Second Only To Cancer Patients

Our medications arrived on the weekend -- one cycle worth, six weeks.

It's overwhelming to look at. It's terrfiying, it's heartbreaking, and it's exhausting. I feel like I'm going to be ill just looking at it all, knowing all the highs and lows that come with it. My body will swell up, I will gain ten pounds, I will be moody, cranky, tearful, and scared. I will get dizzy, feel sick, get headaches, have no energy, and feel like a zombie. We will be hopeful and scared and excited and heartbroken, as we hop back on the never ending rollercoaster ride. We will feel all the emotions humanly possible, as we pour our time and energy and hearts into this yet again. And there is no telling what the outcome will be. There are no guarantees. Yet, we go forward...

Sometimes I ask myself why. Why do we put ourselves through such suffering?

And today I can't help but remember something I read once, that has always stuck with me...

It has been proven that people with infertility, are second only to cancer patients, in what they will endure and put their bodies through to find a cure.

Second only to cancer patients.

But think about it, who would voluntarily, put themselves through all the emotional, physical, financial and medical pain and trauma, months after month, year after year -- with odds staked against them for the chance of a cure? Who would give themselves injection after injection, take medication after medication, have surgury after surgury, drive to appointment after appointment, get second oppinion after second oppinion, fly across the country in search of a specialist who might have the answer? Who else would participate in research studies, opt for controversal protocols, drugs, and procedures and cutting edge techinques that haven't been tested and approved yet? Who else would change their entire diet and lifestyle. Cut out all alcholol, all caffiene, all common cold and flu medication and tylenol? Who else would spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars and year after year of their life of being tortured in order to cure themselves?

Cancer patients do it because they do not want to die. And thankfully being infertile will not kill you. But it's a kind of death of a dream. It's the death of an imagined future, that we do it for. Cancer patients want to be around to see their children grow up, to watch their grandchildren grow up, to have a rich full life. Infertile people do it to for the dream of seeing their children grow up, for the dream of holding their grandchildren in their arms. For the dream of a rich full life.

I'm not saying that being infertile is the same as having cancer. It's not. But it's interesting to note that the desire and determination to create a life, can be as almost as strong and feirce as the desire and determination to actually live.