“Refining”
The Hall family and their little miracle, Coleman; Syracuse, UT

I am a teacher by degree, an avid reader by choice, and a licensed designer by accident. I am also a daughter, sister, wife, an aunt and after 17 years, a mother.

My husband, Jason is a quadriplegic. He broke his neck when he was 15 years old at the C5-C6 vertebrae and has been in a wheelchair ever since. After we met in college at Brigham Young University, we married in 1992. Five years later he was in a life-threatening car accident, which left him in the hospital for 13 months and then onto a series of hospital stays and about 20 surgeries over the next 11 years.

But in spite of our circumstances, I have found that life can be good; that I have the choice to decide how I feel about my life and my situation. In spite of the adversity and hardship that comes from being the caregiver of someone dealing with intense health issues, I have decided that I wouldn’t go back and change the challenge of dealing with them because of one simple reason: I am a different person now than I was 17 years ago. I am stronger and more independent. I am more tolerant, more understanding and slower to judge. I am better than I was before.

Jason and I always knew that we would have to have medical help if we were ever to conceive a child of our own. In fact, many people discouraged me from marrying him because our chances were so low that we could become parents. We met with doctors, tried artificial insemination and continued to hope in spite of the failed attempts. As we planned a round of in vitro fertilization we were hit with the change of our lives. The front left tire on Jason’s handicap-accessible van blew out on the freeway and he barely made it out alive. As he lay in the ICU, I knew that our efforts to have a child would be put on hold. Eleven years later, after intense rehabilitation and endless surgeries, we were finally ready to try again.

Unfortunately, not only did we have Jason’s health working against us, but I was now eleven years older and officially in the “high-risk” category when it comes to age and conception. But we had made a decision. We were going to go the distance and put everything on the table and if we weren’t successful, then we would know that at least we had done all we could do to have the opportunity to become parents.

It’s interesting how the simple desire to reach a goal gives us courage beyond what we think we possess. Each day as I looked at that needle before it went into by belly or hip I thought, “What am I doing?” And each day after I took a deep breath and gave myself the shot I felt triumphant as I said to myself, “That wasn’t bad.” Isn’t it true that so often our minds create barriers for us and if we have the mental strength to push past those obstacles, the reality of the situation ends up being much better than we had anticipated? Women and men who go through infertility procedures of any kind have great courage coupled with never-ending hope. It’s the combination of the two that gets us through.

If I knew then what I know now, I would shout from the rooftops that miracles happen. They happened as we prepared for the retrieval where despite my age, we were able to use Bravelle and harvest nine eggs. Then a miracle happened on the day of fertilization as my husband was willing to have the doctors take an emergency biopsy in order to access his sperm. Miracles continued that night as the few sperm we had to work with weren’t moving at first but with the skill and patience of the embryologist, were able to become usable so that we ended up with seven viable embryos. Then, although the first three transferred did not take, the frozen embryos were how we got our ultimate miracle, a healthy baby boy weighing in at 8 pounds in spite of deciding to come three weeks early.

Ups and downs, highs and lows, such is the life when in the infertility process. But just knowing that this was how it was going to be helped me to manage my emotions and stay positive. I knew that the right thing would happen – whatever “right” was for us.

Recently I bought an ottoman from an overstock company. It wasn’t too big and didn’t eat up the whole room, leaving no space for Jason to maneuver his wheelchair. It was made of leather so it’s easy-to-clean with no sharp corners for the baby and it had the storage area I was looking for. But the best feature was the price – 60% off of what I would have paid in the store.

Now, the thing with overstock purchases is that you have to be a little careful about quality. If you are willing to overlook a mistake or two then you can often find a great deal. Scratches, dents, missing buttons, a stain here and there all come with the territory when hunting for discount items because that is why you are getting them for a bargain – they aren’t worth as much in our eyes once they have been damaged.

But when it comes to people, I believe the opposite is true. As Jason and I have gone through our challenges over the years, our spirits have received their fair share of bumps and bruises, scratches and dents. But with each tumble comes a refining process that removes a sharp edge here and a hard corner there until we are molded and sculpted into something more capable, more understanding and ultimately more beautiful than we were before. Instead of losing our personal value, overcoming the hard knocks of life actually enhances who we are and develops in us a sense of greater individual worth.

Do I excitedly embrace adversity because I know what it will help me to be? Not usually. But I certainly wouldn’t change the person I have become because of it – a few scratches and dents, some pokes from a needle, aches and pains here and there, but ultimately stronger and more of who I am meant to become. I believe in miracles. I believe in hope and I believe that anyone can beat the odds.