The infertility reality check.
This is not a lesson about mutant genes and mutated cells. There are hundreds of expert information sources out there to explain the medical reason about why cells develop at a certain rate within certain conditions and create the perfect storm for cancer to grow in your body.
There is no blame, no misdirected responsibility about ‘if only I didn’t drink soy milk’ or ‘if only I had eaten organic vegies’ or ‘I should never have gone on the pill…’. There is, however, a tougher task ahead to accept that cancer does not care about timing, or whether you’re ready, or whether you’ve got all your ducks in a row before it punches you in the face. For me, the twisted gene pool may suggest it was just a matter of time. But time was not on my side for this.
At 40, the world of breast cancer still considers me ‘young’, but in the world of maternal matters, I’m geriatric. In fact, I’m past geriatric. I’m graveyard. It’s like the worst oopsie moment in history … Had a baby yet? Oh ! Oops ! There I was thinking that, even if the geriatric ovaries were already in retirement, surely IVF would sweep in as a superhero and deliver me a time machine so I could go back to my 20s and plan for the next 20 years before 'life just happened'.
You see, I seem to have forgotten to take on the advice of my smug-married friends to just settle down, get married, and pop out a kid in between building a professional career and falling in love with all the wrong guys at the right time and falling in lust with all the right guys at the wrong time and having a mental break down and building myself back up again and moving towns, cities, states, jobs, desperate to find something more than what I had. What I was. Who I could become. How many times had I felt the sting of loss and disappointment that ‘he’ was not going to be the one. That my window was closing. And you know what, for most of that time, I was not exactly prioritising procreation. It was all about recreation. But along comes a magical man when I'm 39 who would finally love me for me. Would see what truths lie behind my eyes, would breathe life into my heart, would inject hope and happiness into my soul. For a moment, I allowed myself to dream that stupidly girlie girl dream of a wedding dress and a house on a hill and a chance to create a new life from new love.
But this is where Injustice and Unfairness and Regret all came to dance at my pity-party. The options of having a baby when you’re about to take on cancer are less than great. It’s basically a done deal – without exploring a myriad of options and impossible timelines/risks/consequences, it aint’ gonna happen on my terms. I have one shot that's sitting in a freezer somewhere waiting to see what's possible in about three years. Until then, I will find time to grieve what could have been. But for now, it’s something that I’ve added to my arsenal to remember why I need to take this time for me to heal, to recover, to regenerate, to re-emerge as something and someone who refuses to sit in the passenger seat waiting to arrive to meet Happiness. I’m done with the bullshit rhetoric about ‘when x happens, and y happens, and the planetary alignment joins up with the sun and moon in z’ … THEN I’ll be happy. No. Today I am happy. I am ecstatic. I now move into the world of preserving and protecting my next phase of life. A phase that is still going to be full of love and hope that offers sanctuary for my soul. Of actually living. Chemotherapy and radiation are my friends. So too is my cold press juicer, some turmeric and wheat grass shots! And I will embrace all of what is to come, including the crappy side effects, to make sure that I am not sitting in another hospital bed unless it is when I close my eyes for the last time at age 93. I may not be surrounded by my borne-children, but I sure as hell will be surrounded by love.
