Getting bad news during or after a cycle always presents the question:
What do you do now?
At first, I whined and complained.
Wanted to just quit.
If it wasn’t gonna happen easy, it wasn’t gonna happen.
Then my skin thickened.
I can handle this.
I really want to be a father.
I really want to see Lisa be a mother.
So we kept going on.
IVF #1.
IVF #2
IVF #3.
Miscarriage.
IVF #4.
After this one, I felt like Rocky must have after Clubber Lang finished him off.
I was afraid.
For the first time in my life I wondered if we could go the distance.
Then somehow, I found the Eye of the Tiger.
I got back in the ring and took shot after shot after shot.
Financial challenges.
Logistical challenges traveling across country.
Then 9/11 happened.
Bigger security–questions about all our needles on the way and on the way back.
We got to New Jersey.
Anthrax scare.
Lisa allergic to all the anti-anthrax antibiotics.
IVF #5 fails.
We’re done.
And then we’re not.
One moment at a Christening for another child that wasn’t mine made me take on Drago this time.
Two poor qualify embryos frozen in New Jersey called out to Lisa.
So I climbed up to the top of that freakin’ mountain and screamed Drago’s name.
He’s just a man, Rocky said.
It’s just a cycle, I said. We’ll keep trying until we are holding a baby at our Christening is what I told Lisa.
A year and half later, I made good on that promise.
Once you get the bad news, you have to decide what to do.
I say fight like hell for what you want, and never, ever give up.