Caught In the Undertow



Life's a beach.


Yesterday was a bad day.   I left work early, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  I had one of those moments where not only did I feel the pain of losing a pregnancy, I felt like I was drowning beneath the weight of all these years of wanting and trying and praying and wishing and failing and failing and failing.  The phone call from Memphis was just one frustration too many and I was completely overwhelmed.

Turns out we're probably not going to Graceland after all.  Dr K's office offered me two choices: A) a phone consultation, to take place in 3-4 weeks, which will cost $500 out of pocket or B) an in-person consultation in Memphis, which will be covered by insurance but cannot be scheduled until the end of November.  That's FOUR MONTHS from now.

And here's how option B plays out, if that's what we decide:  we drive to Memphis (10+ hours in post-Thanksgiving holiday traffic, btw) and meet with the good doctor.  He reviews my phonebook-sized infertility file, and recommends more tests.  We come home, get the tests done here, and send him the results.  Then, we either drive back to Memphis for a follow-up appointment where he tells us what he thinks is wrong with me and how to deal with it or we send them a check and have that conversation by phone...and by then it's probably January. 

Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but it feels like the whole system is designed to take advantage of desperate women who've had multiple miscarriages and are impatient for answers.

But I am one of those desperate woman.  And I'll try to convince my husband that we'll find the money somehow and go with option A.  Because I still have a sliver of hope that Dr K can discover whatever is causing my reproductive malfunction, and waiting until NEXT YEAR to find out is simply not an option.

But my hopes of having an answer any time soon have faded.  Even in the best case scenario, it will be a month before we know anything. I don't know exactly what I expected from the clinic in Memphis, but what I got left me utterly deflated. 

And, I have to admit, I'm bitterly disappointed that we don't get to plan a road trip.  I was really looking forward to that, and it was nice to have something in the future to be excited about.  But no. Looks like it is not to be.  As disappointments go, I've had worse...but still.  It stings.

I'm just so tired of my hopes rising and crashing over and over like waves in the ocean.  Hope springs eternal, just like there's always another wave swelling just beyond the horizon.  But whenever a wave crests, it inevitably tumbles down again, and each time it does it washes away a little bit of sand as it recedes.  And after years and years of my hopes being lifted and dashed, over and over, it feels like the shoreline of my soul is eroding. 

I hope the tide turns soon.