Okay,” Mom breathed. I looked over and saw tears brimming at the rims of her eyes. “B-but her eggs and everything else is fine?”
“Yes, her eggs are okay. When we ran the tests, the count was standard. It’s just a matter of carrying a child that concerns me.” Dr. Bhandari looked at me. “What I am trying to say, Kandy, is that your uterus is not as strong as it once was. It could take years for that wound to heal, and even if it does, the lining has been damaged. It will be hard for a fertilized eggs to stay attached, which could result in either never getting pregnant, or getting pregnant, but the egg not being able to securely attach to the uterine wall, which in turn results in miscarrying.”
The information was hitting me hard, but all of my words had been lost. Mom stood and came to my side to rub my shoulder, still listening to him go on.
“I never like to say never. There are always possibilities, and there is always hope,” he went on.
“So… what would you suggest she does?”
“I would suggest resting the uterus. I don’t recommend birth control or even sexual activity at this point, as your uterus is still healing, but in two to three weeks, you should be okay to do those activities again. I’m just adding time here, just to make sure you heal properly because everything seems okay, and you’ve stopped bleeding. I can recommend some vitamins that are good for healing. Perhaps walking a bit more, stretching, staying active…” Dr. Bhandari was still talking, but his words became a buzz.
I remembered the stages of grief—how once I was angry, but now I wanted to bargain. I so badly wanted to climb off that bed, drop to my knees, and pray that the doctor was wrong. I instantly regretted dismissing the child that had become attached to me. I’d lost that baby, and would probably never get the chance to have another. I was so young. So, so young. There was no way I couldn’t carry a child.
Ever since I was playing with baby dolls, I knew I wanted to have two kids—a boy and a girl. I wanted to have a nice, quaint, elegant wedding, and grow as a family in a two-story home. I wanted to paint my daughter’s room a sherbet orange because pink was too cliché, and I’d paint my son’s room green, because blue was just as basic…but now he was telling me that none of that would be able to happen. Sure, there was always adoption, but I never, ever thought it would have to come down to that for me.
Mom and Bhandari kept talking as my vision blurred, and even though the next stage had already hit me before, it hit me even harder in this moment. The next stage is depression. It’s lethal and ugly and can attack anyone.
I don’t know when they’d wrapped up on their conversation. I went with the motions. Mom walked with her arm hooked through mine to get to the car. She helped me get inside, too, and when I got in, I could only stare through the windshield. She was talking, telling me everything would be okay, and that I still had a young body with plenty of time to heal…but she didn’t know that.
There was hope, yes, but I heard the percentage. There was an 85 percent chance that if I tried to have a kid, I would lose it. Not that having babies was high on my to-do list at the moment, but knowing that I likely would never have one changed everything. It meant the life I’d dreamed of wouldn’t be mine. It would change my personality, my life. I was too young to want to try…but it was all I could think to do, just to see if I could. I now had to live my life in this paralyzing fear that if I ever got married one day and we wanted to start a family, that there was an 85 percent chance that I would not be able to. The other 15 percent felt meaningless.
To my surprise, I didn’t cry when I got home. I took more pills to ease the minimal pain of my wound and they knocked me out cold. Mom said I’d slept a total of 14 hours that day, and that it was the calmest I’d slept since the incident. No screaming. No whimpering. I don’t even think I dreamed.
The next two days, I tried remaining numb to the feeling, but all I kept wondering was—why? Why did all of this have to happen to me? Why was so much stacking up against me? I had reason to believe I was a good person. I was nice, had manners and respect, was raised by two loving parents, both of whom were also good people. Yes, I’d made mistakes, but what human hasn’t? I was still young, still learning, and life wasn’t being fair to me at all.