It’s been nearly two years, but I can still remember how it happened, all too vividly.
I had gotten married in the fall of 2017 and my husband and I were excited to grow our family. It was something we had talked about for a few years. We’d had our practice run at parenting, having raised our dog through her bratty puppy days, and we’d seen the ups and downs of raising tiny humans through our nieces and nephews. We were so ready for our turn.
When I stopped taking birth control, I reminded myself that it could take time before it happened for us. I knew that my hormones might need to balance out and that it might not happen overnight. I had known couples who tried for months and years, and I had shared in the heartbreak of friends who had had miscarriages. I felt prepared for the best and worst case scenarios.
As weeks passed, I felt increasingly that something wasn’t right. I rationalized to myself that my hormones were still rebalancing after having taken the pill for so many years. I’d manage my worries by repeating those stats that said it took most couples 6 months to a year of trying. Deep down though, I knew that something was off.
I tried to ignore the symptoms but they soon became inescapable and debilitating. It started with a few hot flashes. Then my hair starting falling out at a scary rate. Slowly, the night sweats took away my sleep and I would push through my work days on just a few hours of sleep, day after day, week after week. My anxiety became unmanageable, and my heart would randomly flutter and race, like a mini heart attack. I’d be sitting in a meeting, sweating profusely through my blouse, hoping that my blazer would hide the evidence but knowing that my forehead was beading and betraying me. I’d get up in the morning for work crying, feeling so physically wrong but incapable of calling in sick to work. What would I even say? I can’t come in because I didn’t sleep? Because my body is sweating too much? Because my anxiety was paralyzing? A few times, it did come to that.
I finally booked an appointment with my family doctor. It had been about 5 months since I stopped the pill, and 5 months since my last bleed. She wasn’t all too concerned with any of this, repeating that it can take time to get pregnant and that within the first year, there was little to worry about. Just to be sure though, she agreed to run a complete blood panel and gave me a referral for an ultrasound to verify for any cysts.
A week later, her office called me to set up a follow up appointment. Her office had never called me before to review results, so I knew then that my tests must have shown something abnormal. When we met again, she told me that my FSH level was alarmingly high and that she wanted me to consult with a gynaecologist as this was now beyond her expertise. I had no idea what “FSH” even was, much less what a high FSH could mean. A quick google search told me that FSH stood for Follicle Stimulating Hormone, and that a high FSH was not a good sign for fertility. I told myself to not jump to any conclusions until we met with the gyno. I held my breath for two months, waiting for my appointment. Friends who had dealt with fertility issues prepared me for the potential next steps. “The gyno will refer you to a fertility clinic”, they explained. “They’ll probably prescribe some meds to encourage your system to produce more hormones.” I read about IUI procedures and read up on a few nearby fertility clinics. I wanted to be prepared with questions for our next appointment.
My husband and I drove to the gyno office together. We waited almost three hours past our appointment time, our anxiety slowly converting into impatience and frustration. We finally got called into the exam room by the nurse. My husband settled on a green plastic chair and I sat on the exam bed with only a thin white paper cloth covering my lady parts, as instructed. We waited another 30 minutes like that. Finally, the doctor came in. He reviewed my file for a few seconds, rolled his chair over to give me a quick exam, and then rolled back over to write his notes in the file. Finally, he looked up at me and announced “I’m not sure what your family doctor has told you, but you have Premature Ovarian Failure. I’ll have you do another blood test to confirm and then we can talk about donor egg IVF next time. You’ll also need to take Vitamin D.”
“Do you have any questions?”, he asked, closing my file as he handed me my blood test requisition form.
“Can I put my pants back on?”
It was all I could come up with. I looked to my husband, hoping he could manage something better, something more, but he silent and as shell-shocked and blank as I was. We had no idea what had just happened and we were entirely unprepared for that moment. My mind was still replaying those words, trying to process what it meant. His words had sounded like gibberish and his matter-of-fact tone left me confused as to how to feel. Had he said donor eggs? What … how… why? Why aren’t we talking about IUI? What are our other options? Before I could formulate a proper sentence, the doctor had left our exam room. Our five minutes with him was up, and he had other patients to see.
When we got to our car, my husband pulled me in for a hug, and with that, the full weight of the truth hit us. We broke down in each other’s arms, crying out our confusion, our pain, our millions of questions, our anger at the doctor. We stayed in that parking lot of our doctor’s office for a long time… until my husband was able to pull himself together and drive us home. I gripped his hand the whole way, as I stared numbly at the world that kept on going like it was business as usual. I felt unsure of where I fit now that my world had fallen apart. When we got home, I went straight to our bedroom at the back of our apartment, pulled shut our black-out blinds and curled into the protection of my covers. I laid there crying the rest of the day, finding relief only through sleep. My heart was shattered and my chest filled with a sorrow I’d never known.
A Lillyful Life 