Page 30 of The Facilitator: Part 3
Before I could get into any further conversation, the nurse called me back and I followed her to another room where she took some blood. I was weighed, measured, puffed into a gadget to check for lung capacity, I had an ECG, which I was rather impressed with, and then asked to wait in a second reception. It was a half hour later that I was called back to Mr. Rules’ office and I wondered if Lauren had arrived. She’d see urology and I hoped she’d think it was prostate or some such thing.
Which reminded me, perhaps I ought to book a prostate exam at some point. I didn’t need to.
“Right, let’s have a check of the old prostate,” Samsaid, coming into the room minus his jacket and gloved up.
“Okay, then,” I replied, removing my trousers. Of course, I wore no shorts and I saw the nurse’s eyes widen. I laid on my side and thought of my wife.
“All done,” he said, snapping the gloves off and depositing them in the bin. “If you’d like to follow me,” he said, and strode off. I would have hoped he’d wait until I pulled my pants up. I hopped across the room and buckled my belt as I left. “Take a seat,” he said, waving to the one I’d sat in earlier.
He read something on his screen, mumbling to himself. After about five minutes, the nurse returned with a handful of papers. I was impressed at the speed in which results were ready.
“Okay,” he said, he liked to start a sentence that way. “Bloods are good, heart is good,” he said, mumbling again as he read and dropping the paper to the floor after. “Ah, this is what we want to see.”
He peered at the note, squinting through his glasses. Then he looked over them, again, at me.
“Mr. Miller, you may have one or two live blighters in there,” he said.
I blinked. I knew what he meant, but not necessarily what he meant.
“You have live sperm but I can’t, hand on heart, say they are of any quality at the moment. But they arethere, and they are gently wiggling around, not enough for a distance swim, of course, but it suggests we might have a chance.”
“So you think I have live sperm?” I asked for clarification.
“You have sperm that are moving around. Yes, they’re live, what quality they are is another matter. An MRI would give me the opportunity to see how thick the scar tissue is and whether any of the blighters are making down the urethra.”
“If they’re not, you might still be able to extract some, couldn’t you?” I asked.
“You have Obstructive Azoospermia, that’s the scar tissue that has blocked the route the sperm would travel, a simple operation would solve that. However, you also have a very low production because of the trauma. I’d like to consider a surgical procedure performed under a general, called Micro-TESE. This is where I’d extract tissue from the testes and the lab would hunt down the live blighters ready for IVF.”
“Wow. I’m a little blown away at the moment,” I said, and I was a lot blown away. “For all my life I’ve believed I couldn’t father a child and now I learn I can.”
“Might,” he corrected me.
“Might, even. That’s closer than never,” I said. I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I then thought ofsomething. “Could enough sperm be ejaculated to impregnate?”
“Unlikely, the obstruction would have done just that, obstructed. I’m surprised those couple got through.”
I breathed out in relief. For one second there I thought that Addison’s miscarried child could have been mine after all.
“I really do think fault lies with your doctor, Mackenzie. You should have been told the consequences of your accident and any remedial advice. Like I said, you have an obstruction because of the scar tissue. That could have been easily sorted. I can do that now, although any scar produces more scar tissue and I believe we would be looking at IVF anyway.”
“So what do I do now?” I asked.
“I’ll write to you. Often it’s hard to take in. You need a frank discussion with your partner. IVF is tough on a woman. If you decide that you’d like to investigate more, I’d recommend another meeting with your partner and we move forward from there.”
I nodded, still shocked and baffled, but I was also struggling to stop that bafflement from turning into anger. I’d been cheated all these years out of fatherhood.
I stood and shook his hand. I swallowed hard, needing saliva to coat my dry mouth. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you,” I said. When I left his office andbefore I headed back to reception, I stood by a water cooler. I drank three full cups.
“Your wife is in reception,” I was told and I simply nodded.
I opened the reception door and Lauren stood. “Mackenzie? Are you okay?” she said, rushing toward me. I shook my head and walked to the front door, needing some air. “Please, tell me what’s wrong,” she said, her voice broke and she stammered with nerves.
I took hold of her hand. “It’s not bad,” I said, shaking my head.
She frowned at me and I looked around. I hadn’t texted for the car but there it was. I assumed Lauren had organized it. I opened the door. “It’s not bad,” I said, as she climbed in and I followed.
She sat facing me and I took her hand. I shook my head gently, still processing what I’d been told and the wasted years. I wanted to laugh and smile and I wanted to shed tears. I did none of those, I clamped my mouth shut and looked out the window until I saw our front door. I didn’t wait for the car to come to a complete stop before I opened my door. I was out just as it did and round the car to open Lauren’s.
