Are you there, God?

I opened my first post two months ago, then froze. Today I start again, with words of wisdom from Judy Blume, the author of "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret."

If you start thinking about your legacy when you are writing, it’s not going to work. You can’t start thinking about lasting impact or what a critic would say. I write because I can’t not write. I can’t help it. It has to come out. I never dreamed it would turn out to be what it’s been. It’s something I never even fantasized about—and I fantasized about a lot of things!

This is not about a legacy, unless that legacy is helping a few people over a hump. Or a Dank.

I was just a person who had just finished paying off my student loans, just scraped enough more loans and savings to put a down payment on a house with a little back yard, (thanks Mom and Dad) and emptied the medicine cabinet to get ready for the next phase in an ordinary life. When nothing happened after 6 or 9 months, I made an appointment with a new doctor to find out what was up. Parts were probed. Exams were conducted. Blood was drawn. The next step was the follow up appointment which happened to be scheduled on my 30th birthday. I had wanted to be off that day, anyway.

On the drive to the doctor's office, I imagined I was steeling myself for bad news. More delays? I could handle it. Worse? Sure, I thought. Better me than someone who has no back-up plans.

Silly me. The doctor' announced matter-of-factly that the blood results revealed I had gone through an early menopause years ago. He pointed proudly to a photo of a toddler in the costume of a third-world country. "See?" He said proudly. "This is my daughter. You can do it, too." I assumed she was adopted by his family, but if he told me that, I didn't hear. I don't remember anything else he might have said.

I don't remember if I broke down it the car on the drive home. I bet no one does. For what must have been the next year, I broke down whenever I was alone, with cries that must have sounded like a wounded animal. Not even my husband, who worked at night while I worked during the day, knew how often I lost it. Eventually, I would plunge into follow up treatment, evaluation, adoption and acceptance. But for now, I entered The Dark Phase.

Dink Dank Dunk - Our journey from childless to childfree, with a dank, dark, depressing dip along the way.

Initially I wasn't sure I'd have anything worthwhile to share on a blog. Looking back, though, there is not only my own experience at work in the infertility field, mixed with the charitable work I added to help share what I learned at work. There is my own diagnosis when it was finally made, and my firsthand experience with treatment, to acceptance.

I grew up with an unexplained but seemingly inconsequential medical issue that doctors initially said was nothing much. I graduated and got a job that included inspecting and regulating sperm banks. When I received a proper diagnosis myself, I entered the world of infertility as a full-fledged participant.

We endured the merry-go-round of treatment. It included years of poking and prodding, shots and sonograms, crying and cursing along the circuitous route through it all. We attended meetings of Resolve. Then when treatments failed, we attended classes on adoption, and then foster care. Now we have arrived, approaching our 50th year, with satisfaction and acceptance of our lives. Maybe that is worth capturing in writing.

This blog is a look back to what we went through, and a look forward to anticipate the future.

More coming soon...