It's been a long four months

The best writers use the toughest times to generate their best work.

It's been a tough four months. Instead of using that time to write about everything that was going on, I just withdrew from the blog.

That's why I still haven't written the Great American Novel, I guess.

Last we met, we had just spoken to our donor. And we loved her.

A few weeks later, we heard that she had a bad pap smear and needed the Leep procedure to clear away some bad cells. That obviously put our cycle on hold. I was quite prepared for it to be the end. And, after talking to her, we decided that we'd be done if she dropped out. We felt like she was our match.

More importantly, I felt a lot of worry about her. If she was my daughter, would I want her playing with her hormones after having pre-cancerous cells on her cervix? If that was me 20 years ago, would I want to go through a series of shots and pills and bloating, etc. -- for someone else and $7,000 in pay -- after having a (minor) operation on my cervix? No. I'd be done with messing with this stuff.

Well, she's still gung-ho. She had her surgery in May and got the all-clear in June. We started lupron this week and we"re on track for a mid-August transfer, assuming all goes well.

Including my failed IVF cycles, we've been at this for an entire year. If you include the IUI cycles, it's been more than two years. In all, it's been about six years. So I'm still trying to remain realistic.

The stats are fairly straightforward, I've got about a 70 percent chance of getting pregnant. Sounds great -- especially compared to the 15 percent rate that IVF gave me.

But that's not the whole story. With every pregnancy, there's a 25 percent chance of a miscarriage. So now we're down to about a 53 percent chance of having a successful pregnancy.

In short, I'm standing at a table in Atlantic City with $14,000 in my hands. I've put it all on red and I'm spinning the wheel.

And I've always said I'm NOT a gambler ... HA!