Hello prospective blog readers! After following a bunch of IF blogs for a while, I’m motivated to start one of my own.
A little about me and my journey: I’m a 36 year old engineer living on the west coast, mother to one active 3-year old boy and wife to a 44-yr old software engineer. I always imagined I’d have two children. What we have to work with is seven vials of my husbands sperm, that were frozen before he started chemo in 2012.
DH’s cancer story redux: In 2011, my DH started having chest pains and coughing. He go progressively sicker and sicker and was misdiagnosed by his fancy gastroenterologist with a bad case of reflux. DH lost more than 1/6 of his body weight before circling back to his general practitioner and being sent for a chest x-ray in February 2012. Turns out he had a 17cm tumor in his mediastinum (chest cavity). We were devastated. After several tests it was determined he had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is one of the more curable cancers, with an 80%ish cure rate. He went through 8 rounds of R-CHOP chemo and 18 doses of radiation and was declared cancer-free. There’s obviously more to this story, and perhaps I’ll get back to the details in the future.
DH spent the winter of 2012/13 in an out of the hospital because his immune system was destroyed by cancer treatment. By spring 2013 he was feeling better, back to work full time and had another scan that showed he was clear of cancer. At that point we decided to investigate whether we’d be able to expand our family. DH went in for a sperm analysis, which showed he had zero sperm. Fortunately, prior to starting treatment, he had paid a visit to a sperm bank which yielded seven 1mL vials of surprisingly high quality frozen sperm.
We started with an RE in September 2013. Our RE gave us the option of doing up to three IUIs, and then if they fail, then going to IVF. We have no insurance coverage for this. I just did my final IUI this morning, and am in the two week wait.
So, our lives have been on hold for over two years now. We feel very blessed to have our one healthy child but want more. I work part time and will go back to work full time depending on what the baby situation is. We need a bigger house, but we don’t know how big. We need a new car to replace our 15-yr old wagon, but we don’t know what car will be appropriate since we don’t know how many kids it’s for.
I know we are lucky to have these decisions to make. Very lucky compared to some. I know I’m lucky to have the one healthy child and a totally alive and fairly healthy husband. And to have my own health, of course. Part of me thinks that after all we’ve been through we should declare victory and go home, but I can’t give up the dream of the family of four just yet. I’m just impatient to know how all this is going to turn out – hence the title of the blog “Are we there yet?”.
Are we there yet? 