Approaching the First Hurdle

Getting pregnant, as any woman suffering through infertility issues can tell you, is not always a simple bing-bang proposition. There is often a certain amount of prep work that has to be done first. In my case, that prep work involves surgery on my endolymphatic sack. What's that, you ask? Where's that located? It's in the inner ear. Yes, that's right, the inner ear, and yes, I do know where babies come from.
I have a disease called Von Hippel-Lindau, which causes hemangio blastomas (a type of tumor) in various parts of the body, one such part being the endolymphatic sack. It is advisable for any woman with VHL who is planning on becoming pregnant to get any actively growing tumors removed beforehand. So, that's what we'll do on June 6. The kicker is that I had this same procedure before, on the same endolymphatic sack tumor (ELST), and the little bugger came back. This is not at all a pleasant procedure. It requires two surgeons, an ear surgeon, who will do the drilling—most head surgery requires drilling) and a neurosurgeon, who will actually handle the tumor removal. My most valiant attempts at positive thinking and humor could not make this procedure sound fun. It's not. And the recovery is a bitch. But there's one thing that does make this time a little easier than last time: If I view this surgery as the first step to getting our son or daughter, then I can blink back the tears, swallow the frustration, squash the fear, and look past this first hurdle to the future that lays beyond, a future full of bedtime stories, baby booties, and teddy bears.