Can we talk?

I have spoken several times about personal things in our lives. I guess the great news is that life doesn't stop when you have myeloma and we still deal with a lot of the same issues every other family deals with... plus a whole lot more. On Friday though I had one of those moments that shows you the range of emotions you go through when dealing with MM. This tearjerker moment had to do with fertility. Now, somewhere between the 24 hour nausea and vertigo and the chronic post nasal drip cough induced broken rib of my pregnancy, I decided I would adopt before I ever got pregnant again. Most people told me I would forget how
miserable I was pregnant. They were WRONG. When Tim went for transplant, no one ever mentioned anything about banking sperm, at least I don't recall it. We probably would not have anyway but I don't think we were even told straight out that Tim might become sterile. The most I remember is our transplant coordinator telling us not to rely on his having had a transplant as a birth control method as this is NOT a good idea. Cut to today and I was a week
and a half late for "Aunt Flo". I am NEVER late. Maybe 3 or 4 times in over 30 years. But peri-menopause being what it is, I tried not to panic. I actually started to panic Friday and sent an
e-mail to Tim's doc's head nurse asking about getting Tim tested. If this being late thing is gonna be a habit, I don't want to be panicked every month or spend a fortune on pregnancy tests. She spoke to the doc and then e-mailed back to say that in his opinion,
Tim was almost certainly sterile but we would have to go to an urologist first to have him tested before we could rely on that for birth control. Now here's the thing. For one tenth of a second,
I felt relief that the chances were pretty good that I was not pregnant. For the next two tenths of a second, I was depressed that the chances were that I was not pregnant and then I just broke down
crying as I read the words(crap, I'm crying again now) that my gorgeous hunk of man most
likely cannot father children anymore. I know it sounds crazy but to think that what he went
through was so toxic and drastic that it has rendered him sterile just got to me and I lost it
just a little. As anyone in a similar position will tell you, it's one thing to say or think you do not
want any more kids, it's quite another to be told you CAN'T have any more kids. I talked to Tim
about it and tried to joke a bit and keep it light but the truth is that I'm not sure if it is better to
get the test and be able to stop worrying about birth control or if knowing for certain that he is
sterile will bother him or break my heart even more. And as I kid Tim sometimes, I may not
want to be pregnant again but who knows if his next wife will want to have kids with him.
Tim took the news much better than I did. His first question was if he had to give a semen
sample, was I allowed to come in the room with him? The man's a trooper. Now I guess we both
have to figure out if we really want to know or not. Cancer SUCKS!