Anatomy of Hope

I am not sure what to say or exactly how I feel, but for some reason I just felt like writing it down could help me put it all together. 

 Our appointment with the new urologist is Friday. All week I have felt overcome with emotions. I am hopeful that this new doctor will provide answers and that he will somehow give us a chance at conceiving without IUI or IVF. Then I back up and remind myself that there are rarely easy fixes when it comes to prostate health and I should not get to excited, only to be let down again. I hate how this journey of infertility makes me so guarded when it comes to being hopeful. 

Last week I checked out a book on tape "The Anatomy of Hope; how people prevail in the face of illness". It is written by an oncologist/hematologist and it gives anecdotal accounts of patients who are fighting cancer either with or without hope of recovery/remission. It also gives great insight into Dr. Groopman's strategies for instilling hope in his patients, since he has found hope is crucial for success. 

I love it so far. 

I have been listening in the car during the day and I find myself sitting outside of my appointments for 5 or 10 minutes, trying to get to a stopping point. I love it for the insights it provides me when dealing with my terminally ill patients and I love it for how it relates to our ongoing attempts to prevail through infertility. Today, I stopped with a quote about hope that struck me in my core...

"Hope can arrive only when you can recognize that there are real options and you have genuine choices. Hope can flourish only when you believe that what you do can make a difference. That your actions can bring about a future, different from the present. To have hope then, is to acquire a belief in your ability to have some control over your circumstances. You are no longer entirely at the mercy of forces outside yourself."

I feel taken aback again, just my writing down those words. I constantly feel lost and overwhelmed by those forces outside of myself. I lose hope because I feel like nothing we do has made a difference. Not our attempts to eat healthier, forgo adult beverages, or stay out of hot tubs. Even our scheduling of love making, my hours of research, or the multiple probes and prods that we pay to receive. Nothing I do feels like it will bring about a different future...until now. 

I hesitantly admit that I am hopeful that this step, this venture to find a specialist 3 hours away, could maybe, possibly, hopefully, result in a future different from the present. 

If I am truly honest I want it to result in a baby. 

But as this week drags on, I am realizing that maybe God's plan will not be for this urologist to find a magical way for Kev to get me pregnant. Maybe it will just be the first step of me taking control of our future. The beginning of me realizing that we have genuine choices...choices about what doctor we see, choices about how we more forward from here, just genuine choices. Maybe I can let my guard down and let hope in, not because my hope may not be shaken with every bit of disappointing news we hear, because it will; but maybe I can let hope in so that it will slowly start to grow, as we slowly start to take control of our circumstances. Maybe my hope will shift from strictly having hope that we will have our own child... into hope that the choices we make will lead us to a life with children that complete us. 

Not sure how this will all work out, but if nothing else I am praying that I can let my guard down a little and find a way to let hope flourish.

jenn