault. How could I have known a mentally ill patient was going to elude Triage and attack me with a contaminated needle? At the same time, it could’ve happened to any other doctor and any other doctor might have escaped the infection because they still had their spleen and I didn’t. My luck was in the crapper. Fucking shit happens. I just wish this shit didn’t have to happen to me.
Before any of it, I always wanted a family of my own one day. I wanted to find someone special to marry and have a couple of kids with a nice house with a swing set out back and maybe a dog. It just always felt like a given. I was only in my early twenties, so what was the rush? Plenty of time, and all that bollocks. Then all of a sudden, my life as I know it was ripped away and I couldn’t find my footing before I was falling over a cliff of uncertainty. I was HIV Positive. I wasn’t ever going to be able to have sex with someone without a condom again, and even then there were risks it could break. The last three months have been terrifying and suffocating as I struggle to find some new normal that I can cope with. It always just seems too far out of my reach.
But through it all, my wonderful girlfriend has stuck beside me and shouldered all my bullshit. She took care of me when I was horrifically ill from the amount of foreign substances being introduced into my body to keep the infection from killing me. She let herself drown in my grief and caught me when I fell. She didn’t break when I had to hold on to her so tight to stop myself letting this thing swallow me to the point of no return.
Sex became a phobia for me. There was too much risk for me to be able to view it as anything more than a death sentence. I struggled with the notion that I would never have unprotected sex again and that the epitome of complete and connected lovemaking was gone. There was always going to need to be a barrier, and for me it felt like more than just a physical one. I’ve slowly been able to move on from that in some capacity, even if it just hasn’t been the same since. But conceiving a child naturally is an impossibility for me and that has now raised a whole new wave of heartache for us.
Do I want a family with Evie someday? Fuck yes. More than I could even begin to say. Will we have it? Well, that’s a whole completely different story. To risk or not to risk? Dabble in clinical intervention that might give us a chance to have children, but never naturally and easily, if it even works at all? To risk Evie’s health and the health of a baby we might be able to have conceived in a Petri dish? I’m fucking petrified and I just don’t know if I have the courage to risk it. And I don’t know if I have the inner strength to get through the risk, let alone be a parent.
Word Count | 748
[Follows THIS]
Sperm washing.
How stupid does that sound? I can’t shake the image of a bunch of people in scrubs carrying an armload of sperm in baby blankets and putting them in little baths with rubber duckies and bubbles. That could be part of the reason I can’t stumble over this mental block in my mind to consider this whole thing clearly. It has been nearly three months since I found out I was Positive and I keep waiting to wake up one day and my whole life to have some clarity.
I’m still waiting.
Right now my brain just feels like the slushy remnants of a tepid cup of coffee sloshing around in the bottom of a dirty mug. I can’t see anything clearly no matter how hard I try, and my relationship has been the biggest casualty in this whole thing.
No one can ever foresee crap like this happening to them. It always seems like it should be happening to someone else. As a doctor, you know what precautions you need to take to stay safe from work injury. Rubber gloves, face masks, contam waste bins, hand-washing… But this? I have only just started to realise I didn’t deserve this and it wasn’t my fault. How could I have known a mentally ill patient was going to elude Triage and attack me with a contaminated needle? At the same time, it could’ve happened to any other doctor and any other doctor might have escaped the infection because they still had their spleen and I didn’t. My luck was in the crapper. Fucking shit happens. I just wish this shit didn’t have to happen to me.
Before any of it, I always wanted a family of my own one day. I wanted to find someone special to marry and have a couple of kids with a nice house with a swing set out back and maybe a dog. It just always felt like a given. I was only in my early twenties, so what was the rush? Plenty of time, and all that bollocks. Then all of a sudden, my life as I know it was ripped away and I couldn’t find my footing before I was falling over a cliff of uncertainty. I was HIV Positive. I wasn’t ever going to be able to have sex with someone without a condom again, and even then there were risks it could break. The last three months have been terrifying and suffocating as I struggle to find some new normal that I can cope with. It always just seems too far out of my reach.
But through it all, my wonderful girlfriend has stuck beside me and shouldered all my bullshit. She took care of me when I was horrifically ill from the amount of foreign substances being introduced into my body to keep the infection from killing me. She let herself drown in my grief and caught me when I fell. She didn’t break when I had to hold on to her so tight to stop myself letting this thing swallow me to the point of no return.
Sex became a phobia for me. There was too much risk for me to be able to view it as anything more than a death sentence. I struggled with the notion that I would never have unprotected sex again and that the epitome of complete and connected lovemaking was gone. There was always going to need to be a barrier, and for me it felt like more than just a physical one. I’ve slowly been able to move on from that in some capacity, even if it just hasn’t been the same since. But conceiving a child naturally is an impossibility for me and that has now raised a whole new wave of heartache for us.
Do I want a family with Evie someday? Fuck yes. More than I could even begin to say. Will we have it? Well, that’s a whole completely different story. To risk or not to risk? Dabble in clinical intervention that might give us a chance to have children, but never naturally and easily, if it even works at all? To risk Evie’s health and the health of a baby we might be able to have conceived in a Petri dish? I’m fucking petrified and I just don’t know if I have the courage to risk it. And I don’t know if I have the inner strength to get through the risk, let alone be a parent.
Word Count | 748