Dealing With Infertility When Other Trials Come

Infertility in and of itself is extremely difficult to deal with. There are so many emotions and factors that play into it. Even when you are at your lowest of lows with infertility, life goes on and other trials and setbacks come along. Life does not pause until you are done dealing with infertility. I wish it was that way but we have certainly learned it doesn’t. Other trials and setbacks will come along making infertility even seem more like an impossible journey to endure. We learned this lesson well when Taylor was diagnosed with his acoustic neuroma brain tumor.

Ever since we were dating and after we got married Taylor has always had minor hearing loss. We never thought much of it. Sometimes during the summer of 2012, Taylor would be doing something then stand up and get really dizzy to the point he would fall over again. We would always just say he stood up too fast or was working too hard. However, in June 2012 I came home from work one day and the neighbors came running over and said Taylor had passed out and they were really worried about him. I went in the house and Taylor was lying on the kitchen floor. He wasn’t responding to me much. I got him some water and he started talking to me a bit more. I told him we needed to get him to the hospital and he kept fighting me and saying that we were not going. He said he would be fine and it would be a waste to go to the hospital. We were still paying on medical bills from the ectopic pregnancy and he didn’t want any more bills to pay. Both of our moms came over and tried to get him to go but he still wouldn’t. He was quite stubborn about it. He never did go, but we agreed he would at least go to the doctor and see what they said.

I made an appointment to go in to his regular doctor and they said passing out could have been something to do with his heart. They ordered up all sorts of tests that he had to do, he had monitors he needed to use over nights, and he had to keep record of when he was doing certain activities. All of the tests came back normal.

In July we found out Taylor’s family had met their out of pocket max on their insurance so everything was paid for, for the rest of the year. We made an appointment with an Ear Nose Throat (ENT) doctor to check on Taylor’s hearing. They did a checkup and couldn’t find anything wrong with his ears. This surprised us because we thought they just needed to be cleaned out or something. They did a hearing test on him and the doctors were at a loss to why he was having hearing problems. The tech that was doing the test kept asking me during it if anything had happened or if he had been around any loud noises. They said usually people with that much hearing loss were around loud noises a lot or had something traumatic happen. Taylor hadn’t had anything we could think of. However, the hearing test confirmed that hearing in his left ear was a lot lower than hearing in his right ear.

We left the appointment that day with another appointment for an MRI. They wanted to have the MRI done in case there was something else that they couldn’t see. We went on a Friday to get the MRI done but didn’t get the results until Saturday. We went to the hospital and had tests printed off and it said there was a vestibular schwannoma  (or commonly known as acoustic neuroma) behind his left ear. We didn’t know what this was so we looked it up online since nobody at the hospital was allowed to tell us. We found out online that it was a form of a brain tumor. We would have to wait until Monday though to talk to the doctor about it.

When we were able to talk to the doctor about the results we still didn’t get much information. All they said was we needed to go to a specialist up at the University of Utah. He was the only doctor in Utah that handled this sort of case. The doctor was not normally covered on Taylor’s insurance so we had to go through a long approval process to get them to cover the appointment. We were finally able to go meet with the specialist in September, where we were told that the tumor would need to be removed and that Taylor would lose his hearing in his left ear. There were no other options since Taylor was so young. Usually people with these tumors are at least in their 40s.

We also met with a neurosurgeon who would help the ENT specialist with the surgery. They also do these surgeries together. Surgery was scheduled for December 10, 2012. Taylor started getting ahead in his schoolwork so he could take his finals early and finish the semester without having to worry about it later on. We started preparing ourselves for what was coming. We were told he would not only be losing hearing in his left ear, but he would need to relearn how to walk and balance. He was going to have a long road to recovery. There was also a chance of him losing facial function on the left side.

Surgery came and it was definitely a hard time to get through. Taylor was in ICU for a day then he was moved to a regular neurosurgery floor. He was constantly sick and dizzy and couldn’t even stand. He had to teach himself to stand and walk again. He had physical therapy and had to do a lot of walking. He was in the hospital about a week before we could take him home. Even when he got home things were hard. I needed to work to get the bills paid but Taylor also needed constant care. He couldn’t be left alone. I would take him to his parent’s house in the mornings then pick him up after work. I wouldn’t have been able to make it without all the help of family and friends. To read more about the surgery and to see pictures, click HERE to visit our family blog.

Through this difficult time for us infertility was still there. We still wanted a baby and still had a hard time with all of the friends and family around us who were expecting. We never stopped wanting a baby. The tumor was a huge setback for us and it was hard to deal with both issues at the same time. Here are a few topics with things that we learned and experienced. (These are only opinions from our experiences. They may be different for other couples.)

Finances: With this particular trial and setback that we had, finances were a huge concern. We were already paying for appointments and tests for infertility issues and had just finished paying off bills from the ectopic pregnancy when Taylor was diagnosed with his tumor. At first we didn’t even know if insurance was even going to help with any part of Taylor’s tumor since the doctors weren’t covered. We had to hold back on some appointments for infertility so that we could save for the surgery. Even though we had to hold back from some appointments we were still doing everything that we could that wasn’t financially straining. We had to prioritize with our finances as well as a few other things.

Prioritize: Going through both trials at once we really had to take a look at the situation and prioritize what to take care of first. Of course surgery became the big focus even though in the back of our minds we still wanted to get our children here. We needed to work through surgery first and then we could put our full attention back on our family situation after. It wasn’t easy turning our attention to something else and trying to forget about other situations but the tumor and Taylor’s surgery became first and foremost.

Faith and Religion: Going through multiple trials at once was devastating. It really put us at a really low point. Both of us didn’t know if we could make it through. We started by wondering if we would ever get our baby and then added to that wondering if Taylor would even make it through surgery. Its hard to even describe all the thoughts and emotions that you have going through two things like that at the same time. However, our faith and religion gave us so much hope and pulled us through everything. We know that Heavenly Father has a plan for us and He knows what is best. Knowing that gave us comfort that everything would turn our all right. He helped Taylor make it through the surgery and get back on his feet. He gave me the strength to know how to take care of Taylor and help him. Now that we are back to focusing on our infertility journey, we know he still has a plan for us. We don’t know what that plan is yet in full but He knows what is best better than we do, even though at times its really hard to be patient and find out what it is, especially when we just want our baby now. Click HERE to learn more about what we believe.

Lean on each other: During hard times it’s easy to pull away from each other a little bit. However, it’s should be a great time to make our relationship stronger. It made ours so much stronger. We learned to lean on each other when we were having rough times. Taylor would lean on me and tell me all his fears with surgery and what he was scared about. I learned to be there to be able to comfort him in the ways that he needed me to be. I was able to learn to lean on him and talk to him when I was just so frustrated that I wasn’t pregnant yet. Rather than letting the hard times get between you, let them pull you together. It makes so much difference. We know that we can get through anything together because we can completely lean on each other when things get rough.

One day at a time: A great friend told me to take things one day at a time when she heard everything we were going through. It has really been a great reminder. When you have such hard things happening its makes it so much worse to try and deal with everything at once. Instead, take baby steps and take one day at a time. Deal with the things you have to for that day for the trials that you are facing all at once. You will eventually see you have made it farther than you every thought you could when you looked at everything as a whole. So many people asked how I could deal with it all at once. I told them it was by taking things one day at a time. It really worked. When Taylor came out of surgery I didn’t even know if he was going to make it through the night. He looked horrible, was in so much pain, and was constantly throwing up. I didn’t think I would make it through. But as I sat there alone in his room all night the thought came back to me to take it one day at a time. I took the first step by telling myself just to make it through the first night. The next day I just needed to make it through that day and so on. It really helped a lot when dealing with two big trials at once.

We definitely haven’t learned everything about having to deal with so many hard things at once but we have learned some stuff. We will keep learning more as we continue on this journey. Hopefully these suggestions will at least help a little bit with others who are going through multiple trials at the same time. I have a picture of Christ hanging in the bedroom, which was supposed to be the nursery for our baby that says, “I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it”. We know we just need to keep going because it will all be worth it in the end.