Saving Henry by Laurie Strongin Page B

operating room, and again when I awoke from anesthesia. It was as if she understood what was at stake and was personally invested in being there by my side as we intervened to twist Henry’s fate. That night Allen drove Henry and Jack home to Washington so I could rest and prepare for the next phase. As I did most nights throughout this cycle, I called Lisa Nash to tell her how we were progressing, both of us aware that it wasn’t only Henry’s life that was at stake.
    The next day, we learned that eighteen eggs had successfully fertilized. If the statistics proved correct, we should get four or five Fanconi-free, perfect HLA matches—one or more of which could be Henry’s savior and (because our success would make it the Nashes’ turn), in a way, Molly Nash’s as well.
    As I lay resting, overwhelmed at our good fortune, Dr. Hughes called from his office in Detroit to remind me of all the challenges we could face over the next few days, during which doctors at Cornell hospital would perform the embryo biopsies and Dr. Hughes and his lab staff would conduct the genetic testing. I wanted to cover my ears—the way Jack did when Henry was saying something he didn’t like—and bask in possibility, but Dr. Hughes was committed to ensuring that we were always well informed, so that we could make the best, most educated decisions. He carefully explained thiswar of attrition. Some of the embryos would not grow in the petri dish past the two-to-three-cell stage and therefore would neither be tested nor be able to produce a pregnancy. Others would not survive the cell biopsy required for the genetic testing. Then it was possible that the equipment might fail to deliver any results at all. Even if the equipment functioned properly, the results might not be definitive, meaning that the particular extracted cell might not give us the information about FA or HLA type that we so desperately needed.
    Dr. Hughes was straightforward and prepared to talk until I was satisfied that I knew everything there was to know at this stage, which truthfully was more than I wanted to hear. Some of the issues Dr. Hughes raised are realities of IVF and PGD. Some embryos are simply not strong enough to survive even the natural process resulting in miscarriage, and others can’t withstand medical intervention. But much of what we discussed was simply part of life on the front lines of a medical breakthrough.
    Despite all the preparation, the equipment and protocol had not yet been tested on a real case like ours. I called Allen to share my conversation with Dr. Hughes. Allen listened and then asked me if I had asked whether, if we had multiple healthy HLA matches, we could implant at least one female embryo. Of course, I hadn’t. His steadfast faith in our doctors and the promise of science blinded him to the fact that we were on the medical frontier. Despite everything we had already endured, he still thought it would be easy, and was already thinking about the gender of our new baby. I hoped that he was right, but I did not share his confidence.
    I spent a day alone in New Jersey, waiting for Allen to return, trying not to overworry about the possibilities of failure. Thankfully, my job was demanding, and I had plenty of work to keep me occupied. The next day, Allen returned to New York and we went to Cornell hospital to speak with the embryologist, Dr. Kangpu Xu. We learnedthat he had successfully extracted two cells each from fourteen embryos, giving Dr. Hughes the opportunity to run two simultaneous tests on each embryo to increase his certainty with the results. There were still four embryos from which he had yet to extract cells for testing. We returned one hour later to learn that he had removed one cell each from two; the other two had ceased to grow.
    Allen took the vials of thirty cells from sixteen embryos, which had been meticulously labeled, carefully packed in ice, and stored in a Styrofoam box. We