My husband and I left the reproductive endocrinologist's office in stunned silence. We held hands, gripping a little more tightly than usual, as we crossed the covered pedestrian walkway from the hospital to the parking deck in the warm spring air.

"So what do you think?" I asked. My question dangled in the air alongside my hope that his answer would be the same as mine.

"Well, all I can think is that I don't want to get two years down the road and wish we'd done it."

"I feel exactly the same way."

We were both shocked. We'd just agreed to harvest some of my eggs, fertilize them, and freeze them for later. How could this possibly be our life? How did we get here?

We'd visited the reproductive endocrinologist (RE) on the advice of my oncologist. A few days earlier, a biopsy of a lump in my neck confirmed that I had early stage Hodgkin lymphoma and would require chemotherapy. The RE said that the chemo I would receive posed a low risk for infertility. But I was also 36 years old. Although I'd had no trouble getting pregnant twice before, once at 32 and again at 34, she explained that the researchers in her field still don't understand enough about how certain chemotherapies might interact with a woman's natural aging process to produce a higher risk of infertility after treatment. The risk was still probably low, but it was not insignificant. Not to us, at least.

At that stage in our lives, we'd come to distrust odds or statistical evidence of any kind. I'd just been diagnosed with a very rare cancer (Hodgkin lymphoma constitutes only one-half of one percent of all cancers diagnosed in the United States annually). And barely two years before we received that news, our oldest child Hudson died from a sudden, aggressive bacterial meningitis, a disease that strikes only 1500 Americans every year. What began as a common fever from a common bacteria turned into a rare and fatal illness almost overnight. And the fatality rate from the kind of meningitis she had is also low–only 10-20 percent. But despite the odds, she was in the tiny group of people who contracted and then died from that terrible disease.

Once you've been struck by lightning not once, but twice, you find yourself scanning the sky almost before you hear even the slightest rumble of thunder.

Statistics meant very little to us anymore. Once you've been struck by lightning not once, but twice, you find yourself scanning the sky almost before you hear even the slightest rumble of thunder.

We walked into the RE's office that morning thinking we might learn something but never believing we'd take any action.

We left absolutely certain we were going to freeze embryos before I started chemo.

We'd always imagined we'd have three children. My husband had been one of three, and although I was one of four. My siblings were much older than I was, so I grew up mostly alone. I always loved visiting with friends who had big families and loud, spirited gatherings for holidays and special occasions, and I wanted the same for my own future family.

We had just been about to start trying for a sibling for our oldest child when she was so cruelly taken from us by meningitis. Her younger brother Jackson was born almost exactly a year later, and when he was ten months old, our plans were again thwarted, this time by my cancer diagnosis. And although freezing embryos was no guarantee that we'd eventually have at least two living children, we felt like we couldn't leave this particular step of our journey entirely up to fate.

So within a few weeks of that first RE appointment, we had six frozen embryos ready to use if we ever needed them. I started chemo a few days later, and for once, the odds were on our side.

After four months of chemo, I was in complete remission, and although I lost my hair, I didn't lose my fertility. Three months later, I was surprised and thrilled to find myself pregnant. Our third child, Ada, was born on the one-year anniversary of my final chemo treatment.

Courtesy of Mandy Hitchcock

After a fourth pregnancy ended in miscarriage last year, we decided to stop trying for more children. We have three children, and although our family doesn't look exactly like the one we dreamed of, it is the family we have, and we're so grateful for it.

But those six embryos are still sitting in a freezer 20 miles from our house. Every three months I get a bill for the storage, and even though it's a waste of money, I keep paying it. Somehow, those embryos represent the only hope I have left of that big family gathered for a lively celebration, and even though that dream will never be realized, I'm still not quite ready to let it go.

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