November and December, 2008

January 13, 2012

Just to make things more interesting, D asked me to marry him on November 2, 2008, and then two days after that, the end of a BIG error happened and Barack Obama was elected president! Being in a joyous mood and not seeing much reason to wait at our ages, we decided to get married at “city hall” as soon as possible. However, after seeing city hall in Manhattan, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it this way. Once again, my best friend Colleen and her sister, Mary Ellen, came to our rescue. Mary Ellen arranged for us to get married by Judge Marsha Steinhardt in her chambers in Brooklyn on November 17. Since it was a Monday and it would be very difficult for our family and friends to get there, we decided to just ask two witnesses to come with us that day, and then we planned a bigger party for our nearest and dearest in January. My bff Bernadette and D’s cousin Jerry Della Salla stood for us that day and joined us at lunch at Keen’s to celebrate. So, within 15 days, I was engaged and married!

December 1, 2008, I came back to earth. I had scheduled the hysteroscopy that I needed as a follow-up to my first procedure. While the SHG I had had in October was an in-office procedure, a hysteroscopy is considered minor surgery. D came with me early that morning, and I was very tense. Marriage, at least the first 2 weeks, was wonderful, but I did have an intense reaction that I hadn’t anticipated. I thought I understood the commitment and responsibility, but after we got married, I started to feel guilty. Had I been entirely fair to D? What if this test showed that I could not carry a baby? Should we have waited until we knew the answer?

Eventually I was brought into the pre-op area and prepped for the procedure, which involved getting into a hospital gown and having an IV started. I am an easy stick; I have nurse friends who have complimented my veins. Turns out, this is one of the factors that would make my experience much easier than for some. Conservative estimate, between December 2008 and F’s birth in June 2011, I think I had blood drawn or an IV started at least 50 times. And that does not count the times I had to inject myself when the hormone phase of treatment began. So, having “veins you can drive a truck through,” in the words of my nurse pal, Kate, is a big plus for IVF treatment.

Dr. Janet Choi came out to explain the procedure to me. I would be put under very briefly, and she would examine my uterus with a camera to see if there were any obvious deformities that would prevent me from having at least a chance to carry a baby to term. Dr. Choi turned out to be one of my favorite doctors at Columbia. She is not warm and fuzzy, but she is efficient and calm and I liked her a lot. And it was she who was to deliver some amazing news to us in November of 2010, but that was way in the future!

I was wheeled into a small procedure room and put under. In what seemed like 10 seconds, I was waking up in the post-op area and a nurse was calling Dr. Choi in. She told me “your uterus is fine, it’s a perfectly structurally sound cavity.” Hooray, and ewwww…cavity? Like I said, not warm and fuzzy, but efficient and no-nonsense, just like we New Yorkers like it.

I had to stay for an hour while the effects wore off, and I realized that the major hurtle was passed. Since I now knew I could in theory carry a baby, I might as well jump in and have the first of the blood tests done. A nurse came to draw blood, and so by the end of the first week of December, 2008, I had completed all the tests that could be done at the fertility center. The rest had to be scheduled with my own doctor or at a lab for the mammogram, chest xray, and stress test. So far, this was really turning out to be a breeze. ……oh silly fool that I was……