My surrogacy story began almost 12 years ago, well before I met my husband. I had come alone to New York City barely out of my teens, wide eyed and petrified, but determined to 'make it' regardless. By my late 20's, I was a voiceover artist living the dream, replete with a penthouse apartment overlooking the Empire State Building. Little did I know years later that same building would help solidify a precious relationship, and signify the very beginning of my family.
I'd just returned from my first foray into Burning Man, an avant-guard art festival held yearly in the Nevada desert, when tragedy struck and the towers came down. It was a hollow, horrific time in my beloved city, streets emptied of tourists, the rest of us shell-shocked and heart broken.
Back in the desert I'd noticed a strange discomfort in my lower abdomen, and sensed I'd needed to get it checked out. But Burning Man's medical tent was unable to help me, and because my doctor's office was mere blocks from the twin towers, it too was shut down. But eventually my physician reopened her practice temporarily in Chelsea, and I was finally able to get in.
Three years earlier, I had discovered an abnormally large fibroid tumor, and had it surgically removed. It was benign, but cells in the muscle wall of my uterus were questionably malignant. Because of my age, we decided to keep an eye on it via MRI's. The new tumor had doubled in size since my last scan; a sure sign of cancer. I scheduled another operation, with the promise from my oncologist that he wouldn't remove my womb.
He kept that promise, temporarily. In this second surgery, the cancer had spread to my small bowel, and this time pathology reports clearly showed malignancy. My uterus had to go. I prolonged the inevitable for a few months, grappling with its implications: no periods, no pregnancy, no babies. And worse: Cancer.
I spent months contemplating and trying alternative methods: from fasting to raw food (I was already mostly vegan) to yoga, meditation, acupuncture, shamans and healers. Eventually, however, I realized I wasn't quite as alternative as I'd thought. I had a pivotal moment that December, just a few short months after 9/11 and mere weeks after my second surgery. I was alone in a taxi heading up to a friend's apartment when I found myself stopped at a light. I stared up at the magnificence of the Rockefeller Christmas tree looming ahead of me: resplendent and beautiful, a shiny, glittering symbol of life. I thought of friends of friends who never made it out of the towers: the agonizing last phone calls they'd made to tell their family they loved them. In that moment I knew my best option was to remove the uterus and get on with my life; that although I'd lose this part of me, I was still alive, something no New Yorker could ever take for granted again.
I knew someone in California who had friends who couldn't carry a child; a 19 year old neighbor of theirs, who didn't want kids of her own, agreed to carry for them. She delivered their baby in front of a crowd of close friends and family in a communal hot tub. Days before my final surgery, I flew out West to meet them. Although I couldn't quite see myself living communally, it did help me grasp that perhaps someday, with help from a very special spirit, I, too, might be able to have children of my own. Life would indeed go on.
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