Four Years ago on a dreary rainy Easter Sunday in Seattle I pulled my car up in front of the house where Lynnea was living at that point in time.  In the back seat of my car I had two towels, a bowl, and five years worth of cards, letters, and notes that she had given me.  In my pocket I had a box that contained a single solitary White Sapphire, which is now the center stone of her wedding ring.  Before getting out of my car into the pouring rain to make a dash for the front porch of the house, I pulled the box out of my pocket, and flipped it open.  For ten very long minutes I stared at the Sapphire and thought about the last five years of the dating journey Lynnea and I had been on.  Conjuring up times spent laughing, of our first date, of the mistakes we had made, and conversations that had taken place that had brought me to this point.  For what I was just about to do was ask Lynnea to marry me.  But before I could do that I needed to sit alone in my car with the rain beating down and feel the weight of the question I was about to ask.  Can we merge our dreams and goals for the future, I wondered?  Four years later I find myself reflecting on that decision.  I don’t find myself regretting my marriage proposal, but over these last two and a half weeks, I have found myself sad and angry.  The question of course is why these emotions?  The short answer to this question is that I want to be a father.  The longer answer requires a little more explanation.

When I asked Lynnea to be my wife that proposal brought with it my dream of one day having children.  So why is that possibility in jeopardy?  One of the unfortunate side effects of a young woman’s battle with cancer is that her reproductive cycle needs to be put into a menopausal state, or in the words of our Oncologist, “it needs to go into hibernation for the next five years.”  Along with the suppression of Lynnea’s hormones that dictate her monthly cycle, the chemicals poured into her body, both in high doses over the next 6 months, and low doses for the next 5 years, could do permanent damage that may not allow for her to ever get pregnant.  This is why Lynnea and I have chosen to spend the last two weeks attempting to create a back up in the event we can’t get pregnant in the future through natural methods.  While my part in this back up plan involves a donation into a cup, Lynnea’s has been a little more painful.  In order to gather as many eggs as possible, she was put on a ten day regiment of drugs that would stimulate the growth of her ovaries.  Every morning she would have to do a self injection and towards the end of the ten days it was two.  Along with these injections every two to three days Lynnea had to go in for an ultra sound, so the doctors could check the growth of her ovaries. This past Thursday it came time to harvest Lynnea’s eggs (this statement has brought us a few laughs, as it makes Lynnea sound as if she’s a chicken!).  The process of harvesting the eggs is truly amazing.  What the doctor does is use an ultra sound to see the ovaries on a screen.  At the end of the ultra sound handle is a long thin needle with a very small thin tube attached to it that has a vacuum seal to it.  The doctor then uses the needle to puncture the ovaries.  The painful part for Lynnea comes about because with in each ovary there a many follicles that house the eggs.  Each mature follicle must then be jabbed with the needle so that the eggs can be sucked up.  It wasn’t a pleasant experience to watch.  While the whole process lasted five minutes each time the needle was jabbed it sent sharp pains into Lynnea.  Even with the pain killer that she was given the puncturing could still be felt and the signs of pain were very evident on her face.

After the egg gathering was finished Lynnea and I were taken to an adjacent room where a TV monitor was turned on.  That monitor was hooked up to a micro scope and we got to watch as another doctor sorted through the fluid to find the eggs.  In total they were able to get twelve eggs.  All twelve of these eggs will then be attempted to be fertilized to create embryo’s.  There is no guarantee that our dozen eggs will be turned into embryo’s.  The next step is then to freeze the embryo’s, which could further reduce the number.  Tuesday we will find out how many survived to be put into cryo-preservation.

My hope is that Lynnea and I never have to use the soon to be stored embryo’s.  That at the end of five years her body will not only be cancer free, but that her body will be able to bear children.  I know that there are other options available, such as adoption, if we are not able to bring a child into this world naturally.  But, right now, in these past weeks, I have come face to face with the fact that I want to experience the process of becoming a father.  I want to experience being a husband to Lynnea as she’s pregnant.  I potentially want the experience of putting my hand out to help deliver my child into this world.  The hardship of this particular aspect of our cancer journey is that we will not know for five to six years whether we can get pregnant.  There is also the very real possibility that if we have to use the embryo’s Lynnea’s body might reject them.  There are so many unknowns about the future, with this I am very comfortable.  However, that doesn’t do anything to alleviate my present sadness or anger over my fears that our hopes for having biological children could rest on twelve or less embryos.

Blessings to you all on this Easter Sunday… He has risen.

-Jonathan