When you are waiting to begin something significant, you exist in this kind of liminal space. You’re at a boundary, a threshold, a precipice. You were in one place and you’re about to be in another. It’s hard to be there because we’re so often told that we have to be moving forward, advancing. In the time between the end of our last egg stim cycle and now, I’ve been thinking a lot about reality. It feels so silly to write, because isn’t what we are living, isn’t this reality, real? Yes, sure. And maybe not always. If you are taken out of the river’s flow, that endless ebb onward, you’re just… well, you’re just kind of here. And what does that mean? How does it make me feel? What do I do with the energy of wanting to go on and not yet able to? I’m not sure I have an answer.
Periodically, when we are out for our daily walks my Dad will look out at the distance, be kind of far away, and I’ll ask him what he’s thinking about. He almost always says, your babies. Each time he says this, I first clarify if he means he’s imaging having grandchildren or if he is thinking about the embryos. Through these recent years and his cognitive struggles, I’ve learned to anticipate what he is thinking. I’ve learned to read his mind, in a way. But I want to give him a chance to participate. It’s always that he is thinking about the embryos. And I always have to remind him that embryos are not babies, not yet. They are simply a hope, a wish, a dream locked in a frozen state. The embryos are real, I know that. But since they’ve not yet been implanted and I am not yet pregnant or further along in this process, I find myself questioning whether any of this is really real.
Somewhere in this “wash phase” R and I began rewatching Twin Peaks. The first time I watched it (and we watched it together) was in 2019 and I remember being immediately hooked because the story involved investigating Laura Palmer’s homicide (no shame, I love crime dramas). The show swiftly transforms from your typical solve-the-murder escapade, and invites in the weird, and then the weirder, and finally the weirdest things you can imagine. It manages to keep your attention as if you’re watching a kind of eerie wreck. There’s so much in the show that has the viewer (and the characters) questioning what’s real. The end of season two left me (and probably every other viewer over the years) in that special, annoyed, dead space left for unfinished stories. I understood why there wasn’t more, but I was irritated. The story didn’t move on. Over the next few years, I’d intermittently think about the show or a scene. My brain glossing over details or sometimes obsessing about them. It stayed in my mind, acting as a kind of portal, the way all great shows do - pulling me into a space and time that is separate from reality.
Let me be clear with you. I know that the embryos are real, in that they do exist. I have photos of them. I have seen the test results. And I know the plan that will hopefully allow them to turn into a pregnancy and a child. I also know how quickly things go awry. I also know how hopes get dashed. I also know about loss. For most of these last couple months, I’ve moved from excitement and joy to apathy to fear to disillusionment back to joy and to this weird, untextured space of just being. I go through the other motions of my life. I accomplish tasks. I get overwhelmed. I deal with it (or at least I try to). But there is always this shimmer in the back of my mind, this halo of something. Maybe hope. Maybe it’s the embryos or my thoughts about them. My carrying them with me through every moment, every day, even if I am not yet carrying them inside me. What does it mean to be in the liminal space of waiting? To have no clarity on the unknown? I am not sure.
I do know that what we want and what we get often do not align. I know that the TV show’s story ends abruptly because it was cancelled before the writers had a chance to change the script. I know that sometimes you aren’t able to have a family. I've always been a planner. I like to be prepared. I like to know the end of the story. This period of time has had me trying to imagine every outcome, even the bad ones, trying to see how I go forward, trying to pre-prepare my emotions. Sometimes it’s a passing thought. Sometimes it’s a day spent buried in r/infertility Reddit threads. Sometimes it’s disassociating completely from the process, living in the void of uncertainty.
All the tests our doctor ordered (Hyst, Doppler ultrasound, and TET), revealed that there were some issues with my uterus that needed correcting before proceeding to implantation. I had two polyps and a fair amount of scar tissue. Surgery was scheduled. After which, I would be taking a bunch of medication to try and help my body rebuild the uterine lining. Once that was complete and once I got my next period, I'd be cleared to move to the Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) phase. The FET cycle is about 6-8 weeks long. More waiting. More time in the void.
This “wash phase” is maybe even harder than the egg stim, because nothing is happening. You’re not getting shots, you’re not taking meds, you’re not going to the doctor. You’re also not making a ton of plans cause you have no idea what the future will look like. You are just being alive. You’re just existing. You’re just there. How’s it possible to just be with no idea where you’ll be going? Each day weathers and moves.
Pre-Op Meeting
As R and I drive to the fertility clinic, we talk about how weird it feels that we haven’t had to make this drive in a while, how it almost feels unfamiliar. During the egg stimulation phase we were coming here so much for rounds one and then two, each turn was almost a reflex. Today, it feels like returning to a place you used to live. It wasn’t that long ago, but it still feels faraway. Today’s meeting is to review the pre-operative procedures before surgery in a couple weeks. I ask R if he is scared about the surgery. He says no, but I can see a small flicker of discomfort in his eyes. I have been through so much in the last few years and hospitals low-key freak us both out.
Waiting in the office after having a successful egg stim cycle feels like an accomplishment. But as I look at the other women, I start to wonder where they are on their journey and if they are thinking the same thing about me. Am I allowed to be joyful. No, not yet. We’ve only crossed one hurdle, there are so many more to come. I feel self-conscious about my small win and stare at my hands while R reads a magazine. Finally, my name is called and we head back.
As walk through the corridor, I see the tech who did my blood draws for the whole last egg retrieval cycle. I say a polite hello, but seeing her causes my stomach to clench. Every time she had to dig into the ditch of my elbow to find the right the vein, sometimes it even took her more than one poke. I always asked for the smaller needle, but it didn’t help much and I always bruised. I rub the insides of my arms, trying to massage the memory away. I am grateful that I don’t need to go see her today.
We are led to an office (the type of room we haven’t been in since our initial visits in January) and sit down with the nurse coordinator. She’s the one who’s done my SIS and Hyst tests, and is always seemingly around in the office when we’ve been there. She is pretty and young, her brown hair glinting in the sun coming through the window. Her demeanor is welcoming and warm and I feel safe with her. I reflect briefly on how health care can be so frustrating cause you make these connections with certain doctors or nurses and then they are only with you for a little while before you are shuttled to someone else. You’ve never able to really get comfortable or feel totally safe. I take a deep breath knowing that we’ll probably not interact with her again as she passes a pile of forms to us to read and review.
Most of the pieces of paper are instructions. Everything arrives in front of me one at a time as she talks. There are showering instructions for the night before/morning of surgery. There is a small bottle of liquid antiseptic soap that I will need to shower with. There are pre-op instructions on what to do when. There are post-op instructions on what to do when. There is a discount coupon for prenatal pills by a company the office recommends. There are several papers on information about the hospital and billing and accounts. There is a piece of paper outlining the medication I’ll have to start taking afterwards to help rebuild my uterine lining with dates and times. The nurse talks to us about the surgery and answers the long list of questions that I prepared in the Notes app on my phone.
I am not really sure why, but I don’t feel scared. Maybe it’s her warm smile. Maybe it’s the gentle scent of eucalyptus hanging in the air of her office. Maybe it’s that after having an emergency surgery, any planned surgery feels easy. Maybe it’s that they aren’t cutting through my body, that I won’t have surface wounds. All I know is that I am not worried. When I glance over at R, I can tell that he is uncomfortable, a hint of uncertainty in his chest. But I know that those fears are for him to deal with and that I cannot take them on, so I just look away. The meeting is over and she walks us out.
It is the first visit that leaving from feels easy. I feel like this is maybe the one time I feel like I understand, like I know what will happen and how to live with it after. As we drive home, I watch the sky shift on and on and I don’t think about anything else.
Hysteroscopyic Polypectomy
I wake up at 4:45AM the day of surgery to take a shower. The bathroom’s skylight pours the smallest amount of bright into the room so I don’t need to turn the fluorescents on. I read the instructions several times despite knowing exactly what they say. Washing my hair with my own shampoo is first. Massaging the frothy soap around my hair feels relaxing. The gentle hint of basil and lemongrass helps calm the jitteriness in my brain. I know what’s happening. Everything will be fine.
The antiseptic soap makes my skin hot and a little itchy. I don’t like how it makes me feel. I want to use my own minty, rosemary soap. I want my skin to feel like a breeze. Or a garden. Instead all I smell is hospital. All I smell is what’s coming. I dry off and dress in clean, loose clothes. I don’t drink water. I want to, but I don’t. I follow the rules laid out on my sheet of paper. We gather the dogs and put everything in the car. R is very tired from getting home incredibly late from a work trip so I decide to drive. We drop the dogs off with my Dad and are on our way.
The drive goes by quickly. The sun is slowly pouring into the morning sky, saturating everything with its easy glow. It dawns on me that this route is the same one I took when I brought hawk 102 to the Birds of Prey sanctuary. The skin on my face and neck creeps with sadness. I take three deep breaths and tell myself it will be okay. It’s not the same. And anyway, he lived. I will too.
We arrive at the hospital exactly at 5:50AM, ten minutes early. The nurse and the sheets of paper instructed us to go in the emergency entrance and walk down the short corridor to the check in room. We do as we were told. It is very quiet. The emergency wing is completely empty. Part of me feels like a hospital should be bustling. But maybe it’s a good thing that it isn’t, that trauma isn’t overrunning the place. There are a few other people in chairs in the main lobby awaiting procedures. The woman at the check in desk motions me over. She asks me questions and I answer them. I hand over my ID and my insurance cards. I pay my co-pay. We make small talk about the photo I uploaded into the portal.
I am chronically good at following the rules. I checked in two weeks prior and ensured all my information was uploaded. I was thorough in my documentation of the medications I take and all my allergies. This is not the typical hospital I go to but the one our fertility clinic works with, so I did my best to be prepared. To prepare them for me. My wrist is ladened with plastic bracelets that have a barcode, my full name, and my birthday. I have never been big on bracelets. In college, everyone would wear their paper bracelets from shows for days. I couldn’t wait to cut them off. The adhesive part isn’t fully clamped down on one of them and I fuss with it, trying to ensure nothing sticky touches my skin. She tells us to go wait in the lobby and we do.
R is tired and his eyes keep fluttering. I don’t try to talk to him because I know how hard it is to be so tired and need to stay awake at the same time. The lobby is massive. The ceiling reaches is high up into the sky and a tiered glass skylight lets the morning light in. The sky is blue, blue, blue. I’ve learned that Coloradans like to call days like this, when the sky is cloudless and this particular brilliant shade, a “blue bird day.” Mountain bluebirds certainly are an almost iridescent kind of blue so I suppose it fits. I continue to look up and out the windows because I am trying actively not to look around the lobby too much. There are a lot of crosses and bible quotes covering the walls. I don’t care what others believe in for themselves, but I do not believe in or want anything to do with religion. I knew this hospital had christian affiliations, and if it weren't the only place my fertility clinic did their surgical procedures, I would have put up more of a fight about having surgery here. I can feel my annoyance build at having someone else’s beliefs shoved into my eyes, so I stare through the sky light and focus on taking deep breaths.
Finally, a nurse takes us back into the corridors of the surgery wing. She takes my weight and brings me into a room. She tells me to put on the gown, pee in a cup, and wait. I go into the bathroom that is shared with the next room. The room only contains a toilet and toilet paper. There is no where to put the cup filled with pee once I am done. I put it on the floor and tell myself to be really careful not to kick it over. I finish in the bathroom and realize there is no sink to wash my hands. I let out a frustrated breath and take the pee back into the room. I place it on the nurses table. There is no sink in the room either. I find a disinfectant dispenser tucked in the corner and rub it all over my hands. The bed has a ton of other stuff on it, so I sit off to the side. It isn’t comfortable, but being in a hospital never is. We wait and wait.
R points out the religious quotes scrolling across the computer monitor. I roll my eyes. All I can think about is how they have all these quotes plastered everywhere, but no sink for patients to wash their hands. Maybe they expect that their beliefs will keep people clean. I do my best to ignore the screen and not let my irritation grow anymore. Though he is tired, R makes an effort to talk to me, asking about this and that. If I talk for more than a minute or two, his eyes grow wobbly. I know he is trying to help, but that two hours of sleep is not nearly enough to be functional. I tell him to just rest, that I don’t feel like talking anyway. Time keeps moving forward and I’m just in a hospital gown sitting on the bed waiting. It’s boring. I’m a bit tired. I’m just here.
After about an hour, a different nurse comes in and begins surgery preparations. He moves the rest of the stuff off the bed and begins to hook things up. He asks if I have an IV arm preference. I tell him that my right elbow ditch is the easiest to access my veins. I make a comment to R about how during egg retrieval the anesthesiologist put the needle into my hand and the nurse lights up. Hands are much easier if you want to go that route, he says. Sure why not. The nurse goes to work on the giant, pulsing vein on the top of my left hand. It’s a little uncomfortable and it’s hard to move my hand around, but it’s not terrible. I will live.
Some more time passes and R starts to fall asleep sitting up. I don’t bother him or try to keep him awake. I know that in his heart he wants to try and talk the low-level anxiety out of me, but I am fine. Really. I just look out the window at the sky that’s growing brighter by the minute. I text my parents to tell them that things are progressing, that I love them, and I’ll talk to them later. Afterwards, I put my phone and bag away with my other things that will go with R to the post-op area. The room gets busier with nurses coming in and out, checking this and that. Even the hallway gets noisier, the influx of people and procedures as the day moves forward.
The anesthesiologist arrives to review my allergies and go over everything. She could not be more different than the anesthesiologist I’ve had at the fertility clinic. The sides of her head are shaved into a kind of mohawk and she is covered in tattoos. On her forearm, the tattoo of an owl with large eyes stares at me. I feel completely safe. I answer all her questions and she marks notes on her sheet. Once she is done, my doctor comes in to review the procedure and answer any last minute questions. I tell her I’m ready. When she leaves to get scrubbed up, R and I are alone for a couple brief minutes. I tell him that nothing bad is going to happen to me. But if it does, that I wrote him a letter with my wishes and such. I tell him it’s in the notebook next to my side of the bed. I can see a kind of fear flash across his eyes. I don’t want him to be scared, but I also want him to know where to look for info. I know how seemingly normal procedures can go sideways. I want him to be prepared.
Two nurses come in to get me and R kisses me, See you soon. The nurses roll the bed out of the room and down a hall. It’s not as busy as it seemed when I was in the room and I wonder if there were just a few loud folks near our room. We go through a few sets of double doors and then enter the operating room. Half the wall is this nice teal tile. My doctor is covered in that meshy plastic, but I recognize her eyes. She asks me how I am doing and I tell her that I’m good. She tells me that I’m gonna fall asleep shortly and that everything will be okay. I am reassured. I am safe. I fall asleep looking at the lights in the ceiling. The white hot burning into my retinas.
When I wake up, I am in a kind of wash, a void, a not-here-yet-here space. I fade in and out. My mouth is dry. I am given water and ice. I keep thinking that I am in the hospital by our house, that I’ve had the appendectomy. I am confused and forget everything minutes after it happens. I see R but then I don’t know where I am. I ask how things went and he says good. I can’t remember if we are dating or married. I chew on ice and drink more water. R offers me a honey bar but I don’t want it. My stomach feels full and I’m too tired to eat. The doctor comes in and says something and I forget it. We leave the hospital and I forget it. We drive home and I forget it. Anesthesia is a strange animal. We are home. We are in the recovery room. We are in the car. I lose track of time. I lose understanding of what the word linear means.
Later, I wake up in my bed. I don’t remember getting home. I don’t remember anything the doctor said. R tells me that they removed the two polyps and some significant scar tissue. He makes me a smoothie and brings more water. I zone out while I drink all my liquids. After I am done, R gives me the pain meds and I lay back down. The blanket is soft against my face. The dogs flank me. I fall asleep with their warm bodies pressing into me.
The rest of the day blurs in and out. I nap. I eat simple foods. I look at R. I look at the dogs. I try to write but my brain can’t see. We watch some TV show and I forget what the episode is about half way through. I stop trying to remember. I’ve learned from my and my father’s surgeries that anesthesia can mess with cognitive function and memory for a significant period of time after surgery. How long differs from individual and how long you’re under. They call it a fog. They are not wrong. I don’t fight it. I live with it. I take more pain pills and go to sleep.
Wash Phase Continued
The day after surgery, I am sore. My abdomen feels like it has a large weight in it and I bleed a lot. R says that the doctor told us that I would bleed a fair amount for the few days after surgery. I am not surprised. The blood ranges from bright red to a sticky brown. I don’t mind. I wear loose clothes and period underwear. I sit on the couch. I don’t try and force myself forward or toward anything. I know that this next part will take a good deal of time. More time than I’d like, but I am learning that IVF just takes forever. I’m learning to be used to it.
My body continues to ache intermittently for the first week after surgery. I do my best to listen to the ache, to be present with the soreness and not push myself too hard or too much. But after a couple days, I find it’s frustrating to be throttled back. I try to remind myself that it’s part of this process. There is nothing I can do but do it.
During this time, I am transitioned over to the Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) team and given a new nurse. I really liked my egg stim nurse because she always called me whenever I messaged her with questions. She got that I like talking through things on the phone rather than shooting messages back and forth across the portal. I worry that my new nurse won’t be as accommodating or patient with me and all my questions. But there is nothing I can do. One comes and one goes, transition, transition, and on.
For the next twenty-one days following surgery, I take Estrace (a pill form of Estrogen) twice a day. This is to help my body rebuild the uterine lining. In the morning, I pop the blue oval into my mouth and wash it down with water. I am careful to take it with food and space it a solid four hours after my thyroid meds. In the evening, I have to insert the blue oval vaginally. This causes blue discharge to leak out every morning and whenever I exercise. Sometimes what we have to do as women is so absurd. I wear (and wash) my period underwear every day for twenty-one, long days. Once I am through the Estrace, I begin taking Progesterone pills (orally) every evening for ten days. These are much easier to handle and I even notice my body feeling less bloated after being off the Estrogen. This is something I am grateful for.
I take the Progesterone pills for the required amount of time and then stop taking it. I expect to get my period right away, but it doesn’t show up. I start thinking back through the last few weeks and part of me gets a little excited. Maybe I am pregnant. The next morning, I rush to take a test. It is, of course, negative. It would be too easy if things just worked. I’m not that lucky.
After the fourth day of no period, I reach out to my FET nurse asking what to do. She tells me that it can take a while for the period to show up after ending the Progesterone, but if it doesn’t show up within two weeks that I will need to come back in for more testing. I shake my head as I read her message in the portal. Can’t it just be easy. Can’t things just work. Can’t I get a win. I try to not think about getting a period or moving into the FET cycle or hope. Each days flips back and forth between wanting to be in the next part and giving up on this all together.
At some point, I will be back in the clinic. I will again be getting poked with needles and taking medications. I will be throttling back my exercise and preparing myself for everything to come. I know there will be pain, my body will again be changing, that I will have to learn and relearn every lesson I’ve talked about over these last many months. It all looms so close and yet feels so far away. And I can do is wait.
Over the period of this “wash cycle,” I’ve been working with my close friend and tattoo artist, Le Brit, to fill up my legs (specifically the back of my legs as there was a lot of negative space there) with her incredible work. The relationship between the person doing the tattooing and the person being tattooed is, in my mind, a sacred one. You, the canvas. They, the artist creating incredible work and painting it permanent on your flesh. They are forever woven into your skin. I have been to many tattooers over the years, but part of me was always searching for that something more. I can talk to anyone, but I cannot be myself with just anyone. I was looking for an incredibly intimate friendship, a deep tether, and I found it.
The first time I went to Brit’s website, I was struck by the moving image at the top of the page. Her drawing of a snake-like tiger shifting and wobbling touched something inside my mind. Our first session was to do a tiger and a puma on each side of my shins. It was a little tester. I wanted to see if we’d get along. From the moment I sat down with her, I knew she was the right person. She exuded this tenderness that I’d never felt before with a tattoo artist. As someone nearly covered in tattoos, I can tell you that this industry is filled with misogynistic personalities (men and women) that want to dominate you in every aspect of the tattoo process. Brit is the light that moves across the dark sea of this community. She is part of a new wave of artists who want tattooing to be a collaborative process, who make each person’s experience perfect for them. And she is a warm, funny, stunning individual on top of it all. After those first couple cats, I quickly booked more sessions with her. At the moment, I can safely say that my legs are a full, walking canvas of her work and one that I’m proud to wear.
I bring up tattooing because it’s something that’s actually taught me the two sides of processing any experience: knowing what you’re going into and trusting you have the right people around you to go through it with. Brit was one of the first people I shared my IVF journey with. She’s one of a couple friends I’ve talked through a lot of my challenges with IVF and life with. She listens, she reflects with me, she shares her life and herself with me. We grow together. What I am saying is the void is dark and deep, and as you move through any challenging experience, the people you pull close to you can make all the difference in how you get through it.
A couple weekends ago, Brit tattooed a special piece on me. Well, hang on, let’s be honest, they are all special pieces. Each one she’s designed is full of our conversations, my likes, my history, and her unique ideas. But this tattoo was an interpretation of Twin Peak’s Laura Palmer’s hands and a portal.
To us (Brit and I), it signifies choosing which version of yourself is in the real world, which you is here, (mean)while the other you is in some other time/space/reality. It asks, which *you* are you inviting through the portal into the here, the now? I would say that most of the tattoos on my left leg deal heavily with duality. Though I didn’t intend this as we discussed and put these pieces down, I see now how that theme, that’s been something my mind’s fixated on for decades, is affixed to my left leg.
And as such, my body is this question to the viewer, who do you see? Who do you want to see? Which lodge are you coming from or headed to? What is real? What do you do in the void? How do you make it through?
I think the way each of us approach, consider, and process a void period in our lives is unique. I hope you find ways and people that help you through yours.
Sending y’all light and love.
I loved seeing your tattoos and learning more about the collaborative process you share with the artist. I’m always so fascinated by the way you are able to link together various aspects of your life experiences and your thoughts. Deft writing, deep writing, wonder writing. Thank you, as always, Emma, for sharing with us.