Someone Else’s Good News

By first grade, I had roughly a dozen dolls. I fed them, read to them, braided their hair, and let whichever one had a bad dream sleep with me in my bed at night. You could say I was a pretty good mom.

I guess I always thought I’d be one someday, never anticipating there would be an obstacle that might prevent it from happening.

At the moment, I am 33-years-old and postmenopausal. Yes, you read that correctly- POSTmenopausal. Chemo shut down my menstrual cycle, and now that I’m done with it, I am going through hormone therapy that has shut it down to prevent the cancer from returning. For the rest of my life, the hormones that make me female will forever be my enemy. Each day I take a pill that prevents my body from producing the hormones and each month I get a shot to suppress my ovaries. This will be the case for at least two years before pregnancy can even be considered, based on the medical recommendations, and will likely resume for three more years after.

Guessing by my Chynna Phillips-inspired haircut, I am about eight-years-old here. Reading my library books to my dolls was a pretty regular occurrence. Most days I could benefit by pulling out my Wilson-Phillips cassette tape and remind myself to "hold on for one more day".

Nate and I will celebrate our one year anniversary in about a month. We didn’t plan on waiting this long to start a family and some days it makes me angry more than others.

Last week, sitting across from me in the OB-GYN waiting room, were two teenagers who could not have been more than 15. While she sat on her phone, he awkwardly sat next to her, a peach fuzz mustache hovering over his lip. It made me really, really livid.

I become enraged thinking how young people who aren’t ready can so easily become parents without intending to. I will never understand how some people struggle to conceive or cannot get pregnant at all, while others can’t seem to stop reproducing.

It is a very conflicting emotion that follows each and every time I learn about someone else’s good news.

Yes, we were blessed to have had financial help come in quicker than we could count it from friends, family, and even strangers to help us pay for embryo preservation before I started chemo. And yes, we have two embryos that will be available and ready for us when we are in the clear to contemplate that option. But that doesn’t change the fact that by then I will be 35, making it, by medical standards, a geriatric pregnancy. Nor does it change that fact that I am terrified it might not work and we could still be left with no options to have our own biological children.

By this stage in my life, all of my friends have or are done having children; my sisters are done having children; and every day it seems I am coming across yet another Facebook pregnancy post. While I’m happy for others and would never wish what I am going through upon anyone, it feels really lonely not being a part of that group when you want to be. It feels helpless to know years will go by before anything can happen. It feels insanely frustrating when it appears that everyone else can get what they want so effortlessly. The rational version of myself knows that’s not the case and that everyone has battles of their own, but the irrational and self-pitying version of myself oftentimes forgets that. Sometimes, as much as Facebook can be a terrific tool for sharing good news, it can also be a terrific tool for creating terrible jealousy.

I know I’m lucky to be alive with many people who love me, and I am grateful for that. But that doesn’t stop the What If’s from whispering in my ear each time I hear about someone else’s good news. What if treatment has made me infertile? What if the embryo transfer doesn’t work? What if we can never have kids? What if that becomes the least of my problems and the cancer comes back?

It makes me think of everything, as a newlywed and a woman, I’ve been robbed of, and I can’t help but feel sorry about that.

That’s probably the hardest part about living with and surviving cancer. Everyone expects you to go on with life and be grateful to be alive, but that doesn’t change the fact that not only have you lost the life you used to have, but perhaps more upsetting, you’ve also lost the life you thought you’d have.

#ovarysuppression #hormonepositivebreastcancer #breastcancer #infertility #embryopreservation