I woke up this morning, after about 4 hours of sleep, because I have to write an application essay for our grant application to the SAMFund (this time we are applying for adoption fees). Now, I had written one which I sent to my sisters to be edited but for some reason, my mind was churning a different essay and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I got up and this is what I wrote:
APPLICATION ESSAY
It is 5 AM. The deadline is fast approaching. All the rest of the paperwork is done- the financial information, our taxes, medical releases. The easy stuff. Done. Most of it completed within days of hearing I could continue on in the application process. Now, I sit and stare at the computer screen, wondering is it even possible to put words to the tumult of emotion that greets me when I reflect on my life as a cancer survivor? How can I summarize the bittersweetness of the journey to motherhood I am on?
Do I write about the diagnosis of cancer my parents heard when I was five years old? Hearing those words after weeks of unexplained fevers, lethargy, back pain. We see a mass on her left kidney. We think it is what is called Wilms’ Tumor. You have to leave your other children and go, tomorrow, to the children’s hospital two hours away. For treatment. For surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. You are about to enter a world, no parent, no person wants to be a part of but there is no other option if you want your child to live. We go. In a whirlwind, I have surgery, start chemotherapy, have my abdomen irradiated to rid it of cancerous cells. There is no going back, only forward from here.
Or do I write about finding out at the age of 17, that yes, you have acute ovarian failure? And, no, there is no chance of pregnancy on your own or even with your own eggs. They are gone. Shriveled. Dead from the radiation. Maybe you can do in-vitro fertilization with donor eggs but we don’t know if even that will be successful. After I’m home, I cry to my boyfriend, “what man would ever want a woman who knows she cannot have his children?” In his 18-year-old way, he comforts me, tells me “Any guy who would leave you for that isn’t worth having.” Three years later, we get married. Three years after that, we attempt IVF with donor eggs, my older sister going through egg donation just so we could have a chance. We try three times. One embryo transfer. Negative. A second embryo transfer. Negative. A third and final transfer. And a final negative. Our reproductive endocrinologist looks at us and says “There isn’t any more that we can do. You should consider adoption.” There is no going back, only forward from here.
Do I write about the depression that begins to envelop me? The failure I felt about not even being able to become pregnant. That I wouldn’t have gotten cancer if there was not something inherently wrong with me. That maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother, despite dreaming of it for as long as I could remember. An internal dialogue that repeats itself over and over for the next seven years. My doctor puts me on antidepressants but, otherwise, I attempt to ignore it, push it away but it festers underneath. I begin to lose my faith in God. I tell myself, “There is no going back, only forward from here.”
Or do I write about beginning the adoption process? We choose domestic infant adoption. We want our child to have a connection to his or her birth family. We choose an agency. We save money for the fees. We complete the homestudy. Create our profile. Wait. There is no going back, only forward from here.
A year later, we have feel the joy of being chosen. But then, the devastation of a mother changing her mind. Keeping her baby. How did we come to love something we never really had? It was a miscarriage but the baby still existed, just not in our lives. With trepidation, we continue waiting. Praying that, in the end, there would be a baby, a child for us to love and raise. There is no going back, only forward from here.
A second year of waiting begins. All around us, family, friends begin to announce pregnancies. We wait. We wonder, ”Will it ever be us?” We decide to check out other adoption agencies and talk to a couple different ones. Find one we like, one that needs families because it does not have enough. Holding our breath, we switch. And another phone call comes. We’ve been chosen again. We meet the mom and we wait. Three weeks later, we are holding our daughter in our arms. But what a juxtaposition of joy and grief. The pain for our daughter’s birth mother is tangible. The seed of love we have for our daughter has already been planted. There is no going back, only forward from here.
Or do I write about the fact that for me, the love I have for my daughter and the joy of becoming a parent, does nothing to alleviate the depression hovering below the surface of my life? It begins to creep out, to permeate my life. But still I refuse to see. Then when my daughter is eight months old, depression’s black hole sucks me in entirely. I stumble through the days and nights, in tears, confused. Shouldn’t I be happy? I am a mother. Isn’t this what I wanted? Is there no going back? How do I go forward from here?
I talk to my family doctor. He refers me to a counselor. I go for a few sessions and quit. I converse with my doctor for months by e-mail. We talk about everything under the sun, including God. He is in over his head but he invites me to his church, helps me rediscover God. But still I am depressed. Through his church, I connect with a new counselor and I change antidepressants, hoping that will help. Instead, I fall further down. I think about suicide. I think too bad I didn’t die from cancer. Life would be better without me. In the midst of the swirl of suicidal thoughts, I cling to God. I e-mailed my doctor. Help. I’m scared. I call my new counselor. I am referred to a psychiatrist who checks me into the psychiatric unit of the hospital. We change antidepressants again. I begin to stabilize. I check out of the hospital. Then comes the hard work. I see my counselor, my psychiatrist, my doctor regularly. I begin to talk, to verbalize the internal discussion I have been having for the last seven years. I connect with my counselor and he guides me through my emotions, thoughts, patterns from my childhood to the present. I begin to really work on my grief and loss related to being a cancer survivor, the resulting infertility. There is no going back, only forward from here.
Soon, between the new medication and the counseling, I find myself coming out of the depression. Some days, it is like I see my life, my daughter, my family for the first time. I remember what it is like to be happy, to have joy. The depression begins to dissipate, not just get pushed away. Two years and many long hours later, I can truly say it is gone. I live each day, remembering that I beat cancer and depression. There is no going back, only forward from here.
Now, it ends up that this doesn’t really work for the essay I need to write because there is no way to work the rest of the questions into this format. So I think I will submit the original essay, but figured this was as good a place as any to share the other.
