Smiracles: Up Close and Personal

Part II

I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, mine angels round about you, to bear you up. -Doctrine & Covenants 84:88

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 30

The pharmacy called to confirm our $3100 order. Roger that. I hung up, put my head on the table, and felt like a very tiny person looking up at a very tall ladder. A knock at the door stirred me; the mailman left two parcels on the porch. One box plastered in international labels contained six vials of backordered Repronex fresh from jolly old London (they arrived nine hours before I had to use them-talk about cutting it close) and the other box was from Wisconsin. Jeanne Thalhuber, an old high school friend, had sent a miniature glass dolphin housed in a silky-lined fabric box with a tiny poem glued to the lid. The script font read:

We never know what we can bear until we face the deed;

It's then our inner strength prevails with power to succeed.

Other than exchanging annual Christmas cards I had not received anything from Jeanne in my life. Her note simply said I’d been on her mind and she woke up one morning determined to do something for me. The dolphin at the store reminded her of me so she threw it in the mail despite her not being a random gift-giver.

Something critical happened in that moment, something I’ll never forget even if I don’t write it down. I stood in my empty house holding a sparkly dolphin, the morning light cutting a streak across the kitchen, the countertop sprinkled with cardboard box confetti, as a realization clicked into place. I recalled yesterday’s inspired bishop while clutching today’s shiny treasure and simply understood the Lord was not going to leave me alone in the trenches of IVF. I thought I could do it on my own; He knew better. Despite my not telling a soul what was happening I had the inkling He would manifest his power, intelligence, or love for me in some way daily until I was through the mucky muck.

It was all I needed to know. I squared my shoulders, lowered my head, kept both eyes open to watch for the Lord's hand, and got ready to charge.

What follows are the smiracles (small miracles) I eagerly anticipated each day, originally recorded in my personal journal.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 1

The overnighted Follicle Rescue Kit arrived from Maine five hours early which enabled me to start my blast ahead of schedule. Every hour counts so having five extra seems like a blessing. Jabbed six vials. Waited ten hours. Jabbed six more.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 2

Six vials with breakfast. Follicle recheck was all the way after lunch, I couldn't think straight and repeatedly wondering if anything had grown since Sunday was causing me to emit nervous energy. I went to the gym and rode the bike until my legs and brain were still. I read Ensign magazine while I pedaled and a quote from President Hinckley literally jumped off the page and landed on my frazzled heart like a giant bandage:

Do your best, your very, very best. Work hard and pray hard and leave the harvest to the Lord.

He was speaking to missionaries in the article but no matter, he was speaking to me, too. "Harvest" is IVF slang for the day the eggs are retrieved from the female's body. Right there in the rundown rec center's smelly cardio room, below a quartet of TVs bellowing SportsCenter, Studio5, The Price is Right, and a soap opera, I turned the harvest over to the Lord and let go of the weight I had been clinging to. (It may be the last weight I lost in the cardio room.) Hours later Dr. A's monitor displayed five follicles sized 9, 10, 10, 10, and 11 mm. Success! We could proceed! Our next checkpoint: the 10s needed to be 16s by Sunday morning...which meant more injections, of course.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 3

A California care package containing dehydrated lime solids and a post-it note FROM YOUR FAVORITE CALIFORNIA FRIEND, LOVE YOU, KRISTI unexpectedly arrived in my mailbox. I had posted on facebook years ago (seriously, years) asking where to find dehydrated lime solids so I could make homemade fajita seasoning. Dehydrated lime solids were so random they could only have been inspired, plus the Lord knows how much I love fun mail.

My college roommate Heather texted me words of love. I'm glad her birthday fell in my week of need.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 4

Aunt Lynne sent me a Turkish scarf that doubled as a table runner and a coin-like silver pocket angel with EVERYONE NEEDS AN ANGEL engraved on the back. Yes they do! Little did she know she was mine for the day!

SATURDAY OCTOBER 5-GENERAL CONFERENCE

Jonny and Tiffany Poole surprised me with a visit as they were up from Vegas for the weekend. Tiffany even brought me a famous pink sugar cookie all the way from Swig in St. George. If I had harbored a cookie in my car for four hours it would not have lasted for a friend.  

Elder Bednar spoke on tithing and I realized gratitude has been a blessing in my life from paying tithing.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 6-GENERAL CONFERENCE

Watched the morning session and heard the "Move the Rock" talk which made me feel good as I had already asked the Lord to move my rock in the cardio room. Drove to Dr. A, the follicles were 16s and 18s, and my lining was a 15mm shag carpet about to offer a 9-month housing contract to any and all fertilized eggs. It was unbelievably believable that the Lord hears and answers prayers about millimeters, which are smaller than sparrows and not even living things.

MONDAY OCTOBER 7

Back at Dr. A's for morning blood work, a.k.a. My Zillionth Draw. I officially hate phlebotomists, even good ones. As I pressed a cotton ball on my used vein I told Dr. A I felt like Mater in Cars-like an old, rusty body trying to trick itself it was Lightning McQueen-which basically meant I felt older than 37 and sick of shots that made my pooch feel like it had five water balloons and a bag of splinters in it. Other than that I can't accurately describe the heavy pressure and pricks one feels when they are unnaturally full of eggs.

Dr. A called me at the house an hour later, "Good news, Mater. You only have to put the pedal to the medal for one more day. Your hormone levels have quit rising which means your body can't handle any more medical stalling; it wants to let go of the eggs. I need you to inject every vial you have left within the hour and do the Ovitrelle shot tonight at 10. Your harvest is scheduled for 36 hours after the Ovitrelle. See you Wednesday." (click)

Every last vial within the hour? I had 14 left. Greg was working in Salt Lake so he couldn't do it. Bishop Thornton was the only other person that knew we were doing IVF and was at school teaching choir, not that I could have asked him to do it. I was so deathly afraid of needles I had not opened my eyes once for any shot or blood draw in the past two years. And now I had to suck up 14 vials to make the juiciest injection of all time and give it to myself? Mercy.

My hands shook with palsy as I filled the syringe. I rubbed my tummy with an alcohol wipe and squeezed the fat. And then I froze. I couldn't override my own brain to stick myself. I folded my arms on the bathroom windowsill and prayed outloud for help. A minute later it was over. I stuffed the used needle in the sharps container with a triumphant heart and even shakier hand. Then I called Greg. He couldn't believe what I had done. I think it's the proudest he's ever been of me. He said that's when he knew how badly I wanted a baby. Giving myself the big shot was more of a miracle than a smiracle. That was huge.

Ate a late night snack with my refrigerated Ovitrelle shot at 10. NO MORE SHOTS FOR TWO DAYS! *painful happy dance*

TUESDAY OCTOBER 8

What to do, what to do? I needed a project to keep my mind busy. My neighbor Marcy invited Frenchie and me to pick apples from her brother's tree in Orem. I volunteered to clean up the rotten apples on the grass because I could do it on my hands and knees which disguised my abdominal pain. The Lord blessed me with enough strength to can applesauce all night which did two things: 1)killed time, and 2)kept me too busy to check the clock twice a minute to see how many hours away the harvest was.

My sister Suz called and left a message when I was picking apples "just because she had been thinking about me a lot."

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 9-THE HARVEST

Ol' Mater had TWO HIDDEN FOLLICLES who'd never shown their pretty faces onscreen. BOOM! Dr. A retrieved seven eggs which made me high-five my own body once I came to from anesthesia. Our IVF nurse Liesl left the clinic during my surgery to buy me fries from McDonalds because there was an office legend that every woman who ate one small fry after her harvest got pregnant. To be fair, I ate no french fry on the previous IVF. Not one to squelch an office legend I ate a singular fry and Greg drove me home relieved, eggless, and exhausted.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 10

When an egg is retrieved it is an oocyte. After it is fertilized and one day old it is a zygote. By day 3 it has grown to an 8-cell embryo. By day 5 it is a blastocyst. IVF doctors usually implant between days 3 and 5. Small hiccup: our renowned embryologist was going to be in Boston for a cryogenic conference (if I had a nickel...) on my days 3, 4, and 5. The office had hired a substitute embryologist for those days. Like I wanted a substitute embryologist at that point. I wanted Thomas Chang, Chinese genius, and none else. We had no other choice but to implant with 1-day old zygotes, something our doctor rarely did.

Of my seven fertilized eggs we got three Grade-A, two Bs and Cs, and two funky-looking yellowish ones. Those two got tossed, we implanted the three champions, and froze B and C just in case. Because I am never doing IVF again.

I spent the next two days (Fall Break) on bed rest reading cooking magazines, watching The Men Who Built America on The History Channel, and eating the half-dozen Dippidee cupcakes Pam Cardwell quietly left on our porch.

If I hadn't been secretive, if I had even whispered that I needed help, I would have had no less than forty neighbors and friends at my side in an instant. I have those kinds of neighbors and friends. What still gets me is how the Lord ignited so many people in the periphery of my life and caused them to aid me in my silence. Like a comet they blasted in, made a difference, and blasted out, unlikely to be seen again in my day-to-day lifetime.

There are no coincidences. There is only God.

*Greg likes to tell the story of me waking up after the harvest. Liesl offered me some snacks to help me wake up and held an apple NutriGrain bar in front of my face. I allegedly smacked her hand and made a nasty face at the bar. Then she held up Oreos and string cheese and I smiled all sneaky-like and whispered to Greg there were treats.