Since my surgery, I have had monthly blood draws to test my HCG levels (my tumor marker). Currently, my blood draws consist of a screening at the front door of the lab building, a temperature check, a mask, no sitting in the waiting room, lots of hand sanitizer, and they usually have me out in less than 10 minutes, all of which I appreciate.
I had a virtual visit with my oncologist in May (talk about things I never thought I would experience). She said she would leave it up to me whether or not we continue with monthly blood draws or change that to once a quarter. I have no problem with getting my blood drawn as much as possible for doctors to tell me there is no sign of cancer infiltrating my body, so we’ll just keep up the monthly labs. Blood draws aren’t so bad and I’m pretty used to it. When we get to the one-year mark in December, hopefully things will still look clear and we’ll talk about an altered schedule. My next appointment with her is in September and I’m hoping I can see her in person.
My oncologist was very open with me and said that she really felt like I was done, this was cured, and we could be pretty assured that the cancer wouldn’t return. However, if it did return, because it’s so slow-growing, we would likely see it sometime between the one and two-year mark. So I’m just emotionally preparing for a couple of anxious years. We have to keep living in the mean time (or as much as we can in our current quarantined existence). Charlotte deserves a mom that is focused on her and her development, not cancer, not IVF, not surrogacy. It’s a daily struggle and an active exercise to remind myself to be present and grateful, and as difficult as working from home with a two-year old is sometimes, I’m so thankful for this unexpected extra time we have together.
Our infertility journey feels like it’s just beginning. We know we want another child. At this point, we are leaning towards IVF and gestational surrogacy. Every time I start to research the process, I just get sad and angry that I can’t just do this myself. It’s a legal nightmare, an emotional roller coaster, an astronomical expense, and really just sounds like a huge pain in the ass. At the beginning of the quarantine, they weren’t even allowing new fertility treatments to begin, but I think clinics are opening back up now. There are a lot of grants and scholarships for people struggling with infertility, but many of the cancer-related ones are on hold or being redirected right now, as they should be (ex. some are going to patients currently undergoing treatment who have lost their income). So I feel like I’m in a little bit of a holding pattern on things right now until we learn more.
I’m still trying to understand gestational surrogacy in Virginia. One thing I’ve really been trying to drill down on is the fact that Virginia doesn’t allow pre-birth orders: basically an agreement between a surrogate and intended parents declaring that the intended parents are the legal parents of the child, not the surrogate. Seems like a reasonable thing to work out before the birth of a child that is biologically yours (or even if the child wasn’t biologically yours but you had an agreement with a surrogate), but they aren’t allowed in Virginia and I haven’t really figured out why. As it stands now (as far as I can understand), the gestational carrier’s name goes on the birth certificate after the baby is born and they can’t “give up” parental rights until four days after birth, which seems like a great way to re-traumatize an intended mother who can’t carry a child herself. Intended parents have to petition and pay big money to have the birth certificate changed and the whole thing makes medical decisions for the baby extremely complicated in the hospital. I’m already really angry about this and I haven’t even gotten into the weeds of surrogacy research – I want to find out more to understand why this law is in place. I did speak to another local mom who has been through the whole surrogacy process and she gave me a lot of valuable insight into everything she went through – the good, bad, and very expensive. But in the end, she said the struggle was totally worth it. I’m just trying to hold on to that sentiment when the research stresses me out.
Life One Step At A Time 