Bringing in Finn (3 page)

Bill listened patiently, then said, “There are other doctors. You can get a second opinion.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a shard of confidence return. I felt relieved. I wasn't under any orders to do what Dr. Angelli prescribed.

I wiped the corners of my eyes with the backs of my hands and told Bill I'd see him at the house. On the way to the parking garage, I passed a metal-mesh trash can. Inside I could see candy wrappers, Big Gulp cups, and half-eaten sandwiches. I pulled out the prescription Dr. Angelli had given me and threw it inside. The square of white paper fluttered in the wind for a moment and then fell into the basin. I felt lighter.

As I walked the rest of the way to the car, I remembered a colleague of Bill's who had mentioned that he was studying Chinese medicine. Acupuncture had a good record for helping with fertility; I made a note to contact him. By the time I'd turned onto Lake Shore Drive, I was humming along with the classical station on the radio. The sun peeked out from a congregation of gray clouds, and I felt warm inside the car. Winter might go on for months longer in Chicago, of course, but if I looked intently enough at the trees, I thought I could see the earliest notes of spring.

 

Bill's friend referred
me to the College of Oriental Medicine (COM). The school was one of two large acupuncture and Chinese-medicine schools in Chicago. COM worked like a teaching hospital, offering acupuncture sessions with a supervising instructor and team of students several afternoons a week. For my first consultation, I met with Elizabeth Jane, who, at thirty-five, was the youngest female supervising instructor. She was intelligent and comely, with round brown eyes behind black-framed glasses.

I told her about not having had my period, and Elizabeth felt confident acupuncture would help my body resume a regular menstrual cycle and ovulation—reestablishing the balance of my reproductive system at a root level.

I started seeing Elizabeth once a week. Each session, she guided her students to insert a series of needles into my hands, legs, feet, low abdomen, and ovaries. I looked forward to the treatments and COM's utilitarian space; the smell of moxa, with notes of deep spice and earth, that permeated the treatment rooms and hallways. During the treatments, I liked looking at the posters of the meridian channels taped up on the painted yellow walls.

At my second treatment, Elizabeth informed me that she was going to give me loose herbs to make into a tea.

“I'll send you home with instructions,” she told me. “The tea has to be made precisely. The process takes about two hours, but the loose herbs are much more potent than taking them in pill form.”

Having worked with dried herbs at my clinic in London, I was thrilled by the idea of making my own tea. Elizabeth led me into the room where the herbs were stored. The room was cool, windowless and temperature-controlled, to maintain the herbs' integrity and medicinal properties. I took a tour of the large glass jars, delighting in the variety of large and small leaves, the spore-bellied mushrooms, and silken strands of lemongrass. Elizabeth carefully picked herbs from at least six different jars and folded the contents into a piece of stiff white butcher paper. She wrote my name on the package with a Sharpie and handed it to me. I carried the packet home as if it contained precious gems.

My affinity for the tea was matched proportionately by Bill's intense dislike.

“What's the problem?” I asked, when he groaned as I began to prepare the tea for week three. “You don't have to drink it.”

“The smell is disgusting, and it's laborious. I cannot imagine what it must taste like.”

The tea was acrid and, truthfully, hard to get down. I developed a strategy to avoid having to taste it: I poured it into my throat without letting it touch my tongue, then chased it with small sips of grapefruit or some other juice.

“It's not so bad,” I said, not wanting to concede anything negative about the tea. I shoved the juice glass into the dishwasher and licked my lips, pretending the taste was delicious.

“It's supposed to be very potent,” I said, continuing my defense.

Bill pantomimed throwing up, until I laughed and dropped the strainer I'd been using to distill the herbs into the pot.

“Seriously, though, this tea could help me have periods and then help us get pregnant,” I said.

“With what? Rosemary's baby?”

I shook my head at him but didn't resent his complaints. Despite his protesting, I knew Bill supported my efforts. He sat with me in the kitchen, preparing food for dinner, while I got the tea ready. If he finished the cooking prep, we'd look through cookbooks for inspiration or he'd play a bootleg recording of a new band he'd discovered. Bill was a drummer in bands since high school. He was shaped by the Who, the Clash, and Rush the way I was by the Brontës, Tolstoy, and Sylvia Plath. His passion was what attracted me to him most strongly when we met; art bonded us in spirit long before we took formal vows of marriage.

Once the tea was ready, I'd pour it into a glass jar and put it on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Bill said it would be better to keep it outside. “It's not like any animals would drink it.”

I told Bill if he kept up the jokes, I'd slip some of the tea into his morning coffee.

“Fat chance I wouldn't notice that smell,” he said, poking me in the ribs.

 

When I hadn't
had a period after nearly twenty-four months of acupuncture, something in Bill caught like a trip line. For two years he'd taken the support role, letting me seek the treatments that felt comfortable to me for my body.

I was thirty-two, still within the optimal fertility age, according to Web MD, but he was six years older, and attending his friend's fortieth birthday party the week before had triggered a sense of biological urgency in him.

We came together in our kitchen, where we always seemed to have our serious discussions. I sat on one of our bar stools at the
island in the center of the kitchen, going through mail. Bill was prepping for dinner. He julienned carrots, shaving them precisely into ribbons of orange that fell soundlessly onto the dark wood surface of his cutting board. I was organizing bills into file folders, and the granite countertop was strewn with open envelopes and mail.

“I should have put my foot down months ago,” Bill said, assuming a parental tone. “I don't even want to think about what we've spent on these treatments, not to mention the teas. It's a total scam.”

“Acupuncture has helped thousands of people get pregnant,” I protested. “Probably millions if you take into account the thousands of years it's been used.”

“It's bullshit,” he said.

“It just hasn't worked for us,” I said.

My shoulders slumped and I slid down the back of the chair until my neck rested on its metal rungs. I'd only just allowed myself to admit, in the midst of Bill's tantrum, that acupuncture really hadn't worked. I had remained so convinced that it would just take a little more time, that surely my body would remember to ovulate and I would start having periods again.

I was quiet for a moment, listening to the sound of garlic frying in a pan on the stove. We agreed that I would seek out a Western medical doctor, and I began making inquiries among my friends.

Even with Caroline putting in a personal referral, the first available appointment I could secure with Dr. Bizan was three months away. I asked the receptionist to call me if anything opened up earlier. Once I'd booked the appointment and circled the date twice with a Sharpie in my calendar, I felt a cold shock of fear. For the first time, I was afraid that something might be seriously wrong with me and afraid that we would have problems becoming pregnant. I was scared enough that I was even ready to take the Pill if that was what Dr. Bizan prescribed.

 

“You're sure Dr.
Bizan is an actual medical doctor—with a real degree?” Bill asked as I came out of the shower on the day of my appointment.

Bill had been testy since I'd told him Dr. Bizan was a DO, rather than an MD. I had just learned about DOs: Western medical doctors who are trained to treat the whole person, as opposed to being symptom-focused. I was excited to find out this kind of doctor existed.

“Yes—geez,” I said, hanging my towel on the back of the bathroom door and pulling a dress over my head. “DOs are fully licensed Western medical doctors. Dr. Bizan has been Caroline's OB for three pregnancies, and she works out of St. Joseph's, a totally Western hospital. Like I said, you're welcome to come with me.”

Dr. Bizan's office had called the day before with a cancellation, and I'd scrambled to reorganize my own schedule to be able to make the appointment. Bill had recently left the advertising agency and started his own creative group with a best friend. He had two meetings and a shoot scheduled that day, so we'd already agreed that I would go on my own. As I waited in that grungy, airless office, I was happy I'd come by myself. Bill hated small spaces—and waiting—and I could imagine him pacing back and forth like a caged tiger in the cluttered room.

I'd moved through the remainder of
Cosmo
,
Elle,
and a ten-month-old
InStyle,
when the nurse finally called my name.

“I'm Sara,” I said, jumping up so she could see me.

“Follow me.”

She ushered me into an examination room and told me Dr. Bizan would be in shortly. Another nurse came in and took my weight, blood pressure, and temperature: all normal. After she left, I looked around for something else to distract me. I felt more nervous than ever, afraid that Dr. Bizan either wouldn't be a good fit or would chastise me for going so long without consulting a doctor.

In direct contrast with the waiting room, the examination room was spare and orderly. My stomach grumbled. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was after 3:00 PM, and I hadn't eaten lunch. I decided to lie back on the exam table and meditate. I'd studied various meditation techniques in my training in England and joined a meditation group when I moved to Chicago. Someone from the group had recently shared an article about an order of yogis from Tibet who were able to nourish themselves with their breath instead of with food. If they could fast for weeks at a time, I could wait to eat until after my appointment.

I'd found meditation impossible when I first started; I'd been unable to sit still for more than one minute at a time. I'd dedicated myself to the practice, though, believing for reasons I did not understand that it was important for me. In the years to come, I would often thank whatever intuition had guided me to meditation. “The middle of a crisis is probably not the ideal time to start a practice,” one of my teachers in England said. A gift of meditation was said to be equanimity, calmness within uncomfortable situations.

The sanitary paper crackled beneath my body. I tried to find a position where my spine was straight and I could stay still. I counted my breaths. Inhale, “one.” Exhale, “two.”

I made it to twenty-six before a knock on the door jolted me out of the quiet. I sat up fast, blood rushing to my head. Dr. Bizan entered the room. She was trim and athletic-looking, with honey-blond hair pulled back into a low ponytail.

“I'm terribly sorry for the wait,” she said, shaking my hand and then, as if deciding more was needed to apologize, moving in for a hug. “The practice has just exploded, and I've delivered twelve babies this week so far.”

She took a seat in a chair next to the exam table. I liked hearing about the babies Dr. Bizan had delivered that week. The high volume
perhaps explained the lack of organization in her office. I wondered if Dr. Bizan worked by herself and if she was a mother, and if she ever got a complete night of sleep.

Dr. Bizan scanned the files I'd had sent over from Dr. Angelli.

“I see here that you haven't had a regular cycle in a couple years, and that you and your husband would like to start a family,” she said.

I braced myself for a reprimand, but Dr. Bizan moved right along.

“And you've tried acupuncture and herbs,” she said, looking up at me from the folder. I nodded.

“That's great. A lot of my patients become pregnant incorporating alternative therapies. They can be very effective.”

I relaxed further. I uncrossed my legs and laid my hands next to me on the table as Dr. Bizan continued.

“Since you've been trying for a while and have not started having a cycle on your own, I'd like you to see a reproductive endocrinologist.”

I felt unnerved at the immediate referral to another doctor. Dr. Bizan continued speaking, but I felt distracted. I watched her lips move, but I heard only one out of every few words.

She handed me a business card. “I recommend Dr. Colaum. Her office is in Evanston, which is a drive, but I believe she's worth the commute.”

Anxiety prickled in my chest. I thought Dr. Bizan would at least examine me and give some kind of assessment. I felt comfortable with her; I didn't want to go see someone else. I asked if Dr. Colaum would see me exclusively or if I would see her and Dr. Bizan in tandem.

“Dr. Colaum can advise you on that—after she gets a sense of what's going on,” she said. “Before you see her, though, I want you to have a test for something called empty sella. Have you heard of it?”

Empty cellar? Sella?
I shook my head no. Was empty sella an illness of some kind? Aside from not having a period, I felt healthy and strong in my body and hadn't had even a cold in three years.

“Empty sella is a condition affecting the pituitary gland that prevents it from signaling the ovaries to ovulate. The first drug many fertility doctors prescribe is Clomid, which is pituitary focused. And if the pituitary isn't functioning properly, Clomid won't work. The condition can be detected by MRI.”