I woke up this morning thinking about the blog. Where do I start? At the beginning? When exactly is the beginning of the story? I landed with describing why we need infertility treatments. It's long ago history from the mid 90's. And while I think this information is necessary to share, I want to assure you that it was a pebble in my path....even though at the time, it looked like a mountain. Time heals.

I was 28 years old, recently divorced from a 9 month marriage (yes, 9 months...I previously thought I had the shortest marriage in history and then came Britney), working full time and sharing an apartment with my brother. I started feeling tired... really, really, really tired. So tired that I thought my ex had given me HIV (he had extra marital fun with other women). I had previously found a swollen gland in my neck and gone to the doctor. I got a CT scan, antibiotics and seemed to be fine. Alas, I was not. I had cancer. Hodgkin's Disease to be exact.

The first round of treatment was chemotherapy. It was a regimen that was said to help protect my fertility. You see, chemotherapy drugs focus on rapidly dividing cells. One of the problems with chemo is that the cancer cells are not the only rapidly dividing cells in our bodies. This is why cancer patients get sores in their mouths, their hair falls out, sperm and eggs are destroyed....all of those areas contain rapidly dividing cells or are rapidly dividing cells. ANYway, the first round of treatment didn't get the job done. I was left with the realization that the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale AZ was going to be in my future with high dose chemotherapy, radiation and a bone marrow transplant.

Part of the process is learning your odds of survival, the permanent side effects from treatment and temporary ones. I was told that my ovaries would not survive the treatment. Let me rephrase that, I was told my ovaries had a very slim chance. Therefore, I was sent to a Reproductive Endocrinologist to talk about options. Whatever I did, I had to do it fast. My doctor wanted no time wasted before I was in treatment again. I had lots to do: donate my own marrow, lots of scans and a surgery to place a garden hose into my chest/heart for the drugs.

In 1997 there were few options for preserving a woman's fertility. After learning that the first round of chemo had not destroyed my ovaries (bitter sweet isn't it?), the only option now was to harvest eggs and fertilize them. I had no sperm. I had no husband or boyfriend. I was given the option to use someones left over sperm (sounds weird huh?) from their treatments. The donor was French. I am not French. Time was running out. With much thought in the 24 hours I had to make a decision, I opted to not take the time to harvest eggs and use donor sperm. Lots of things went into that decision, the fact that I could use donor eggs later, the very slim chance my ovaries would survive and the realization that my future husband would deserve to have his own genetic children.

Good news for today's women who are undergoing chemo...they can freeze your eggs without sperm! The process is imperfect but it is now an option that gives pretty good results from what I can tell.

Long story getting you here. I had my high dose chemo, lost my hair, the insides of my mouth sloughed off, my gut was ucky, I got my own stem-cells put back in me, those cells worked hard and re-built my immune system, I went home in record time (20 days), had radiation and I was cured. My ovaries took a hell of a beating.

This is how we got to IVF and egg donation.