Today I'm going to be sharing with you all my story of infertility,
endometriosis, and ultimately never being able to have my own children. This video
is a follow-up to a video I did a couple months ago on my cancer survivor story.
I'm an ovarian cancer survivor for those of you that don't know and I'll put
links in the description and everywhere for that video so you can catch up on
that story. Really that's where my infertility story began. I was
diagnosed with cancer with ovarian cancer in 2009 when I was just 17 and
initially, when they found the cancer, I lost one of my ovaries. I was left
with one ovary and still had my uterus and my other reproductive organs after
my chemotherapy and the surgeries that I went through then. So for a few years
after my diagnosis I still had a uterus I was still having a period I still had
all my other reproductive organs and essentially I was told that I would be
fine and that the cancer was never going to come back. Unfortunately my cancer did
come back.T his is sort of the second part to the original cancer story that I
told. My cancer came back in 2012 about three years later and thank God it was
benign. So it wasn't a cancerous tumor that they found but it was still a tumor
that required surgery. It was very very scary. This tumor in particular that
they found was near my spine. So when I actually went to go have surgery, I was
having trouble walking. I could barely stand up straight and I was having some
serious nerve pain that was causing a lot of issues. Eventually they removed
the tumor that was in my spine. I didn't have to have any chemotherapy but
unfortunately they diagnosed me with something different and just as lethal
as cancer -- that's a disease called endometriosis. Endometriosis is
essentially where the cells inside of a woman's uterus grow on the outside and
they grow in blisters and lesions that essentially bleed and burst every month
when the woman's period starts. So these are essentially blisters inside of the
woman's body that overreact and cause extreme pain during that time of the
month and for most women with endometriosis
the pain is consistent. For me at that time, I suspected based on my
symptoms, that I was going to have endometriosis; that there was something
going on. It's very genetic and hereditary. My mom had struggled with it.
So getting diagnosed with endometriosis was not really a shock to me. But getting
diagnosed with endometriosis after having ovarian cancer and only having
one ovary left is what scared me. Endometriosis causes infertility. It is
extremely hard to get pregnant -- very hard to get pregnant if you have
endometriosis. When I got diagnosed, I was diagnosed with stage 3. It is staged
very similar to a cancer so mine had spread quite significantly across my
uterus and my ovaries. So in 2012 when they diagnosed me with endometriosis and
removed the benign tumor, they sent me off and said you may or may not be able
to have children. Now at this point this is not something we expected.
There was still a chance with just having cancer in your history that
you may still be able to have a child. So the odds were not good. The odds
were very, very bad. At that time I was only -- I was almost 20 years old so I
was I was probably 20 or 21. My partner and I at the time -- the guy I was dating, I
had been with him for about a year when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I
knew I was gonna have an infertility. I knew I was gonna have problems
conceiving. We, at the time, had the support of our families and made the
decision -- even though we were so young, to try to get pregnant and try to have a
baby. This was in 2013 and when I -- when I look at the course of my life and
I look at the course of everything I've been through, 2013 especially sticks out
as the worst year of my life. It was the year we tried to start conceiving and we
did everything in our power to try to get pregnant. There was never even a
hint of a positive pregnancy test. The horror of realizing that my
body had betrayed me -- it had cancer and I now had this
reproductive disease. I now had all of these issues. And all I wanted was a baby.
All I wanted was to make it right. I just wanted one, healthy, good
thing to come from my body. For thirteen months, every month, I looked at
a negative pregnancy test or several and it was absolutely soul-crushing. I'm
doing this video because I know there are women out there today -- I know there
are women out there right now who are getting big fat negatives on pregnancy
tests and all they're hoping for is a big fat positive. I lived in that
world of trying to conceive for a very long time. It completely shifted the
whole... wow. So much of who I am as a person. Getting past the devastation of not
being able to conceive has been my greatest life challenge. Eventually
what happened was at the end of 2013, we actually got medical intervention. I
was put on hormones and we facilitated through a medical procedure
to try to get me pregnant. We had some medical intervention to try to help this
and still we had no luck. At that point I was beyond devastated and my
depression spiraled absolutely out of control. I knew it was the end because my
pain -- at the same time, with the endometriosis, was getting so bad. The only
way to cure endometriosis is to get rid of the hormones and the
organs where it grows. So eventually what we decided, after trying every
possible medication -- to the point where I was just... I was blackout pain. I was
bedridden. I couldn't leave my house. I could barely
work. I was having trouble with every aspect of my life. I knew I had
tried to have a baby it wasn't going to happen.
My pain was getting worse and I had put my own life on hold long enough.
Eventually, with with an incredibly dedicated and conscientious and
wonderful team of surgeons,
who knew that I needed this. They knew that it wasn't
gonna get better. They knew, even though I was only 22, this was my last
option. This was my last hope to try to live a normal life. And the obvious
consequence and what made it so difficult, was I would never ever have my
own baby. The remaining ovary that I had would be
gone. I couldn't even pass on my genes with the best scientific medicine. A
lot of people asked me --- no I couldn't store my eggs. It costs, out of pocket, a
hundred thousand dollars for like one egg because of storage time,
refrigeration, the maintenance. Storing my eggs was not an option. At this point
I had I had tried everything. We just knew. It was the worst decision I've
ever had to make -- to have a hysterectomy. To say, I am going to choose to wake up
in menopause at 22 and continue on with my life knowing that I'm never going to
have my own children because the pain of this disease and what I've been through
is so bad that the only way to defeat the endometriosis, the only way for me to
live a life is to get rid of my uterus,, my ovary -- my last ovary, my cervix,
fallopian tubes -- gone. Everything gone.
I remember when I woke up from surgery
I didn't know what they were gonna find. I didn't know how bad it was
gonna really be. Endometriosis is really elusive. It's
really.. you -- you can't test for it. You have to see it with the naked eye. So
in a couple years, I didn't know how bad the endometriosis had gotten. When I
woke up from surgery, my surgeon came to me and he said-- your organs were mangled.
We couldn't find them. We could barely identify your ovary because everything
down there was so catastrophic. I think for a lot of women that
struggle with endometriosis or PECOS or any other reproductive disease or any
other autoimmune disorder that is hidden -- invisible illness. That moment was so
validating because I knew that the pain was real. I knew that the chances of
never having a baby were so real. My ovary was a mess. Everything was a mess.
I made the right choice and today that's that's what gets me through. That's what
gets me through the really sad times when I stop to think about it. I
remember that I did everything in my power to try to make the world go one
way and it didn't. Through my acceptance and through throwing myself
into other endeavors, I've been able to heal from this. It took a considerable
amount of grief counselling to get over 2013. I went to grief counseling
specifically to get over the shock and devastation of not getting pregnant
trying to conceive. Whether you wait three months, six months
or never, it is devastating. I
really hope that my story can inspire and help other people. Because you know
to me the road just ended. There wasn't a chance before my life even really got
started. I didn't get a choice. I grieved the loss of the choice. I grieved the
loss of the life script that I've been told was going to be what my life.
You know, get married, have children, get pregnant, whatever.
Suddenly that wasn't gonna be my route anymore. Suddenly my way to have a baby --
especially with the person I love, is a lot less of a choice and much more
mechanical and much more medical at this point. That's hard. That loss of
control and letting go of the idea of what my future family is supposed to
look like or how it's gonna come together very difficult. At this
point, like I mentioned, the grief therapy was above and beyond helpful getting
past that devastation. I am so grateful that I'm not in pain anymore.
I live my days pain-free which is just like phenomenal because I lived for five
or six years just absolutely devastated with endometriosis pain. So even though
things did not work out -- even though I did not get pregnant when I tried and I
can never have my own children, my goal is to help other people now. My goal is
to throw myself into the projects that I'm doing and throw myself into helping
other people through the same problems. Whether it's similar loss of infertility
or miscarriage or similar losses and griefs that plain just disappoint us and
totally change the trajectory of our lives. I really hope that just
through my actions and through my demeanor and through the
young woman that I have become that I can inspire people to keep going if they are
struggling with trying to conceive or they know that they're never going to be
able to have the kind of family that they want. I really hope that I can
encourage you to keep going and know that no matter what happens there are
things that you can do to have a fulfilling and satisfied life that are
going to be just as important as being a mom or a dad and are just gonna be as
impactful to people. That's really been my goal -- is to focus on the good
that I can put into the world and the good that I can do for the world
and not focus on what was taken from me or what I didn't gain or what I don't
have. Shifting that perspective has taken a very long time. I encourage
you -- if you are struggling with any sort of loss of this magnitude, to really be
patient with yourself. Infertility is devastating.
It doesn't matter if you have to wait a year or a month to have a baby.
Any woman that sees a negative pregnancy test -- it does something to your psyche. It
does something to how you feel about yourself as a woman. I want everyone
out there to know just because you are infertile -- just
because you're missing all of the organs that would make you a woman, it does not
mean you are any less of a woman. I went through periods of feeling like I
was less than a woman because I don't even have a uterus -- I don't even have
ovaries. I felt like an alien. I felt like I didn't belong anywhere.
To me now, it's so much about self-acceptance and self-love.
Realizing that so much of what happened all of what happened was not my fault.
I was forced into a decision that was life-changing, that most young women
at 22 do not face. From the time I got cancer at 17 to the time I had my
hysterectomy -- those years are so valuable to me
because of what I learned. I hope that I can use that information and my
own heartache and my own grief to help all of you. So if you have any questions
for me or you are struggling with infertility and want to message me
privately, I have a link to my Instagram below. Please follow me on there if you
have any other questions about my endometriosis or what I went through or
my surgeries. Please leave a comment and I will likely do more videos on this in
the future, especially providing more insight into how I coped with negative
pregnancy tests and how I was able to sort of do very specific grief exercises
to get over the loss of my fertility. So I will be doing a lot more videos in the
future on this topic. Especially now that I have been able to share my whole story
and have rambled on and on about this. So if you are still listening, I really
appreciate your support and your kindness and being here for me. It has
been very, very healing for me to do YouTube and throw myself into something
that I'm so passionate about and feel like I'm making a difference in the
world, even if it's not gonna be through bringing life into the world. I hope that
I can bring life to the world in other ways. So thank you so much for joining me
today and hearing my story. G-d bless.
For more infomation >> Video: Less wet this evening, breezy and dry on Wednesday (11-6-18) - Duration: 3:39. 
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