Me me me - Starting the cycle

Suddenly realised I have written just about me, my poor boyfriend with whom I am sharing this whole saga of my life with, is probably having equally as tough time, even more so, he has to put up with me and my mood swings!

The chemist came up with the goods, I am sitting here looking at these tablets like they are the be all and end all of everything.

I have read the leaflet cover to cover.

I have absorbed as much of the essence of the visual asethetics of the packet as is humanly possible without actually taking one.

I am sure it will become some kind of profound ritual for me, the actual taking of the tablet, the water should be imbibed using a golden chalice encrusted with folic acid and positive vibes. I shall clutch onto a photo of a fertility temple in India that I paid homage to on my travels, wrapping a tiny piece of red cotton around a small piece of the temple, asking for it's fertility blessing, 10 years ago one foggy day in Delhi.

Tonight I commence the cycle with 2mg.

2 of your finest milligrams they shall be, especially for the 5 star hotel I am hoping to provide for one special resident.

So This is it!?

Hard to believe that one uterus could go through so much and still be responding to hormones. I sit as I type this wondering who on earth is going to read this, probably me, and only me, but will I be reading it in 3 months time, stroking my belly smiling, feminine and glowing appreciating all that the universe has given me, or will I be rocking in a straight jacket stained with tears swearing at the world and cursing my existence and my useless body.

One thing is, it feels like it is never straightforward.
Since 1988, when I was told at the tender age of twelve, still swooning over Jason Donovan and listening to Bros, that the chemo and radiation had damaged my ovaries and that unfortunately meant no children.



If it wasn't for the fact I had watched the film 'Champion' one afternoon while aimlessly pulling out the last strands of my hair, I probably wouldn't have been told there and then like that. I saw '(Bob)Champion' and he started going on about chemo damaging fertility something about 'Jaffas', so I asked my mum, she in her typical honest way, confirmed that was indeed the case and best I knew now than later. True.

So I spent the next 15 years feeling inadequate.

Having gotten over a life threatening cancer at the age of 12, all I could think about was the fact I couldn't have children, I would never have one growing inside of me. I would never show off my bump. It stayed in the back of my mind for the whole of my existence. I could live with the temporary baldness and the lack of hormones and all that palava. What about my baby, there is one somewhere, somewhere in the universe waiting to be jetissoned into reality via some magical portal type umbilical spiritual connection type thing.

I had a wild (ish) teenage time, the usual, moshing, smoking, drink, boys, lovely boys. Infact I sort of became one of the boys, felt more at home with them. Perhaps the feminine thing passed me by the day my mum told me about the lack of baby prospect,
I was never into doing girly lunch and stuff I was more your pub lunch girl, half a lager and a game of darts and lots of flirting with my fellow drama students. I was fantastic at 'killer' and enjoyed every last drop of my drama/theatre time, loved it, the friends, the art the drink the laughs, what a beautiful time.

I ended up at 16 in what was going to be a 7 year relationship, he was the first one to say 'ok lets investigate this making miraculous babies thing' Fortunately I was under Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and they helped me in getting an appointment with Professor Winston, a key figure in infertility treatment and now a documentary presenter on the BBC.

The following year I go travelling the world, I sell a house that I had bought with my father and decide to bugger off for a year. Couldn't cope with the commitment of a mortgage and all that, that entails. My beloved and I parted. Not on bad terms but on ' so this is it' terms, he buggers off 6 months later meets a thai lady in Thailand, gets married and has a child with her in the space of a year. I had been with him for 7 whole years and had managed to drag him along for an IVF consultation once he used to come out in hives when I mentioned marriage!

So, feeling alittle inadequate once again, I march off into my destiny once more.

The prozac helped when I returned from my travels! A year spent in sunshine, with nothing more to do than move on to the next country, town, rainforest, desert was bound to set me up in some kind of ecstasy that wasn't going to last forever. I met so many interesting people from every different culture and background I saw so many awe inspiring sights. Standing, watching the sunrise over the himalayas to watching the Taj Mahal appear through a morning fog. My world was spectacular for a whole year, everything I saw was massive and I lived full on throughout that time, getting every kick I could get, pushing myself everyday to do something amazing.

Coming home to my ex beloved and his pregnant wife and a whole bunch of friends that weren't really into hearing my boring travelling tales sent me into a spiral of despair and self loathing.

But then things always do change and that is of course what happened.

I started a new life living in London, then Eton then back in my home town, hung around with some friends and ended up meeting my current boyfriend who I am venturing on the path of egg donation IVF with. We started it out as friends (as all the best cheesy songs go) but by god that is all I wanted us to be, I never dreamed we would get to this point together, but I couldn't imagine my life without him now. He annoyed the hell out of me and still does, he had no oomf and still doesn't, but I wouldn't change him.

So we fell in love and decided to tread the path of having a baby if we could.

Hurdle number 1: will my uterus have a blood supply?
Hurdle number 2 : will my uterus respond to hormones? (If I fall at either of these I am out of the race and, well, game over.)

I get referred by the wonderful Great Ormond Street Hospital to the UCLH in London for tests, to really see what the buggery is going on down there! (2004)

It is a hot steamy July. I am being investigated!

Baseline scans and prognova.

I am given hormones, first 2mg, then 4mg, then 6mg (I think) scanned weekly, the progression.

UCLH - 'You are responding well to the hormones, I don't think you will have a problem with egg donation IVF, 11mm was the best reading of your endometrium, there is nothing wrong with the blood supply'

I have a blood supply supporting my uterus, hoorah, who cares if I have nuclear waste for ovaries, the hotel is comfy and you can stay for free. I couldn't believe it!

UCLH - 'So we have confirmation that you have funding through the West Kent PCT, which is at Guys and St Thomas' we will refer you there as that is where the funding is, I must say though, best start looking for a donor now, if you want that funding' ( phrasing has been changed slightly but that is the jist.) Everything was moving in our favour.

Bouncing on the rays of happiness I leave the hospital building with a prescription for cyclo - progynova, the HRT, that will lull my uterus into a false sense of security that it is a real, propar, uterus and not just being supported by Horse Urine. I feel all is well and I will be pregnant in no time.

Find an egg donor......ok.......easy right?

Meet Guys and St Thomas'
' Hello, we have confirmation that you have funding with us, we need to find an altruistic egg donor that is known to yourselves as we do not adhere to supplying receipients with unknown egg donors, so perhaps a family member? a close friend? this is what we advise, the law in the UK is changing in April 2005, any donors submitting eggs will be contactable by any future offspring as soon as they reach 18, we realise that this has caused a shortage in egg donors, but appreciate that the way forward is to have someone you know offer you their eggs out of the kindness of their hearts and perhaps you could all work through the moral, awkward sticky mess yourselves'. (Wording has been slightly changed to emphasise the ridiculousness of the situation).

'Erm, ok I do have a female cousin who I haven't spoken to for 10 years as my parents fell out with her parents but I will see if she wants to give me her ovums'

We go away, slightly bemused but with hope in our hearts that we can have a free crack of the whip, we just need a whip to crack.

I spend hours over a heart felt letter, trying not to be too desperate, trying to appeal to the family spirit and genetic instinct. 'Please can you donate me your eggs.....' is what it boils down to.

I feel like a family failure, my mother was reluctant for me to contact her, she knew what the outcome would be, but I thought deep down in the genetic make up of all related females there would be something, something that would make us one, to help each other to solve a genetic problem within our family, to help the sisterhood.

'Sorry, too busy with my career, and don't want to give my prospective children up to someone I have vague memories of when I was 10, besides, my famliy are way above all that, we are genitically gifted and therefore will not be allowing anyone else into our little world, thanks for your card anyway and good luck for the future, your only female relative of donating age x'

OK.

Hard as it is, that is over with and I have erased that from the list of possibilities. We now have to work on advertising and how I go about it. I try to advertise in college publications, appealing to students, as my friend was when she donated her eggs, only to be told that it is ethically and morally wrong to do such a thing, and my adverts will not be accepted. Even my local doctors surgery refused to help with advertising, not even a little card on a pin board, 'It would be aginst the moral and ethic code of the practice'.

I put it all on the back burner and have my 30th birthday, decide to get drunk and pretend it all isn't happening. Verge on a nervous break down.

A college friend from 'killer' darts, drama days appears at my 30th, she is a love, and a charitable person and we get talking.

'Don't be daft, you know I would always donate my eggs for you, you know that don't you.'

I smile and think that she is wonderful but I could never ask her to do such a thing.

Days pass, weeks even. I send her an email.

'Thankyou so much for your offer when can you do it?'

I am ahead of myself, I have caught up with the philanthropic nature of my friend, believeing that we could do this together. I get a rather worried email back, the realisation of what she had said and the fact I had listened had hit her hard. She was just saying what she thought she should say, I realise that, but I was going to test the boundaries. We were friends, I knew her family but there was enough distance for us to cope with a resulting child, we had both moved on from the 'Killer' drama days, she had offered and was sincere but I knew deep inside, that noone could do this, noone could offer such a big part of their lives no matter how much good will and compassion they had.

'We need to meet' she told me

'I'll come up to you' I said
We met, wine was guzzled, tears were shed and the enevitable occured,
'I can't do it' her words melted into one another, I knew the outcome, I didn't have to listen. 2 years on from our first baseline scan at the UCLH and we were back at the beginnning. We couldn't advertise, we couldn't get family or friends we had no hope. I didn't want family or friends, I wanted our own baby, not a gift from someone, it had to be ours. I told her we had already made a descision anyway and that it didn't matter, it wouldn't of been right.

I decided one night after talking with the people I worked for at the time about it, she had told me a friend at a dinner party had spoken about egg donation IVF in Spain. I am forever grateful for this little piece of dinner party conversation.

I googled as if my life depended on it. Stumbled across an Observer Newspaper article, Sun, Sea and Sperm. A clinic in Spain offering 6 month waiting lists for infertile couples. This had to be the solution, suddenly it felt right.

Then a letter came.

'You no longer have funding at Guys and St Thomas' it is believed that you are seeking treatment abroad and therefore you are no longer a priority' In other words 'you are no longer part of the funding process so f*** off' .I cried, even though we had no donor and could use no funding, I cried, all the support had gone, all the NHS had gone, we were alone, it was selfish to want the funding when I knew we couldn't use it but it was hard to accept.

I contacted Spain, and then I contacted the West Kent PCT to find out about funding, where had it gone? Guys didn't want us to leave them, but without funding what was the point? PCT said 'Chaucer' I thought it was some code word, 'Chaucer' was some way of getting funding, like if you said it quickly through a keyhole somewhere it could open some magical doorway..... until I relaised that it was a hospital in Canterbury. They emailed me, they were full of support saying that even if we went to Spain for the treatment they may be able to fund us, they had done so with another couple, perhaps the magic was there.

Chaucer had no eggs, like all the other hospitals in the UK, There were no eggs, an egg sharing scheme exisited but the waiting list like all the others was at least 3 years long. Spain was our only option, unless I wanted to be carrying a papous around with my zimmer frame.

Chaucer did tests:
'It seems that your boyfriend has low motility'

Low motility, this happened at a test we had at Guys, he has low motility. A minor in the scheme of things, but still a smack in the face. I whine at him to give up smoking and stop wearing pants and stocked up on vitamins encouraging the lazy gits to swim.

It felt like we were fighting against everything.

We decided to enrol with the Spainish clinic that Chaucer had visited and confirmed that it had high success rates and was of a high standard, we applied for funding as we could not get eggs in the UK.

We were told by Chaucer, 'I am sure it will be fine, don't worry, we are here for you, (for a £800 flat fee of course)'

Despite the fact that a couple from East kent had been funded to go to Spain the PCT decided it was not feasible, it had been passed on to the Department of Health and they said that it was just not gonna happen. A possible review in March 2007.

We are fed up of waiting.

So thats it, we have to get a bank loan and do it all oursleves. Which is what we are doing, after 8 months on the waiting list in Spain we have a donor (same size as me, straight brown hair, brown eyes, but apart from that anonymous and quite rightly being paid for her amazing effort) and 3 weeks before we go to Spain, it has been discovered on a scan(that I had to wangle through my GP) that I have a polyp in my uterus. it takes ample time of begging my GP and blagging my way into the system before I manage to get myself an appointment to have the polyp removed just in time before I start the hormones for the IVF Cycle, 2 thank you cards later, a very kind doctor who is removing the polyp feels pity on me and my situation and explains that he is opening an IVF clinic just down the road from us and has had more eggs than you can shake a stick at, all for the taking, maximum of 3 month waiting list. He winks 'You see, your not supposed to know that.....let me know how things go....lets lean on the PCT.......things have got to change, use it as a back up plan' He winks again and smiles and I feel like crying he writes his details on a scrap of paper 'This is the easy bit' he says as he walks off into surgery. The first thing I asked for as I came round from the antesthetic was him, making sure he had done the surgery, he had become my saviour.

Why is it so hard?

£5000 bank loan later and it looks like we could of had a free go through a doctor down the road who is desperate to help the people who are willing to share their eggs so that they can have a free cycle and help people like me at the same time.

It is all so wrong.

Anyway our flights are booked, I start the hormones on Monday (God willing, the chemist is not coming up with the hormones needed fingers crossed they will be there Monday or there will be hell to pay, I haven't spent the last 3 years waiting only to be let down by a pharmaceutical supplier and a lazy chemist).

I just thank the gods, planets whatever, for people like the winking doctor, he gave me a number, he gave me some back up, some hope if all else fails, he'll be there, winking and the whole process will start again.

We fly out on the 11th February.

What will be my destiny next?

Watch this Space.

X