The Measure of My Failure
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
ou know that dream a lot of people seem to have about finding themselves in a classroom, naked, and taking a test they know nothing about and haven’t studied for? That dream has been my experience of infertility.
Those of you who know me understand what a Type-A, Dr. Fix-it, problem-solver that I am. The challenge is that none of these skills can be brought to bear to make ones ovaries behave the way you want them to. This is the most frustrating experience in the world.
I remember when I started this mess back in January of 2004. I didn’t anticipate that my body might have other ideas about going along with the program. I took my shots and expected it all to be simple. Until after a week of stims, I ended up with an estradiol level that didn’t move beyond 30.
Even then I didn’t really get it. There had to be a simple reason that it didn’t work. Perhaps it was the meds. Maybe I need to find something different. I even called Serono, the manufacturer of Gonal-F to see if there had been reports of a complete lack of response to the drug. Yet two more attempts and two poor responses finally made it dawn on me that this wasn’t going according to plan.
I searched Medline, changed doctors, and changed my medications all with the goal of finally cracking the case of the reluctant ovaries. Though I did better, I never responded well. Finally it began to dawn on me that the simple answer to my problem was that I’m an old fart. By not wanting to get pregnant outside of marriage (something I still feel strongly about), I have missed my opportunity to have a child with my genes. It doesn’t matter that my aunt had her children at 40 and 43. I’m not her. My ovaries are different, uncooperative and traitorous.
Every time I went to the office for labs and an ultrasound, I felt like those people do in the dream. I’m being tested, but no amount of anxiety, force of will, or knowledge will affect the outcome of the study. My body is going to do whatever it wants to do. And every day when I looked at the sheet with my follicular development (or lack thereof) or every afternoon when I received the phone call with my labs and instructions, I felt the helplessness that arises when you can do nothing to change the outcome. Its like being a rat in a cage, being given electrical shocks whether you move or not. Nothing you do relates to the shock being received. All you do is sit there and take it, not understanding what is causing you to be shocked in the first place. Finally you get used to being shocked for no reason and just take it because you don’t know how to do otherwise.
Like the dream scenario, there is an overwhelming fear of failure in this process. Even when the logical part of your brain realizes that you cant do anything to affect the outcome, when you don’t respond like you hope to, you still feel like an abject failure. You take the problem on yourself and hold yourself liable in some way. If you had just found the right supplement, the right study, the right protocol, you wouldn’t have failed. Even when you know damn well that this is bollocks, you still own the responsibility for the failure of your Judas ovaries.
So I sit here this afternoon awash in feelings of failure and shame. Despite my 4 egg harvest yesterday, egg-quality issues caught up with me for fertilization. One egg fertilized. Another was atretic. The third began dividing on its own before fertilization (something called parthenogenesis that I remember from my Reproductive Biology class at Yale) and was deemed abnormal. The last egg was immature. The embryologist was going to see if it had matured today and perform ICSI if the egg was up to it. This leaves me with one, maybe two embryos for transfer on Tuesday. Not great odds. So much for my dreams of an 100% fertilization rate. I have failed again.
I’ve spent most of the day in bed nursing my shame. I do know better that to own this as my failure, but that logical part of my brain cannot connect with the primal hurt portion. One thing is clear, I cannot do another IVF cycle with my own eggs. It will be donor eggs, adoption or nothing. Unlike the rat in the cage, I hold the key to my own escape from this hell. Its time for me to exit stage left.
Curtain falls. Actress leaves the stage.