Double Board Certified Fertility Doctor, Mother, Advocate & Content Creator
My Story
I was in a fevered, ketamine-induced dream: the ceiling bled into the walls, the silver IV pole dissolved like mercury in a thermometer, my husband drifted away as if on a sailboat, even though he, like everything else in this fevered dream, is stationary. My last thought: a prayer that I will not remember this feeling and that I will still have a uterus when I wake up.
“Did they remove my uterus?” I asked.
“Yes,” my husband replied, looking up and surprised to find me awake.
“Why are you joking?” I asked, hoping he would laugh and agree.
Instead, he replied, “Why would I joke about something like that?”
Unable or unwilling to process this new reality, I fell back into the cocoon of sleep.
Waking up without a uterus from an unplanned hysterectomy at the time of my c-section (a procedure medically known as a cesarean hysterectomy) was one of the few indescribable moments of my life. It was a moment that divided my life into before and after, when I had a uterus and when I didn’t.
Right before my hysterectomy, I had been on call for 40 days straight. I was pregnant and experiencing extremely high blood pressures and there were concerns about preeclampsia.
On one occasion, I had been admitted overnight, but left the hospital prior seeing my doctor because I was on call. I didn’t want to let my patients or colleagues down. On some level, I think I was also afraid to confront what I knew as a doctor could be the possible outcomes of my situation: a preterm delivery and a child in the NICU.
One month after my daughter was born, my worst fears came true. Instead of taking her home, I was sitting with her in the NICU and feeling immense guilt that my actions had put her here. Was this all my fault? Did I deliver my daughter preterm because I didn’t take care of myself? It made me question the core of who I was as a person and if medicine was the right path for me.
I felt so alone.
I had always wanted 3-5 kids, but this was no longer in the cards for me and I wasn’t sure if medicine was either. I hadn’t known how to process being a working mom, a physician with worsening hypertension in pregnancy, and all the fears, uncertainty, and conflicting emotions that come with it. Now, I didn’t know how to process the fact that I no longer had a uterus.
I went through two miscarriages before my even though I knew that 1 in 4 pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
I felt like my love for medicine, the way I had pursued it and had unwittingly used it as a crutch to mask my fears during my pregnancy, were to blame for my current predicament and most importantly, for my daughter being in the NICU. I was used to being strong.
Who was I if I wasn’t the strong dependable one anymore? Who did I want to be?
In the midst of this, my sister encouraged me to try yoga as a way to cope.
I initially resisted, thinking it was silly to believe that “a little bit of stretching” would help my existential crisis. Didn’t she understand how serious this was? She decided we should make a deal, she said, “Do one video and if it doesn’t help, I won’t bother you about it again.”
I remember the very first yoga video I did. It was titled “Ease into It” on the YogaWithAdriene YouTube channel and it changed my life.
I don’t think everyone has as dramatic of a transformation, but something about her message and the movements in that video made me confront my fear and uncertainties and gave me hope that I could go on. I also started seeing a therapist who specializes in women’s reproductive and post-partum health. She taught me to lean into my support system, ask for what I need, accept that it is not only okay, but essential to build boundaries, and see how vulnerabilities and fears can also be a strengths.
This experience made me a different kind of person and a different kind of doctor.
Looking back, I realized I was overwhelmed and unable to face a situation that I had little to no control over. I subconsciously leaned into inertia, feeling a false sense of security in the status quo. Ultimately, my inertia was not inert. By reflecting on my experience and confronting my fears, I realized that many of my patients, like me, were struggling to deal with the stigma, fear, and anxiety associated with infertility and miscarriage.
Because of this experience, it is my mission to utilize evidence-based medicine alongside a holistic approach to eradicate the stigma surrounding infertility and miscarriage, educate women about their reproductive health, assuage their fears, and create a space where they feel seen and know that their concerns are heard.
Where they know without a doubt that I am rooting for them, I am here for them and I am on their team.
