"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."

Since the death of Maya Angelou, her quotes have covered news headlines, twitter accounts, and Facebook news feeds, and I have LOVED it.  I loved the optimism that her legacy has left behind. I loved that every quote struck different people in entirely different ways. I loved that people googled her and ordered her books that they've always been meaning to read. (I know I did!) I loved that I stood a little taller after reading about such an amazing woman and all she accomplished. And I especially loved how one thing she said has echoed through my head this past week as if she planned the timing herself: "We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."

Will and I had a week of some defeated thoughts. Last week, (right after my beautiful sisters' wedding weekend, which was pure perfection by the way...), we were set to finish some tests to get the 'thumbs up' to start preparing my body for the next round of meds and another embryo transfer. We were expecting smooth sailing, as this is the "easy" part. However, unfortunately one of the tests resulted in the need for surgery on part of my uterus. So not exactly the 'thumbs-up' we were expecting. (Actually felt more like the middle finger than the thumb.) We still aren't sure exactly what happened. Our basic understanding is that my uterus got infected from my last miscarriage and they had to remove that part to avoid further damage. (Frankly, I still don't really get it.) We had 3 days notice for the surgery which gave us the perfect amount of time to repeat the phrase "CAN'T WE JUST CATCH ONE FREAKING BREAK??" about 9,345 times. (Maybe even 9,346.)

Surgery was in the main hospital on Monday morning, and other than the anesthesiologist trying to put the tube down my throat while I was still awake, everything went really well. I've bounced back fairly quickly, actually.

We won't be given the 100% green light for a definitive transfer date until a couple of weeks post-surgery, but we're moving forward with injections hoping that I continue doing well with this part of the healing. We start the first shot tonight and our hope is that all goes smoothly and we can do an embryo transfer during the last week in June.

This week wasn't what we were expecting, and it felt like just another defeat. But it turned out to be another defeat we could handle.  So thank you, Dr. Angelou, for reminding me that we sure aren't waving the white flag yet.

Bring it on, June. We're ready for you.

Love,
Kendall and Will

Ps. For those that are confused, yes- we ARE doing another embryo transfer. We're going to try one more time before going the surrogacy route. Because I have embryos already frozen, we don't have to do the harvest again. And if you recall from earlier blogs, hell would have to freeze over for me to do that again, so it works out nicely.