My hairdresser's sister...
A friend of mine, let's call her N, is vaguely aware of what we are going through. She doesn't know the details (like the miscarriage, IUI, the state of my ovaries), but she knows I am infertile. She usually is quite sensitive, but she sometimes can be a jerk. She called me last week to tell me about a friend of hers, let's call her M. M went to the dr because she has no period at all. The dr told her "well mam, you're sterile." Ok, now, wth? What kind of a dr is that? What, he knew she was sterile just by looking at her? Lucky her, she did not have to go through bloodwork, HSG, lap, and what more to know that! I would have told M to get a second opinion, but hey, that's me. Anyway, M decided to go to the accupunctor. And oh miracle! She is now regular. N told me, after that deliteful story: "you should go see an accupunctor." Yeah. Ok. Whatever.Everybody knows, up close or not, someone who has had some ordeal with infertility. Everybody can tell you about the cousin who was declared sterile and who got pregnant naturally two years later or the friend of a friend who got pregnant while trying to adopt. Everybody has a story to try and bring some infertile's spirit up. But infertiles like me hate these stories! I am so sick of listening to stories about the mailman's sister-in-law who had 4 miscarriages and now has 3 healthy children, or the hairdresser's sister who waited 3 years before (oh dear god!) giving up and getting pregnant. I KNOW the intentions are good. I am perfectly aware that people telling me these stories aren't thinking to themselves "eheheh! I'm gonna tell this bitter infertile about my former-infertile-friend-now-ubber-fertile and watch her get mad!" I know most of the time these stories come to mind because people want to be nice, but don't know what to say to encourage me. I know they want to help, but it does not help at all.
I have tried to explain why it bugs me to hear those stories many times. I have tried to find something that would make it clear that I don't want to know about any of those people I don't even know anyway. It's not easy to understand from the outside that these stories do not give me anything. No encouragment, no hope, no help. Ok, I am happy for the person in question. Lucky her. Good thing it worked for her. But in what does it change my own situation? Meds don't work the same way on everybody. Infertility comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, most of them still ill-known. As one of my drs once told me, there are as much fertility-treatment recipes as there are infertile couples. Meaning, it if worked for one, there's no garantee it's gonna work for another.
I finaly found a way to explain this to outsider. A little vague comparison, but I think it's clear enough. Let's say I play the lotery every week, hoping to become a millionnaire. I never win. Then, someone comes to me and tells me "you know, my secretary's uncle just won the jackpot with these numbers. You should take these numbers, you would win, since it worked for him." This is silly, right? That's not the way things work, right?
This said, I trully appreciate every word of encouragement I get, no matter where they come from. I know how to see the good intentions behind a story. And I thank every one of you, from the bottom of my heart.
posted by Kiwi at
5:17 PM
1 comment(s):
That is a great analogy!
Wishing you well.
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Anonymous, at
2:38 PM
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