So the Yeti and Nessie walk into a bar….

It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
 
I don’t normally write about serious stuff on this blog – I mean I DO, cancer and shit, but other than some rants, I’m generally able to see the humor in things. Because that’s life, right? It throws shit at you, you deal. Laugh, cry, rally to laugh again, as I say. And as I always point out, I have so much bad luck in general, I’m able to quickly adapt to bad news.

This one might be tough though.

So yesterday I went on my first visit to a fertility clinic in Portland, namely Oregon Reproductive Medicine (ORM). Yes, Miss Tasha is attempting via sperm donor to have MiracleBaby, aka PerfectChild. Have I always and forever wanted a child ever since I was an embryo myself? Well no, because if that were my life’s goal I probably would have made sure to have a child when I was in my 30s and not leave things to chance, right? But I have for some time, though The Cancer did kind of derail things for a while there.

I drive into Portland all whistling and happy, me and The Kone, on a gorgeous spring day, excited about finally getting this party started for reals. Then reality came crashing down on me during my appointment with the wonderful Dr. Barbieri at ORM, who was really awesome. But she did tell me some sobering statistics, all revolving around the fact that I’m old as dirt. I was fine with them though, even though they were all along the lines of  “1% chance of such–and-such, and .006% chance of this” etc. Ech, numbers, I’m not so mathy anyway.

Then she pulled out the chart that will be burned in my brain forever, the bar chart that shows how many women they’ve worked with who have gotten pregnant with their own eggs, by age. And she points to the bar for 45-year-old women. And that number?

Zero.

A big fucking zero.

Me, being the eternal sunshiney optimist that I am, at this point start to sound like the guy in the movie who, when being told he has a one in a million chance of dating some woman, says “So you’re saying I’ve got a shot!”

See again: not mathy.

Hence the Yeti and Nessie reference, because those are about my chances. Hey, it could happen! We decide to go full steam ahead anyway, because as I told Dr. Barbieri, go big or go home. More testing, the “clomid challenge” (which to me sounds awesomely like the Battle of the Network Stars, so hell yeah, bring it on – not that I’m competitive or anything), an IUI attempt while working on the IVF stuff, then IVF which will probably cost around $24K. For each attempt.

As I jokingly told my most awesome Cancerchick friends Melinda, Cori, and Adrienne later at home as they were talking me off my tiny ledge, I should get on the fundme bandwagon and set up a page along the lines of “Help Kone achieve the baby of his dreams!” Because Kone LOVES babies. Freaking loves them. He just wants to be near them and kiss them and make sure they and kids in general glom onto him. So I could have things like, say, a gift for $10 donations consisting of a pawtograph from The Kone, and so on. Of course I wouldn’t do this, but it amused me to think of it. Do it for The Kone!

Anyway. This ledge thing.

Because then I started thinking of course about how I fucked up my life. Put stuff off, waited, putzed around, wasted time with idiot guys, didn’t take note of time madly rushing by. Though I did recall this morning that most doctors don’t tell you about fertility options before you start cancer treatment. They don’t mention that even if your ovaries aren’t completely fried afterwards, after you go through and finish everything, you might then be too old to get pregnant anyway. So it’s not ALL on me.

Just most of it.

And while it’s mostly on me, I’m also bitter and resentful while looking at all the people who have kids without any problems – not that I begrudge them, but it’s still painful to see billions of pics of kids on Facebook and everywhere else, knowing that might not be in the cards. I know that’s the case for a LOT of my Cancerchick friends, so it’s not like I’m some special snowflake, but still. It’s tough. It's tough for all of us. Some people get truly lucky with the kid situation, where everything falls into place perfectly, and often they don't appreciate how remarkable that is, but some of us don’t. And it sucks and it’s hard.

The thought that kept drumming through my head when I was talking to Dr. Barbieri was actually from the stupid show Private Practice that I watched maybe 3 times, because I don’t do tv as a general rule, and there was the episode early on where Dr. Addison has just found out that she basically has no egg reserve, or something like that, and her chances of having a baby are zero to none. And she’s in the elevator, stunned, just thinking – “I waited too long.”



 * * * * * * * * *

Well that was just one huge boring fucking pity party, now wasn't it?

The point being, young grasshoppers, don’t be like me. At least not in all ways. Don’t think you have all the time in the world for certain things. I mean I know we should be carpe dieming and all that shit in general, but with some things it really doesn’t pay to wait. Because then you’ll be like me, alone with your thoughts at night, and the main one that keeps running through my head is this:

I waited too fucking long.