My MG Pregnancy Story...Part One

So. I just recently met another young mom with MG! Her button is on my sidebar if you want to check it out. I was asking her about her pregnancies with MG, as she has started sharing her diagnosis story on her blog. In turn, she got me thinking of my own pregnancy journey. So here goes:

My husband and I were married for 6 weeks when I was hospitalized for some unknown illness. Before I went in, I was a mess. I couldn't walk more than 10 yards without stopping. I couldn't sleep, except for sitting up at the kitchen table, leaning over a stack of pillows. My right hand (I am right handed) was curled up, useless, and even my arm was curled up into my body. I had virtually no grip in my left hand. My speech was slurred to the point of people having a difficult time understanding me. My neck was so weak I had to prop up my head with my arm, because it couldn't hold up my head on its own. Needless to say, I was very, very ill.

When we got married, I was going downhill, but Doug and I both thought it was stress from my job. I was working 50-55 hours a week as an Operations Managet at a Trucking company, and I LOVED it. But I literally thought the stress was killing me. So I quit, and instead of getting better, I got worse. We were married (eloped pretty much) August 26, 2000. (We were still planning a "big" wedding for February, but got married legally in August so I cold be on his insurance, as I had just quit my job. What a God thing that turned out to be!) The month of September was spent going from doctor to doctor to doctor. I heard everything from "You've got a tumor on your spine" to "It's all in your head" to "I have no idea what it could be." In October I had an MRI under sedation, stopped breathing, and had to be emergently intubated. I was admitted to the hospital in Grand Rapids, and flown via helicopter 4 days later to the U of M. I was pretty much out of it for 2 weeks.

I was in and out of the Neuro-ICU (mostly in) for the next 3 months. My husband was by my side...he was committed to me, to God, and to our marriage vows. I knew I picked the right guy!
When we got married, I was 29, and Doug was 30. We kind of both assumed we'd have kids right away and get on with our lives. When I was discharged just before Christmas in 2000, I was told I either had Myasthenia Gravis, which was treatable, but incurable, or bulbar palsy, which was degenerative and terminal. I was 29 years old. The docs decided to treat me as if I had MG, because they really had no other option. If I got better, I would have MG, if I didn't get better, I knew I would die a slow, agonizing death.

Fast forward 4 years (I'm getting better, so obviously I have MG and not bulbar palsy, thank God!). Doug and I do not think it would be wise for me to have a child, but Doug is set on having our own biological child. In what I thought was a Divinely inspired plan, a friend of mine from high school (I'm not sure if she would care if I used her name, so I'll use her initials, LV) volunteered to carry Doug's and my biological child. We couldn't have been more amazed, thankful, or, frankly, surprised. She just completely volunteered, and this was actually something she had mentioned years before as a thing she could do. She had great pregnancies and super easy births...(her youngest was ONE HOUR from first contraction to birth!) We thought it was the perfect plan. We thought God had worked it all out.

It was kind of a nightmare dealing with the legality of surrogacy in Michigan. Whereas in some states, you can pay a surrogate for her services, in Michigan you cannot. You can pay for medical expenses, maternity clothing, things like that that are directly related to the pregnancy, but nothing else. No money, no gifts, nothing. We had to each hire separate attorneys (required by law, not by the generous friend who wanted to do this for us), and pay for each of them. LV's insurance covered a lot of her medical expense, prescriptions needed for her fertility drugs and stuff, which was awesome. Our insurance paid for part of mine too, but they would NOT cover the procedure of transplanting the newly formed baby into LV (to the tune of $3800.00, and that was 6 years ago!) They covered my fertility drugs, and the ultrasounds, and even the in vitro, but not the transfer. We had just enough money in the bank to cover it.

Fertility drugs are hideous. I was the the most evil woman on the planet. I would look at people and just want to scratch their eyes out! I am a generally friendly, kind, loving person by nature. This was SO not like me. The drugs were making me crazy. And the shots HURT. The one burned for like 30 minutes. Ug.

So after "X" amount of time (I can't remember exactly) I go in for the ultrasound to see how many eggs were big enough to remove. We had decided ahead of time that we would take out as many eggs as were big enough, and then fertilize and implant only 2, because if I had more than twins, I would be in BIG trouble. I would have been in trouble with twins! But I was still pretty healthy at this time...my medication was working well, and I was doing quite a bit on my own. I remember I had gone to this particular appointment by myself.

I impatiently waited for what seemed like eternity to go into the exam room for the ultrasound. The nurse came in, started the ultrasound, and started the search for eggs, on each side....and they found...... To be continued!!!!