And just like that…

it was gone. There is no baby.

I think I resigned myself to the worst case scenario when they called to tell me my HCG levels. Losing this baby, before it was even a baby, just a little embryo, is better than the alternative of an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in surgery. I did my crying. And when I got the call yesterday that my HCG plummeted back down to negative numbers, there was nothing to do but accept it.

My husband is having a harder time right now. He, who never quite grasped that enormous  “but…” that came after the “we’re pregnant” part of the conversation, is feeling the full brunt of it. There are few things worse or more dangerous and volatile than hope betrayed. My husband is not a man who feels or expresses sadness well. It leaks out sideways as righteous anger and discontent with everything else in the world and our lives. When something goes wrong, it is never just that one thing that is wrong. Suddenly our entire lives are viewed through a carnival mirror that skews his perception, making everything part of one big disaster. He is difficult to deal with when he is like this. It is hard to draw solace from him when he is like this. To be fair, I am sure it was hard for him to draw solace from me during the weeks of waiting when all I did was read or watch endless netflix episodes to keep my mind occupied. I was absent and he is angry. Instead of crying together, I spent most of last night reassuring him and being the yang to his yin. Part of me was angry that I was forced into coddling him instead of being able to grieve with him. However, it made me realize that I didn’t really need to grieve; that I had come to my sad peace with this already. Being there for someone helps me through my own sadness. It gives me purpose and keeps it from consuming me. I am the opposite of a fair weather friend. I am actually not a very good friend when it is fair weather. I forget to call. I never remember birthdays. I don’t make happy hour dates. But I thrive when weather is stormy. It gives me a purpose and I am happy to drop everything to be there no matter what. I think there is a psychological profile for people like me, but I have been out of the social work game too long to remember what it is called.

I digress.

My husband is angry. At himself for getting cancer and putting us in this position. At the doctor for not warning us more explicitly how great a risk there was of this not working the first time. At the house. At the car. At his job. At the cats. He claimed that the doctor is scamming us so that he can get more money. My husband is Chilean. He always thinks everyone is running a scam. He wants a new doctor.

We are not getting a new doctor. At this point, he is my doctor. I am the one whose body is being treated. I always do so much better the second time through anything. I feel like I have the hang of this now. I am always wracked with anxiety when I don’t have every detail down. But the second time through anything makes it old hat for me. This next time, the procedures, medications, and side effects will be familiar. I don’t want to further alienate him from the process, but I am not going to put myself through more stress because he is paranoid. I think half of his distress is that it didn’t work the first time, and the other half is that I have to go through all the injections again. They are worse for him that they are for me. They aren’t exactly a picnic, but they aren’t as bad as he seems to think. I keep telling him he should try it with saline to put his mind at ease a little, but he won’t.

We have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow to review and plan the next cycle. I want to start the next cycle as soon as possible.