Newly Diagnosed

Last Saturday I had taken Chica Marie to see the new Smurf movie as a surprise. Her previous TSS worker met us there to reward her for getting on green and purple at school (green means “ready to learn” and purple means the child did something extra-special, like helped a friend). I wasn’t even inside the house when Primero pounced on me, telling me Esperanza was in his room asking to talk to me. She had been to the emergency room for issues with a burst ovarian cyst and had received bad news. She has PCOS, the same complicated, horrible disease with which I suffer. Apparently she had not known, along with so many other problems like acne, extra hair, imbalanced hormones, high blood sugar, extra weight, and wacky cycles, PCOS can make it hard to get pregnant. She was distraught. So, I sat and talked to her. I didn’t, I couldn’t sugarcoat it, none of it. I explained more about the disease and some potential treatments, what I had tried and what I didn’t. And then I held her while she cried and I cried along with her. No platitudes were going to make this go away. I didn’t whisper words of false hope  or flippant encouragement into her hair while she bear-hugged me and sobbed. I told her I knew how much it hurt and how unfair it is, how much it sucks. I told her to be kind to herself and if she couldn’t be around someone pregnant to allow herself the space for her own mental health. I told her the beginning is the hardest time, triggers are literally everywhere, but time would help and the triggers would lessen. They wouldn’t go away entirely, but they would lessen. She told me how she tried to talk to her mom and sister about it but they didn’t understand. I explained that for those who easily got pregnant it is as impossible to understand as it is for us to understand easily getting pregnant. I promised her she could talk to me anytime she needed because I do understand, I intimately know this pain and how far it reaches into your life. I also know the very dark place it can take you emotionally and I hope she does not go there. After we talked I felt emotionally drained, as if talking to her had taken me back to when I was first diagnosed. But, I was also glad I could be there for her in a way I wish someone had been there for me in those early, dark times. In a strange way infertility is like an unwanted sisterhood, we don’t want to be here, we don’t want anyone we know to be here, but if we going through hell we might as well help each other along.

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