Viable: French, from vie, life, from Old French

One the lemon: Being told you have a cyst the size of a lemon in your uterine wall will not prevent you from becoming pregnant.

It will, however, increase your risk for miscarriage. And premature birth. And perhaps you won't be able to have a vaginal birth. Or it might be harder for you to get pregnant. But all your doctors will agree that it's okay to still do IUI, provided the HSG comes back normal.

And that's the news we went to New Orleans with last weekend. After relaxing a bit by the side of the pool, Partner and I agreed we'd take the risk. It's pretty exciting stuff-- And I probably haven't been accurately portraying the excitement in our house thinking about insemination in JUNE. Remember the prayers? Okay-- I'll admit I even went so far as to look at potential outfits the kid could wear to my brother's August wedding. I had my top three sperm choices, chosen blind, and Partner had hers, and one was a match. How totally cool. Babies!

We both walked into the HSG yesterday, a little cocky, mostly scared of how painful it might be. After all, they are inserting a needle-like apparatus into the cervix. I strapped on my lead apron and grabbed hold of her hand. I have to tell you, that in theory, this is a cool test. When they rolled the x-ray machine over her, I exclaimed, "That's your pelvis!" There was a general chuckle, and then the iodine got squirted inside. And then things got really quiet. And then the radiologist turned the monitor away from us.

"It looks like it's leaking over there," Partner whispered. A nurse was called into the room and more iodine was procured, and pushed inside again. I could see my partner's uterus move up and down. She was squinching her eyes tightly shut. It looked painful, even on the screen. And then they swung the screen back to us.

"See that there?" The doctor pointed. "That's where your intramural cyst is. So the uterus is really misshapen from that." We nodded. We'd seen this before-- it was nothing new and it wasn't interesting anymore. After all, we made all the lemon jokes we could by this point.

"But see this here?" He pointed again, to a little walnut looking node. "This is a cyst inside your uterus. It's blocking this Fallopian tube."

Now, flashback with me for one minute to a week earlier when we were in Dr. BusyBusyBusy's office and he was counseling us about the lemon. He told us about a paper he wrote back in '83 about cysts that exist in the uterus itself. "Those are the real problems," he blithely spoke, "There like an IUI. Pretty much impossible to get pregnant with one of those."

How quickly did this comment come back to me. How quickly did I wonder if such a recall came to my beautiful partner, lying on a table with legs in stirrups and her uterus up on the screen for all and sundry to see.

After sitting up, the doctor, Dr. BusyBusyBusy's partner, and I have to say a very nice man, had a little talk with us. Now some people might not like his approach, but I have to say, both of us actually appreciated the candor. Still this sentence will burn in my head forever, and I can't imagine how the words sounded to my partner:

"This is not a viable uterus for pregnancy."

Not. A. Viable. Uterus.

I am usually one to crack a joke at a tight spot, but there's nothing here. There's blankness. There's darkness. There is such a total hole of sadness that I can't even express it right now. If you're one of my blog readers, I am sure that you'll hear more about it.

There's no hope here, friends. This is not a diagnosis where a doctor says, "You're going to have a really hard time and it's going to require ART and IVF and all sorts of other crappy things." This is a diagnosis where, to put it bluntly, a doctor says, "You're barren." And it sucks. Especially when you thought you were going to start trying for pregnancy in about three weeks.

I suppose it's better in some ways we didn't try for six months, spend a lot of money, and then get told about this. And even though the RE told us in no uncertain terms what the outcome of the HSG was, I know we both have had moments thinking that he can't be right. That we just need to try anyway.

Partner can do a surgery that may or may not work at getting out the cysts. And if they go in and decide it's messy in there, they might do a hysterectomy, something neither of us think is a great option. And even if they get everything out, and repair the uterus, it still might not be viable. And it's "elective," which as you all know means "you pay." For 3-5 days in the hospital! Fuckity-fuck. Fuck. With a few vodka chasers.

Listen-- I am going to write more about this-- but we're going to meet some friends for some drinks. There's a well of feelings here that we're both having, and I think it opens some very interesting questions/issues about femininity/womanhood/culture etc.

But mostly right now what it does is suck.

I'm now taking pre-natals and nearly choking with sadness on every pill.