Lj Idol One: Black Rainbow
Trigger warning: cancer, needles, death, ivf, pregnancy
The worst part about getting uterine cancer was that I wouldn’t be able to have kids. When I was younger, I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. I wanted to be a better mom than my mother, who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder was. I was convinced I would have twin girls since there are twins in the family, and it had skipped a few generations.
I was the type of child who always had a list of baby names for my future daughters. When I was younger, my favorite names were Kansas like the state (I think I had misheard Candice when I was little) and Isis, like the Egyptian goddess since I was obsessed with mythology when I was younger. Then, I wanted to name at least one of my daughters, Ashleigh, for a while. But my boyfriend at the time said if we ever got married that we were not naming any child Ashleigh because his cat was named Ashley. There was also Jane because I loved Jane’s Addiction at the time, and Serah because Final Fantasy XIII was my favorite game, yet to this day, I haven’t beaten it because I wouldn’t say I like it when things end.
When Justin and I first started dating. He didn’t want kids. He had an abusive dad and a very emotionally distant mother and didn’t think he could be a good father. But somehow, I convinced him that we would be great parents. We decided if we ever had a daughter, we would name her Zoe. We were constantly debating about the name of a second girl.
I got diagnosed with uterine cancer in February 2014. Justin and I had just gotten engaged last May. I had been experiencing heavy vaginal bleeding and clots the size of my hand since August. I lost so much blood that I was anemic, and there were days when I would be teaching at school, and I would have to call the office and get coverage for my class because I couldn’t leave a bathroom. My gynecologist tried several birth control pills, but nothing helped with the breakthrough bleeding. In February was when they finally decided to do a hysteroscopy. Two days later, when my gynecologist called me during school hours and told me we needed to make an appointment, I knew something was wrong. They had found a polyp in my uterus, and they biopsied it. It was cancerous.
My gynecologist told me that they had found it early. It was barely even stage one. So she told me I wouldn’t need chemotherapy or radiation or another kind of cancer treatment. But unfortunately, I needed to get a complete hysterectomy. After she told me the news, I went to my car and started crying. The first person I told was my dad. I didn’t know how to break it to him that he might never have a grandchild from me. And I had no idea how to tell Justin. He was so against having children when we first started dating, and I had finally gotten him excited about being a dad, and now he might never even have the chance to be one.
Since I was so young, I was barely even 30; my gynecologist told me that I could go through IVF. Some foundations paid for all the medication needed for IVF for young cancer patients who had never had chemotherapy or radiation before. She warned me that IVF was highly unpleasant, but she was confident that my prognosis was good because we were such a young couple.
IVF was very painful. I am awful with needles, so Justin had to do every injection.
The medicine, combined with the plethora of hormones from uterine cancer, made me feel like I had PMS for over a month. I ended up going on FMLA early because I was too temperamental from all the hormones floating through my body. The first cycle of IVF failed because of a giant ovarian cyst. The second cycle succeeded. They got ten embryos.
Waiting by my phone for day-to-day updates from the embryologist was nerve-wracking. Of the ten embryos, only four got fertilized. Only one made it to the blastocyst stage, but they ensured that it was a healthy embryo. The problem wasn’t me; it was Justin. His sperm was missing parts of its body, and he had an extremely low sperm count. The IVF doctor told us that we could do one more cycle but recommended using a sperm donor for a higher success rate. Hysterically, I begged Justin to ask his brother and every one of his name friends if they were willing to donate sperm. None of them were. The one embryo we had became our rainbow baby.
The hysterectomy was painful. Not only was my uterus enlarged from cancer, but I also had a severe case of endometriosis that no doctor had ever found. In addition, I gained about forty pounds after the surgery because my body was confused from all the hormone issues, and my boobs went from a size D to a size G. Not only couldn’t I have any children, I felt like a stranger in my own body. To this day, I still can’t look in the mirror because I hate everything staring back at me. But at the time, I was okay with this because eventually, we would have a baby, and it wouldn’t matter what I went through as long as I could have my child.
About a year later, we were ready to hatch our child. I had a former parent of a student willing to be our surrogate. We planned to do the implantation in the summer. We went to the IVF clinic, and they recommended genetic testing of our embryo, which they had not done at the time because it was not required, and they hadn’t seen a need to do it. They didn’t seem worried, so we weren’t either.
We talked about how excited we were to be parents and what the baby’s room would look like. Justin was excited to teach the baby everything about video games, how to build his first computer and math. I couldn’t wait to introduce the baby to my favorite books from when I was younger. I wanted the baby to take swim classes and play soccer. Justin wanted to baby to do UIL and academic decathlon. If the baby were a girl, her name would be Zoe Snow. Zoe means “life” and Snow because she had been frozen. “Snow” was going to be for my great-grandfather Stanley, who passed away in 2016. In Jewish culture, we name children after deceased relatives. If the baby were a boy, he would be Jace Holden. His name wasn’t as meaningful compared to Zoe. Jace was for a planeswalker in Magic the Gathering, which is Justin’s favorite card game, and it was one of the few boy’s names we both didn’t hate. Holden was from Catcher in The Rye, my favorite book in elementary school (I was a very gifted reader). The H in Holden was for my Papa Herbert, who had passed away while I was in Israel on birthright in 2010. We decided we wouldn’t tell anyone about the baby until it was close to its due date, except a few close friends and family members. We were ecstatic.
A few days later, we heard back from them. Our embryo was a boy. He had been missing chromosome pairs. We could still implant him, but there wasn’t a very good chance of him being successfully implanted. Even if he had implanted, he wouldn’t have made it full-term. If he had somehow made it to full-term, he might have died shortly afterward. If he had grown into a child, he would have had many problems. He was missing chromosome pair 8. The issues that result from that include growth deficiencies, mental retardation, and malformations of the skull and face, including microcephaly. They could also be cardiac abnormalities and genital defects, especially in males.
They asked us what we wanted to do. We decided to destroy the embryo. I couldn’t imagine trying to bring a child into this world when they might never even be able to enjoy the world they live in. Also, IVF and surrogate implantation were expensive, and Texas doesn’t cover any of the costs for a gestational carrier. So our rainbow baby turned into a black rainbow, and we would probably never be able to have a baby of our own.
I’ve had friends offer to be a gestational carrier, and while the thought is appreciated, what we need is somebody willing to donate their eggs, so we can try to make more embryos. There are some people who I think are enough like me personality-wise that if they donated their eggs, the embryo would be like it was mine even though I wouldn’t be genetically related to it. But how do you even ask somebody to do that? I couldn’t ask somebody to go through painful medical treatments to give me some of their eggs so that we could be parents. So as much as I want to have a baby of my own that’s at least somewhat genetically related to us, it seems like an impossible dream. And I don’t want to put my hope into another rainbow.
The worst part about getting uterine cancer was that I wouldn’t be able to have kids. When I was younger, I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. I wanted to be a better mom than my mother, who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder was. I was convinced I would have twin girls since there are twins in the family, and it had skipped a few generations.
I was the type of child who always had a list of baby names for my future daughters. When I was younger, my favorite names were Kansas like the state (I think I had misheard Candice when I was little) and Isis, like the Egyptian goddess since I was obsessed with mythology when I was younger. Then, I wanted to name at least one of my daughters, Ashleigh, for a while. But my boyfriend at the time said if we ever got married that we were not naming any child Ashleigh because his cat was named Ashley. There was also Jane because I loved Jane’s Addiction at the time, and Serah because Final Fantasy XIII was my favorite game, yet to this day, I haven’t beaten it because I wouldn’t say I like it when things end.
When Justin and I first started dating. He didn’t want kids. He had an abusive dad and a very emotionally distant mother and didn’t think he could be a good father. But somehow, I convinced him that we would be great parents. We decided if we ever had a daughter, we would name her Zoe. We were constantly debating about the name of a second girl.
I got diagnosed with uterine cancer in February 2014. Justin and I had just gotten engaged last May. I had been experiencing heavy vaginal bleeding and clots the size of my hand since August. I lost so much blood that I was anemic, and there were days when I would be teaching at school, and I would have to call the office and get coverage for my class because I couldn’t leave a bathroom. My gynecologist tried several birth control pills, but nothing helped with the breakthrough bleeding. In February was when they finally decided to do a hysteroscopy. Two days later, when my gynecologist called me during school hours and told me we needed to make an appointment, I knew something was wrong. They had found a polyp in my uterus, and they biopsied it. It was cancerous.
My gynecologist told me that they had found it early. It was barely even stage one. So she told me I wouldn’t need chemotherapy or radiation or another kind of cancer treatment. But unfortunately, I needed to get a complete hysterectomy. After she told me the news, I went to my car and started crying. The first person I told was my dad. I didn’t know how to break it to him that he might never have a grandchild from me. And I had no idea how to tell Justin. He was so against having children when we first started dating, and I had finally gotten him excited about being a dad, and now he might never even have the chance to be one.
Since I was so young, I was barely even 30; my gynecologist told me that I could go through IVF. Some foundations paid for all the medication needed for IVF for young cancer patients who had never had chemotherapy or radiation before. She warned me that IVF was highly unpleasant, but she was confident that my prognosis was good because we were such a young couple.
IVF was very painful. I am awful with needles, so Justin had to do every injection.
The medicine, combined with the plethora of hormones from uterine cancer, made me feel like I had PMS for over a month. I ended up going on FMLA early because I was too temperamental from all the hormones floating through my body. The first cycle of IVF failed because of a giant ovarian cyst. The second cycle succeeded. They got ten embryos.
Waiting by my phone for day-to-day updates from the embryologist was nerve-wracking. Of the ten embryos, only four got fertilized. Only one made it to the blastocyst stage, but they ensured that it was a healthy embryo. The problem wasn’t me; it was Justin. His sperm was missing parts of its body, and he had an extremely low sperm count. The IVF doctor told us that we could do one more cycle but recommended using a sperm donor for a higher success rate. Hysterically, I begged Justin to ask his brother and every one of his name friends if they were willing to donate sperm. None of them were. The one embryo we had became our rainbow baby.
The hysterectomy was painful. Not only was my uterus enlarged from cancer, but I also had a severe case of endometriosis that no doctor had ever found. In addition, I gained about forty pounds after the surgery because my body was confused from all the hormone issues, and my boobs went from a size D to a size G. Not only couldn’t I have any children, I felt like a stranger in my own body. To this day, I still can’t look in the mirror because I hate everything staring back at me. But at the time, I was okay with this because eventually, we would have a baby, and it wouldn’t matter what I went through as long as I could have my child.
About a year later, we were ready to hatch our child. I had a former parent of a student willing to be our surrogate. We planned to do the implantation in the summer. We went to the IVF clinic, and they recommended genetic testing of our embryo, which they had not done at the time because it was not required, and they hadn’t seen a need to do it. They didn’t seem worried, so we weren’t either.
We talked about how excited we were to be parents and what the baby’s room would look like. Justin was excited to teach the baby everything about video games, how to build his first computer and math. I couldn’t wait to introduce the baby to my favorite books from when I was younger. I wanted the baby to take swim classes and play soccer. Justin wanted to baby to do UIL and academic decathlon. If the baby were a girl, her name would be Zoe Snow. Zoe means “life” and Snow because she had been frozen. “Snow” was going to be for my great-grandfather Stanley, who passed away in 2016. In Jewish culture, we name children after deceased relatives. If the baby were a boy, he would be Jace Holden. His name wasn’t as meaningful compared to Zoe. Jace was for a planeswalker in Magic the Gathering, which is Justin’s favorite card game, and it was one of the few boy’s names we both didn’t hate. Holden was from Catcher in The Rye, my favorite book in elementary school (I was a very gifted reader). The H in Holden was for my Papa Herbert, who had passed away while I was in Israel on birthright in 2010. We decided we wouldn’t tell anyone about the baby until it was close to its due date, except a few close friends and family members. We were ecstatic.
A few days later, we heard back from them. Our embryo was a boy. He had been missing chromosome pairs. We could still implant him, but there wasn’t a very good chance of him being successfully implanted. Even if he had implanted, he wouldn’t have made it full-term. If he had somehow made it to full-term, he might have died shortly afterward. If he had grown into a child, he would have had many problems. He was missing chromosome pair 8. The issues that result from that include growth deficiencies, mental retardation, and malformations of the skull and face, including microcephaly. They could also be cardiac abnormalities and genital defects, especially in males.
They asked us what we wanted to do. We decided to destroy the embryo. I couldn’t imagine trying to bring a child into this world when they might never even be able to enjoy the world they live in. Also, IVF and surrogate implantation were expensive, and Texas doesn’t cover any of the costs for a gestational carrier. So our rainbow baby turned into a black rainbow, and we would probably never be able to have a baby of our own.
I’ve had friends offer to be a gestational carrier, and while the thought is appreciated, what we need is somebody willing to donate their eggs, so we can try to make more embryos. There are some people who I think are enough like me personality-wise that if they donated their eggs, the embryo would be like it was mine even though I wouldn’t be genetically related to it. But how do you even ask somebody to do that? I couldn’t ask somebody to go through painful medical treatments to give me some of their eggs so that we could be parents. So as much as I want to have a baby of my own that’s at least somewhat genetically related to us, it seems like an impossible dream. And I don’t want to put my hope into another rainbow.