After several months of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, we decided to seek advice from my wife’s gynecologist. On her recommendation, we started our investigative journey with a simple sperm analysis because male factor infertility is usually easier to diagnose, and is, in most cases, easier to treat. Let me preface this situation by saying that I am probably in the minority of men that have always known that I wanted to have children. Being a father and having a great family life has always been my first priority and strongest ambition.
Our experience with the local urology clinic was tedious, embarrassing, arduous and ultimately heartbreaking. I had to repeat the sperm analysis several times because my counts were so low that they needed confirmation that it was not just a fluke. This process, in and of itself, is highly embarrassing. I had to perform each test at the local HMO lab and they do not have a private room specifically set aside for your collection process. And, unfortunately, we live about forty miles from the nearest lab. Since the results of a sperm analysis are very time sensitive, I had to “collect” in the public bathroom, at the clinic. Do you think there were any nerves present for this process? I am not particularly germ phobic either, but a public bathroom stall is not the first place that comes to mind when I want a place to relax and de-stress for this kind of process.
Believe it or not, it only gets worse from here. At every appointment, I felt like I was in some low budget 80’s teen movie where the funniest gag is to embarrass the hell out of the poor schlub that is trying his best to be discreet about the contents of his little brown paper bag. Inevitably, some form of embarrassment ensued, thanks to the ever-changing person on the other side of the check-in counter. Yes, “hello, waiting room full of people, I am here with my cup of semen that, you sir, know I was just collecting in the bathroom around the corner”. What a nightmare! After several sperm analyses were performed, we were abruptly informed that my sperm count was on the lowest end of low and that we would never be able to produce a pregnancy naturally. So, when my urologist flippantly handed me my diagnosis, I was devastated on so many levels and completely unprepared for him to launch into his speech about considering adoption. I hadn’t even had the chance to process all of the areas of my life where the new adjective, I had just been so unceremoniously given, would cause cracks to form. So, my wife and I managed to make it to the car and then broke down into tears. We had to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we would never see our reflections in the eyes of our children and I felt like I had failed the most important person in my life and was suddenly asking her to forfeit something that was also her deepest desire because I would not be able to provide it.
You see, what I was unprepared for that day in the urologist’s office was the true weight of what was about to be handed to me. The undeniable power of that one single word, infertility, the weight was immediately crushing and we continue to sink further and further into the ground as we fight to hold up the weight of the burden that was so easily tossed at me that day. At times I think it must be obvious to those around me that I have been diagnosed infertile. Like the character of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic, The Scarlett Letter, I feel like it is a visible badge that brings feelings of failure, shame, emasculation, pain and fear.
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