Wednesday, May 13, 2009

FISHing for Trouble?

I seem to live life on the statistical edge. One half of one percent is the percentage of women who have recurrent miscarriage for which no explanation can be found. It's also the risk that the baby I'm currently carrying has Down's Syndrome. My nuchal results were great, but the news has gotten progressively worse. My odds are now 1/190, worse than my age-related risk of 1/287. The odds of miscarriage due to having an amnio are 1/400. What's a five-time miscarrier to do?

I feel absolutely whipsawed by this latest twist of events. What are the chances that fate could be so cruel as to let me hold a pregnancy with a chromosomally abnormal fetus after I've lost FIVE chromosomally normal ones? You might think the odds are slim. But given the improbable bad luck I've already experienced, I find little comfort there.

I'm currently scheduled for an amnio on Friday, but I'm scared and ambivalent. I just don't know how much more I can take...Suffice it to say that this is doing nothing for my efforts to get back into a work writing routine. Somebody stop the bus. I want to get off.