I he
ard a story recently about Ernest Hemingway and a lunch time bet that some of his writing buddies made. They bet him $10 he couldn’t write a story with just six words.
Hemingway, never one to shy away from a dare came up with this:
For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.
Brilliant.
It got me thinking about the six-word stories that infertility patients deal with on a daily basis.
Hemingway’s baby shoe ad could easily be the epitaph to a miscarriage.
I remember worrying that we would end up selling all of the baby stuff Lisa kept buying as the treatments kept failing.
Test results back: big fat negative.
I always hated that one.
I would sit toward the end of the ceramic tiled kitchen table. It was the 1990s, and we had at least graduated to cordless phones in our house, but cell phones were still to0 unpredictable to use for such an important phone call.
I would watch Lisa bite her lip.
Her eyes would reflexively look down, and then the right side of her mouth would begin to quiver.
The tears would race down her cheeks as she absently listened to whatever the person on the other line was saying about what the plan would be next.
I pushed back my own water works when her hand rested on her bloated abdomen.
A reminder not of the pending arrival of our baby, but a cruel side effect of the egg growing drugs that would take another couple of weeks to empty out.
Here’s another one.
No asshole. We can’t just relax.
This became an anthemic story of just about everyone in our social circle who grew tired of our ongoing infertility trials and wanted us to talk about just about anything else.
Just and relax together are not the words to say to someone who just had eggs sucked out of her ovaries with a large needle after having a plastic penis wand in her vagina, after spending anywhere from $3000 to $10000 for a 50/50 chance (and that’s at the best clinics) shot at having a kid wants to hear.
Please God. Let it work this time.
I don’t have to explain this one.
I’d love to hear your six-word infertility story. If you’d like to share, please put in the comments section.