by Aly Taylor
That’s what I felt when Josh called me to tell me about Amy’s recurrence. I was devastated. Josh and I were mentally preparing to celebrate my two-year anniversary, but it was hard for me to feel excited about it. Cancer can steal so many of our joys. I’m glad I was able to spend some time with Amy after she received the bad news. I went to see her at a cancer function where she was speaking. I was in absolute awe of her positive outlook and attitude, even in the face of her grim diagnosis. I was once again baffled at how this was happening to her, especially since her initial cancer diagnosis was not nearly as serious as mine had been. But here she was, having to walk through this nightmare all over again.
Amy fought an amazing fight, but it breaks my heart to say she passed away, leaving four precious children behind. She was a gift, an incredible friend and inspiration to me during the hardest time of my life. I hated watching my friends die, and I hated worrying that cancer would ultimately kill me too. I prayed I would live and declare the works of the Lord for a long, long time. I prayed this would not be my ending and that my family would not watch me die the way I’d watched others die. I prayed to live out the calling of Psalm 128, which had been spoken over me so many times, that I would be a fruitful vine in my family.
So Josh and I faced the future together as we walked into my two-year appointment. We knew that would mean more tests, more scans, and more appointments. We also knew it meant talking about potentially starting a family—a battle we knew still awaited us, and one we weren’t sure how to win.
CHAPTER 6
ATTEMPTING PREGNANCY AND FIGHTING INFERTILITY
—JOSH—
The time had come.
We were at the tail end of two horrendous years of cancer treatments, surgeries, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and grieving. To say we were exhausted at that point would be an understatement. However, despite the pain and struggle of the previous two years, we were about to experience one of the most exciting times of our lives. It was October 2013, the two-year mark of Aly’s initial diagnosis. This meant heading back to Houston for a thorough exam. Because Aly’s oncologist knew we were thinking about trying to have children, she ordered a full-body scan for this visit. She wanted to be absolutely certain that there was no cancer hiding out in Aly’s body as we attempted to get pregnant.
We believed that Aly was completely healed, but there was still a lot of stress around that visit. I was feeling it myself, and I could read it all over Aly’s face. She isn’t a worrier by nature, but this was a huge appointment for us. Not only did it mean finding out for sure that she was still cancer-free at the two-year mark—a major milestone—but it was the first hurdle we had to overcome to start a family. There was a lot riding on this visit.
It was good to see the team at MD Anderson again. After all, these people helped save my wife’s life! I will always owe them a huge debt of gratitude. After a lot of small talk with doctors and nurses, Aly went in for her scan. The next morning we went for our appointment to get the results. The nurse came in and gave an initial report: the doctor had taken a look at the scan and didn’t see anything apparent. Aly and I were overwhelmed!
About twenty minutes later, the doctor herself talked to us and confirmed that the scan didn’t show anything we should worry about. Being a cautious professional, she said she’d need to wait until the official radiologist report before she signed off on everything, but that report came a short time later and confirmed everything we’d been praying for: Aly was cancer-free at the two-year mark! With that, her chances of recurrence dropped dramatically. It was a huge celebration!
We spent the rest of that appointment talking with the doctor about starting a family and celebrating together. When we were done, the doctor said goodbye, wished us luck, and said she didn’t need to see Aly again for six months. Six months! After all the constant tests and exams we’d been through, a six-month sabbatical seemed like a dream. From that point on, the doctor only needed to see Aly every six months until she hit her five-year cancer-free milestone. With that, we felt a kind of release from the world of cancer treatment and cancer-related anxiety. Now we were focused on something else: starting a family.
NOT AS FUN AS YOU’D THINK
Years earlier, a buddy complained to me about how “exhausting” it was trying to get pregnant. He and his wife had been trying for a while with no luck. I remember thinking, Are you kidding me? What are you talking about? I thought “trying to get pregnant” was another way of saying “having sex all the time.” What man in his right mind would complain about that? Not me, I smugly thought as my friend whined.
Man, was I wrong. Coming off our two-year appointment at MD Anderson, Aly and I were convinced she’d get pregnant right away. Even though the past two years had been horrible and had taken a huge toll on her body and on both of us emotionally, and despite doctors telling us that the chance of pregnancy was unlikely, we really thought a quick pregnancy would be our next miracle. We imagined introducing everyone to our little miracle baby! That… didn’t happen. Several months and buckets of tears later, I had a healthy respect for my friend’s exhaustion. We were shaken by the emotions, timing, pressure, fears, questions, and disappointment that came with each month’s negative pregnancy test. The pressure built every month as we started it with hope and ended it with frustration, stuck in a terrible cycle with no end in sight.
Eventually Aly’s OB-GYN suggested using an ovulation kit, which would tell her the dates (and even time of day) she was most likely to conceive. She warned us, like the other doctors, about the unlikelihood of us conceiving, but, to us, this was worth a shot. Now it wasn’t just sex; it was sex on a rigid schedule. Needless to say, this led to some interesting midday breaks in my workday. It also gave us some hilarious lifelong memories.
In particular I’ll never forget the time I had a broken nose when duty called. One afternoon I was playing basketball with my buddies and slammed my face into an opponent’s shoulder, hitting the ground with blood gushing out of my nose. I was so dazed I didn’t even know where I was for a few minutes. The next day a doctor confirmed that it wasn’t just broken; it was broken in several places. I had surgery the following day to put the pieces back together, and I went home in more pain (and with more pain meds) than I’d ever had in my life. Aly was a huge support during the whole ordeal—but she also kept me aware of where we were on the ovulation calendar. Sure enough, two days after surgery, still in pain and half-stoned on pain medicine, I came face-to-face with the smiley face on the ovulation kit. It was go time.
—ALY—
Okay, I feel like I should break in at this point. I wasn’t quite as demanding as Josh remembers. He was half out of his mind on pain pills, remember? Josh was definitely my top priority, but I was consumed with getting pregnant. If you’ve ever tried to follow an ovulation kit to get pregnant, you know how devastating it can be to discover your partner is out of town or otherwise unavailable when you’re ovulating. It means another month you can’t get pregnant. But Josh was so kind when I gently told him I was ovulating right after his surgery. Despite the pain he was obviously in—not to mention the swollen black eyes and bandages all over his face—he did his best to be there for me. Without going into details, I’ll just say that we tried… but it wasn’t happening. I sent him back out to his big comfy chair, where he could fall asleep watching TV, and I lay on the bedroom floor crying. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to have a baby, but I had also convinced myself that this would have been the month it would have happened if only Josh hadn’t gotten hurt. In a weird way, I felt like Josh’s accident cost us our only shot at pregnancy. Isn’t it nuts how we convince ourselves of these things?
NOT MADE TO BE A MOTHER
After a few more failed months of trying, I had some tests done and discovered that my body wasn’t really ovulating. It was trying, but it just wasn’t happening. Even though we’d been told numerous times that medically it was so unlikely that I would get pregnant, we asked all
our doctors to remain hopeful with us. We knew we weren’t relying on science to provide for us, but on God and His timing. Thankfully, my doctor stayed positive and was willing to keep working with us. She referred me to a fertility specialist, so we made the appointment and started another waiting game. I was used to all the stress and weird thoughts that popped into my head as I waited for an upcoming doctor’s appointment. By this point I was a pro! So as we looked toward the fertility appointment, I found myself wondering if I was even meant to be a mother. Maybe God was protecting me from being a mom because He knew I’d be a terrible one. Maybe He knew I wasn’t mom material? The one fear I tried not to think about was, Maybe God isn’t letting me get pregnant because He knows I won’t live long enough to raise a child. Whatever the reason, the phrase maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother often filled my mind.
In the midst of this whirlwind of fear and doubt, I had a revelation: I actually wasn’t made to be a mother. It just came to me. It wasn’t based in fear or a negative thing at all; it was just a fact. I remembered an email I had received a few months earlier from a friend whose daughter was having fertility issues. She learned she was unable to conceive and was looking into other ways of becoming a mom. My friend shared that her daughter, in a brilliant moment of faith and clarity, said, “God did not necessarily put me on this earth to have babies. I was put here to love and glorify Him in all circumstances.” That simple statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I was immediately undone by the power of that truth. I realized that, while I truly believed being a mother is one of the greatest callings on my life, motherhood doesn’t define me. Christ does.
I had spent so much of my life defined by other things. I was Cyd’s daughter, Jessica’s sister, and Josh’s wife. I was the cancer patient. I was the cancer survivor. I was the PhD student and the therapist. But I came to realize those things did not define me, and neither would being a mom. Instead, I chose to make a list of things that did define me. I wanted to be clear on who I was and whose I was. Here’s what I came up with:
I am Aly. Just Aly. And Just Aly is something incredibly unique. There is no other person like me! I am determined, strong, a child of God, beautiful in His eyes, blameless, goal-oriented, self-motivated, and loving. I’m a wife, a faithful friend, a daughter, a sister, and a niece. I am a hard-working peacemaker, fun-loving, encouraging, and positive. And that’s not all!
It’s uncomfortable to try to see yourself through God’s eyes and make a list of all the wonderful things you are, but it is so important. Try it if you don’t believe me! I know that, in that moment and in the midst of our fertility struggle, this was a critical wake-up call in my spirit. God didn’t make me to be a mother. He made me to be His precious child and to glorify Him with my life. That’s the attitude adjustment I needed before Josh and I took the next steps in our fertility journey, and I’m so grateful God gave me that insight at the perfect time.
ASSESSING FERTILITY OPTIONS
So many emotions flooded my mind as we sat in the fertility doctor’s waiting room. I was affirmed in my faith that God made me to be more than a mom, but I still desperately wanted a baby. I sat there praying for direction. I prayed for favor. I prayed for a healthy pregnancy and that we would receive positive news and results.
Once again, we were blessed with a fantastic doctor to walk us through this part of our journey. He was thorough too. He listened patiently as we ran through our cancer story, and he was particularly interested in the type of chemo medicines my oncologist had ordered. He wasn’t thrilled to see what they had used. Just by looking at my history, he was pretty sure the chemo drugs had severely damaged my eggs. My oncologist had explained that likelihood at the time we started chemotherapy, so we weren’t shocked; but it was still tough to hear the news and see the negative test results now that we were actively trying to have a baby. It was a problem we had deferred as we focused on our cancer fight, and now it was time to face the music.
—JOSH—
The doctor ordered a full round of new bloodwork and gave Aly a new fertility medicine to take while we waited on the test results. After another unsuccessful month of trying, we had our follow-up appointment. When he walked in reading her test results, I could tell he was disappointed but not surprised. He gave us a bunch of numbers we didn’t fully understand before dropping the hammer. He told us his assumption had been confirmed: Aly was producing little to no eggs, and there was a good chance that any eggs she did have were severely damaged by her cancer treatments. To drive the point home, he said that Aly had begun the menopause process and that it was as though she were trying to get pregnant in her late forties.
I looked at Aly as he gave us the news, and I saw the same devastated face I’d seen during so many other doctor visits. She was crushed. The doctor launched into a speech full of statistics about cancer and infertility, but we cut him off. We didn’t want to hear all that. Instead, we simply asked him what he would suggest for us. He explained that everything he told us so far was based only on Aly’s bloodwork. The only way to be absolutely sure of his diagnosis would be to actually examine Aly’s eggs through a procedure called egg retrieval. If we wanted to do that, though, he said we might as well try in vitro fertilization (IVF), as that would be our best bet at getting pregnant.
This was a lot of information to process from a single office visit. The final punch was him suggesting we begin the process immediately. He explained that every month we waited, Aly would lose more and more potentially healthy eggs. Her biological clock was ticking. His next IVF group we could participate in was one month away, so the doctor sent us home to think about it. The two-hour drive home was deathly quiet—but nothing new. I’ve lost count of how many uncomfortable car rides we’ve had after doctor appointments, driving down the interstate in silence with life-altering questions looming over us.
—ALY—
That drive home was brutal. Even though I was already feeling comfortable about moving forward with IVF, I was angry that it was this hard. I was confused about why my womb had been so affected. Doctors had warned us about this, but Josh and I believed—truly believed with everything in us—that my womb had been protected. We believed my body would grow a baby. We had so many people praying for pregnancy, but it was looking doubtful. However, I was holding out hope that perhaps this would be how God would bless me with a baby. We went home, discussed it with our family, prayed a bunch, and then felt peaceful about signing up for the IVF the following month. We figured we should at least reserve our spot, and we could cancel if we changed our minds before then.
While we felt a peace about the procedure, we weren’t sure how we’d pay for it. I was shocked by how expensive everything was. Josh and I prayed hard about it, and neither of us were comfortable asking anyone for help. Our friends and family had been so generous during my cancer battle; we didn’t want to put this burden on them too. We were able to pay for a portion of IVF through selling one of the rental houses we owned, hosting a big yard sale, and being frugal with our other expenses. However, we were still short. Then, out of the blue, my mom approached us about some money she had saved for us from my dad’s life insurance policy. She wanted these funds to be used to fund our remaining fees for IVF. What a huge answered prayer! We were continually amazed at how God provided at every step.
—JOSH—
We had an enormous group of people praying for us as we got ready for this next challenge. Inspired by the incredible faith of a sick man’s friends in Mark 2:4–5, Aly had organized a prayer circle she called her “Mark 2 people.” These were friends, family members, and people who followed our blog and who committed to pray for us on this journey and specifically in our fertility efforts. We really needed those prayers, because starting the IVF process was overwhelming.
The first week I gave Aly what seemed like ten shots a day. It gave me flashbacks of the shots I had to give her during her cancer treatment. Honestly, all this effort made me angry that she was having to jump through
these medical hoops again. We made it through that first week, though, and drove the two hours back to the doctor’s office for our first “egg checkup.” We were excited; it was the first time we’d be able to see Aly’s eggs with an ultrasound, and we’d know for sure what we were dealing with and how well the fertility drugs were working.
As the doctor performed the ultrasound, though, he was visibly disappointed. He spoke to us kindly, but also left little room for doubt about what he was seeing. He explained that the ultrasound showed what he had initially expected, that Aly’s eggs were seriously damaged. In fact, he only saw a couple, and they weren’t growing like he’d hoped. Since we were only one week into the IVF journey, the doctor suggested we cancel the treatment and look into other options for starting a family. Bottom line: he didn’t want us to waste our money on IVF treatments he was pretty sure wouldn’t work.
Another two-hour drive home in silence. I knew Aly was hurting as she stared out the window. I was too. Could anything in our life be easy? Why was everything so hard? I was frustrated beyond words, but I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say before I opened my mouth. Finally, after praying about it most of the way home, I told Aly what I was thinking. “I think we should continue with the IVF,” I said. “I know it’s a long shot and the doctor advised against it, but God has done so much more than this in our lives. Let’s trust Him for an opportunity to show up in a big way.” I could tell she was considering it. I closed with, “Besides, if we stop IVF now, we will always wonder, What if… What if we would have gotten pregnant if we had stuck with it?” We discussed the financial commitment, and I knew it would cost thousands of dollars from the sale of our rent house and Aly’s dad’s life insurance policy. But I just wasn’t ready to give up on IVF yet.