hurdles

Yesterday's excitement of harvesting 11 eggs was relatively short lived. The doctor called today to inform us that only 3 had fertilized normally. So here's the breakdown: 4/11 were too immature to try to fertilize yesterday, so they'll try today and tell us how it went tomorrow. 1/11 appears to have done nothing. 3/11 fertilized abnormally by allowing more than one sperm to penetrate the egg, so they are genetically incompatible with life as they have 3 or more copies of all the genes, instead of the normal 2. And that leaves the 3 normal ones. Three is better than zero, but it is quite disappointing nonetheless.

Tomorrow she'll call back and tell me if those three are still growing ok, and if any of the 4 previously immature were able to fertilize. They will actually use a procedure called ICSI (Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection) to try to maximize fertilization for those others. I don't really expect any of them to fertilize given that they were immature at retrieval, but we'll see.

I just feel like I'm running a race with an unknown number of hurdles. Everytime I jump over one, I hope that the end of the race is coming soon and there won't be any other hurdles, but then there's another one waiting. And I keep watching all these people around me running a simple hundred yard dash with narry a hurdle in sight. And I have no choice but to keep running, and keep jumping. Or just give up on the race. I don't want to give up, but I'm tired. I'm mentally tired and emotionally tired, and quickly becoming physically tired.

I asked Dane today, "When does the disappointment end?" He said "When you stop trying". It's not the answer I want, but it's the truth.