"I Have a Dream"

We can all look back on our lives and pinpoint a few big days that changed the course of our history. Days that were so profound we can retrace steps, revoke emotions, and muster up minute details that our mind naturally discards of for the more subtle days.

I was supposed to have one of those big days last week. Friday, May 30^th 2014. Marked in my calendar as “the big reveal.” The culmination of so many tears, prayers, hopes, and dreams that would all find solace in this. Day.

The reality is, I don’t know what my uterus looks like. I only know what I’ve been told, and that is that the radiation I received would weaken my uterus, zap it’s lining, and leave a significant amount of scar tissue that would make getting pregnant impossible, or at best risky, with no chance of carrying to full term. I was told that almost 3 years ago, sitting in my gynecologic oncologists office that (big) day, and with the exception of a few open minded, experimental doctors, I’ve been told that ever since. But hearing is different than knowing, and knowing is different than believing, and although I have spent hundreds of days accepting this forecast as truth, there have been days, many of them, that by the power of the holy spirit I have believed for something more.

It started when after being assured that I would never have a period again on the pretense that I would have no lining to shed, I started to bleed. First it was just a little, than gradually, each month, like clock work, I was greeted with an increasing flow; a manifestation of hope. The lining of my uterus was regenerating. Then passages started to jump out at me from scripture and I claimed them as my own. Friends and family, pillars of faith, began to speak life over my womb with absolute conviction it would one day carry a child. I have memorial stones of moments where it seemed all of heaven was pointing to this truth.

Waiting for the Doc

This big day, I was scheduled to meet with a fertility doctor, one of the top-rated in the country in Fairfax, Virginia, and for the first time, get a real look at my uterus. I would be getting a hystersonogram, a fancy ultrasound that would give an in depth look at my uterus by filling it up with saline via a catheter that’s inserted through my cervix. The saline separates the walls and can asses the uterine lining, detect polyps, fibroids, any abnormalities in shape, and most importantly SCAR TISSUE. While there is no test that can wholly determine the strength of my uterus and whether or not becoming pregnant would be a safe and fruitful option for me, it would display any red flags and give us an idea of what we would be working with.

My sleep was restless the night before and I woke up early feeling wired. I was so nervous when we arrived, pacing back and fourth after I checked in, taking glances at my sweet husband who was characteristically calm and steady. The Dr. initially took a regular old ultrasound of my uterus and ovaries, both of which looked good. Then he continued on to attempt to insert the catheter into my cervix. I could tell he was having trouble, and seconds later he said that the opening to my cervix was too tightly closed to insert the catheter and that he would not be able to perform the procedure we had driven almost 5 hours to get. He explained that I had cervical stenosis, a common side effect of radiation to the cervix as well as trauma during birth, ect. The only way to correct this would be to get my cervix dilated manually or potentially undergo a minor surgery to re-establish the hole. He also explained that because of the placement of my ovaries, egg retrieval would be complex. Doable, but not easy.

I left that appointment feeling overwhelmed and nauseous. I just kept thinking, “I don’t want to do any of this.” It all feels like so much work for something that’s supposed to just happen! Ryan and I talked it out, and he continued to highlight the positives of the situation, and deflate the seemingly prodigious situation we were in. The reality is I didn’t receive any horrible news, and honestly I had already made peace with getting the hystersonogram and being told pregnancy would not be an option for me. What upset me is that we had no news. Nothing new to focus on or move us forward on our journey to becoming parents, and that’s what hurt. I want to be moving.

On the upside, we were already two days into a vacation that still had a shelf life! We had already spent time in Annapolis, Maryland, and were now staying in a beautiful historic hotel in Downtown Washington D.C. That day, after taking a much needed nap and getting a reset on the day, we woke up and rode our bikes through China Town, and some of the greatest monuments and historical sites America has to offer. When we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial I was in awe. Never had I seen a masterpiece marked by such honor. I stood in the place Martin Luther King gave his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” and I looked out on the Washington monument and the Sea of Tranquility. I imagined the endless sea of people MLK would have been staring out at as he spoke, and I felt the presence of God wash over me. “I have a dream,” I thought. I said it over and over again to myself, and all at once, I knew everything was going to be okay.