My First Post

My first post. I guess it should be something profound, but I will settle for explaining the title of my blog. I have an inherited connective tissue disorder which I have passed onto my children. Of course, we weren't diagnosed until after they were born, and we were assured that the type we have was the benign type. There are nine varieties, and genetic testing is only available for two of the rarest.
Our plan to have one more child was derailed 10 years ago when I developed a serious sinus infection that needed to be treated with IV antibiotics. It required six weeks of therapy so I had an IV line placed in my right arm. I then developed a large blood clot in my right chest wall that went from my chest down to my right elbow. That year I was hospitalized eight times for recurrent blood clots and my plans for a baby went into permanent hiatus.
Since then my health has bounced back and forth with times of excellent health intermingled with periods of frequent hospitalizations. During these times the experts have postulated that my mild connective tissue disorder has been complicated by my chronic sinus infections and my allergy to latex. Both seem to have hopes of being conquered this year by my retirement from nursing and then by treatment from a new ear nose and throat doctor.
So finally we are ready for that last baby, the one we have waited so long for. But now we have waited too long. My eggs are old, so we will turn to donor eggs. A complication that doesn't thrill me, but makes sense, as I have no desire to pass this connective tissue disorder on to another child.
But this is where the failure of imagination comes in. That benign connective disorder that all the women in my family have? As well as most of the men? Well it doesn't seem to be so benign after all.
In my mom's sibling group of 5, three have had cancer, two have had fatal aneurysms and only one is alive at age 60. My uncle survived one abdominal aortic aneurysm dissection at age 45 only to have it recur and die at age 47.
At the time of my mom's death she had three large aneurysms in her brain, one the size of a walnut. So fragile, she would have bled to death had an attempt been made to operate. As it was, the largest one pressed on her brain stem and she simply stopped breathing, resulting in her death. One aunt died of colon cancer before 4o, my surviving aunt also had colon cancer before 40 but has survived so far. I have lost one cousin to cancer and I am the next to oldest of the cousins. So the idea that we have the not so fatal form of this disease? Likely not accurate.
My husband is a marathon runner whose parents are very healthy and whose paternal grandparents lived to be in their mid 90's so we expect that he will live for a very long time.
But we really had a failure of imagination when we thought that we could plan one last child late in our marriage, a child to travel with, maybe even spoil a little now that we would be older, more experienced parents. Even as we debate the wisdom of trying to conceive, I am readying my body for a pregnancy that may not happen. I am just not ready to give up a dream 27 years in the making.