The Tamesis
Far from the neon streets of Tokyo or even the fluorescent lights of Atlanta hospitals, which I hated, the soft morning sun in Kyoto enveloped me on a cold November morning when my husband and I visited Okazaki Shrine. This little-known shrine, nestled in the city’s tranquil Hokutō mountain district, wasn’t initially on our itinerary. Quietly, we venture through its traditional stones Torii The gate, which signaled our entry into the sacred space, was quickly surrounded by some of the shrine’s guardians. Okazaki Shrine is dedicated to fertility and fertility, and is guarded by an abundance of rabbit statues: concrete and pink, ceramic and stone, and even some hand-painted on rice paper lanterns. As this group of spiritual messengers welcomed us in, I reluctantly reflected on the circumstances leading up to this fateful visit.
Eight months ago, one uneventful night, my husband Eduardo was making dumplings at our neighborhood place when he received Telephone. A routine physical earlier in the day revealed that his white blood cell count was dangerously high. “It could be a lab error… or leukemia,” the doctor on duty seemed to be saying to himself, urging us to go to the emergency room. Three hours later, he was admitted to the hospital with what we learned was a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. The next few weeks were dominated by bone marrow biopsies, PET scans and tests that left us physically and mentally shattered. Then we encountered another harsh reality: If we ever wanted to have a family in the future, our path to parenthood would not be easy. We need to act quickly to preserve options before any potentially gonadotoxic (damage to the reproductive system) treatments begin, and our only way out is in vitro fertilization (IVF) or in vitro fertilization.
Less than 18 months into our marriage, we knew we wanted a child but naively thought it would happen in due time. This assumption, along with all my other plans, seemed to disappear overnight. My mind raced between two paralyzing fears: losing Eduardo and the possibility of never having children with him. On top of our already endless appointment schedule, we had carefully timed surgeries, and with daily injections, I was convinced that once this nightmare was over, it would be our turn to become parents. Later, I had zero embryos, and I was wrong.
When we found out Eduardo was eligible for a clinical trial using targeted immunotherapy instead of standard chemotherapy, I breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in weeks. His treatment officially began, and so did my quest to beat infertility. I spent countless hours by his side during his grueling and lengthy immunotherapy infusions, frantically emailing fertility specialists and engrossed in every infertility forum I could find on social media. But as his treatment progressed and we both became very exhausted, I began to wonder if the answers I so longed for would actually change anything.
We were further away from starting a family than I thought, but slowly, Eduardo’s health was improving. I began to realize that even when consumed by grief, hope is not only possible but necessary to stabilize us through each day. Before diagnosis, when our future and all its possibilities seemed limitless, I was always energized by the spontaneity of life, especially when traveling. I need to be reminded that life can still be serendipitous. It comes in the form of a dream trip to Japan. Thanks to my husband’s doctor’s approval, it quickly became clear that we both longed for this time away to prove to ourselves that we still had parts of our old lives: when we were happy, optimistic, and looking forward to the future with excitement.
