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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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I've been keeping very very quiet out here. (You may have noticed.) For months and months, it was because I had nothing new to say, and thinking too much about all the nothing was doing me more bad than good. So I stayed mum while I browsed egg donor databases for possible candidates, hunkered down inside myself as I tried to come to terms with picking a donor based on 15 pages of scribbling and a few blurry photographs, tried to stay upbeat whenever friends asked me how the search was going, told myself I was in no rush. A good friend had her baby. The boy's sister announced she was pregnant. I was happy for them, but sad for me. I turned 31, and that was harder than 30, when I still had an ovary, and the boy and I had just started talking seriously about me going off the pill, and I took it for granted that I could have anything in the world.
Then, sometime around Christmas: something happened.
A friend of a friend of a family friend had heard our story. R was from Taiwan, but just happened to be in Boston doing a year of graduate studies; she told her friend, who told our friend, who told my mom, that she'd like to donate for us. I gave my mom the go-ahead to give her my email, leaving things in her court; I didn't want to be pushy, convinced this was too good to be true. But two days after Christmas, she got in touch. A few emails and a long voice chat later, it was settled: she was in. The only hitch?She would only be available for the three months of the summer, after the main school year was over, and before she headed back to Taiwan. This would be tricky for us -- we'd be moving from Edinburgh to Toronto around then -- but never mind the logistics; this was the dream donor, the next best thing to having a relative step up to the plate, and as far as the boy and I were concerned, we'd juggle whatever crazy schedule necessary to try to make this happen.
Contact the clinic, bring on the forms, set up the screenings, she said enthusiastically way back in January. The clinic sent her the welcome packet; she mailed back her forms two days later. Progress, it seemed -- until it turned out that she didn't have any of her medical records on hand. I mentioned the clinic needed them; she promised to ask her sister back home to hunt them down. A week passed, then another. Finally, she emailed back: no luck with the records. And so I hunted down a local doctor for her, made the earliest possible appointment that fit into her schedule, tried not to get frustrated that this was two weeks away, taking us well into February. She showed up at her appointment, discovered the fun of a pap smear (apparently not routine in Taiwan), was a good sport nonetheless. More time passed, as we waited for her results (fine), then waited for the doctor to send things over to the clinic, then waited some more when it turned out they flaked out and forgot to mail the records of the physical along with the pap. By the time all the preliminary paperwork was in place, March was drawing to a close, and the clinic, I was told, wasn't booking appointments until May. Will we still make the summer cycle? I emailed anxiously. We'll try our best, the coordinator replied noncommittally. I got quiet, and still, and sad; I was sure I had been too slow, not pushed hard enough. This wasn't going to work.
But out of the blue last week, the coordinator emails me. We have an opening coming up; we can squeeze R in for her psych test, she says. After a few frantic emails and an arrangement for my parents to give her the ride she'll need, things are set.
And so, after the nothing and the waiting and the waiting and the nothing, it begins. Let out that breath I've been holding for months now; take another deep gulp of air. Things are rolling, and this is scary and wonderful, and while there's still so, so much that can still go wrong, it's time to let myself feel hopeful.
# posted by y @ 10:06 AM
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