have hypnotherapy before I could face having sex—and that was before Holly.
Poor Ken took that third one really badly too. He kept saying how he couldn’t forgive himself for not having been there for me, but really, what could he have done? In a way I was glad he’d been spared the ordeal—God knows he later went through enough with Holly. But it was around then that our sex life took such a dramatic nosedive that it was a miracle Holly managed to get herself conceived at all.
It was just before Holly’s conception that I gave the bone marrow donation. In retrospect I wondered if it was all part of a divine plan; if maybe that was why I had the third miscarriage. If I’d carried that baby to full-term, then I wouldn’t have been eligible to make the bone marrow donation—pregnancy precluded one from donating. Then perhaps another donor wouldn’t have been found for Max, and he would have died.
I couldn’t help feeling that my would-be baby, the one before Holly, gave up his or her life for Max. It really had helped, to think that. But it also made the urge to meet him even stronger.
The actual bone marrow harvest hadn’t been too bad. Not what you’d call a pleasant experience, and my lower back had been stiff for weeks afterwards, but not agony or anything. In a weird sort of way it felt like an atonement, like I was saying to God, if I’ve done something wrong, and that’s why my babies keep dying, then I’m sorry, and perhaps if I do this for a stranger, then please I can have a baby who’ll stay?
I remembered coming round in the hospital after the operation, lying on my stomach, pain coming in waves from the small of my back, but with enough drugs in me to be able to objectify the discomfort; regard it as something happening to a different person—the pain didn’t go away, it just felt attached to me via a hazy umbilicus of unconcern. It was a strange sensation. Anyway, of all the various medical indignities I had been subjected to over the years, the bone marrow harvest had definitely been among the most minor. It wasn’t as bad as the D&C I had after miscarriage number three.
I had to confess that I didn’t think much, at the time, of who my bone marrow would end up in. I hadn’t even given much thought to the prospect of saving a life; apart from a brief swagger of pride when we’d first registered. It had just seemed the right thing to do. Vicky and I had both been on the Anthony Nolan Trust register of would-be donors for years, since we were at university. An aunt of Vicky’s had died young from leukaemia, so Vicky and I had gone along to our local GP and given a blood sample to send to the Trust. I remembered sitting in the waiting room with her, giggling at the Beware of Sexually Transmitted Diseases poster and flipping through old copies of Cosmo, waiting so long that we got bored and went to play with the train set on the floor in the corner, great hulking nineteen year old students crouching over the battered wooden carriages and mismatched pieces of track, earning us a ticking-off from the receptionist and much tutting and head shaking from a coughing old lady in the corner. But we’d felt far too virtuous to care. Look at us, I’d felt like proclaiming. We’re not here for our own benefit, you know, we could soon be saving someone’s life! But it hadn’t seemed real, then; more like a game.
Neither of us had heard from the Trust again—in fact, I’d almost forgotten that I was on the register - until they had approached me two years back saying I was a potential donor for an anonymous leukaemia sufferer. Max could have been anyone, male or female, old or young, from any corner of the globe. It was another small miracle, I reflected, that he ended up living less than a hundred miles from me.
And that, there I was, driving down on a hazy August morning to that place to meet his father, and to help stick bits of broken tile onto a board. I wondered again if Max was going to
Poor Ken took that third one really badly too. He kept saying how he couldn’t forgive himself for not having been there for me, but really, what could he have done? In a way I was glad he’d been spared the ordeal—God knows he later went through enough with Holly. But it was around then that our sex life took such a dramatic nosedive that it was a miracle Holly managed to get herself conceived at all.
It was just before Holly’s conception that I gave the bone marrow donation. In retrospect I wondered if it was all part of a divine plan; if maybe that was why I had the third miscarriage. If I’d carried that baby to full-term, then I wouldn’t have been eligible to make the bone marrow donation—pregnancy precluded one from donating. Then perhaps another donor wouldn’t have been found for Max, and he would have died.
I couldn’t help feeling that my would-be baby, the one before Holly, gave up his or her life for Max. It really had helped, to think that. But it also made the urge to meet him even stronger.
The actual bone marrow harvest hadn’t been too bad. Not what you’d call a pleasant experience, and my lower back had been stiff for weeks afterwards, but not agony or anything. In a weird sort of way it felt like an atonement, like I was saying to God, if I’ve done something wrong, and that’s why my babies keep dying, then I’m sorry, and perhaps if I do this for a stranger, then please I can have a baby who’ll stay?
I remembered coming round in the hospital after the operation, lying on my stomach, pain coming in waves from the small of my back, but with enough drugs in me to be able to objectify the discomfort; regard it as something happening to a different person—the pain didn’t go away, it just felt attached to me via a hazy umbilicus of unconcern. It was a strange sensation. Anyway, of all the various medical indignities I had been subjected to over the years, the bone marrow harvest had definitely been among the most minor. It wasn’t as bad as the D&C I had after miscarriage number three.
I had to confess that I didn’t think much, at the time, of who my bone marrow would end up in. I hadn’t even given much thought to the prospect of saving a life; apart from a brief swagger of pride when we’d first registered. It had just seemed the right thing to do. Vicky and I had both been on the Anthony Nolan Trust register of would-be donors for years, since we were at university. An aunt of Vicky’s had died young from leukaemia, so Vicky and I had gone along to our local GP and given a blood sample to send to the Trust. I remembered sitting in the waiting room with her, giggling at the Beware of Sexually Transmitted Diseases poster and flipping through old copies of Cosmo, waiting so long that we got bored and went to play with the train set on the floor in the corner, great hulking nineteen year old students crouching over the battered wooden carriages and mismatched pieces of track, earning us a ticking-off from the receptionist and much tutting and head shaking from a coughing old lady in the corner. But we’d felt far too virtuous to care. Look at us, I’d felt like proclaiming. We’re not here for our own benefit, you know, we could soon be saving someone’s life! But it hadn’t seemed real, then; more like a game.
Neither of us had heard from the Trust again—in fact, I’d almost forgotten that I was on the register - until they had approached me two years back saying I was a potential donor for an anonymous leukaemia sufferer. Max could have been anyone, male or female, old or young, from any corner of the globe. It was another small miracle, I reflected, that he ended up living less than a hundred miles from me.
And that, there I was, driving down on a hazy August morning to that place to meet his father, and to help stick bits of broken tile onto a board. I wondered again if Max was going to
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