When it comes to statistics, caveat emptor (aka In Which our heroine displays perhaps a bit of bitterness)

I receive weekly updates, along with the rest of medical-school community, on new and exciting developments at our institution.  Today, I learned that our Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Department is highly successful; indeed, well above the national average.

Congratulations.

Wait.

Could it be the reason behind the success rate is people like me?  People turned away outright?  If the statisticians included us rejects as failures, maybe the statistics would look different.  I'm not advocating futile IVF cycles or endangering the life of myself and fellow members of the aortas-more-fragile-than-porcelain club.  (According to Them.  I am NOT that breakable!)  It just upsets me to think about how different things would be if I were allowed to get pregnant.  Nobody would have to know I couldn't have children.  My parents wouldn't have to spend their hard-earned savings to fund this project.  We wouldn't have to travel back and forth to Chicago.  My best friend could have been our ovum donor.  We wouldn't have to outsource the most precious cargo ever.  My Bubby and my Aunt J would have known a child was on the way.  And maybe they would have held on just a little bit longer, knowing...

Maybe part of this is also about what makes me a girl.  Genotypically I'm not playing with a full deck of cards...er...chromosomes.  Phenotypically -- it's all thanks to pills.  Yes, I can wear makeup and dresses, but so do the drunken transvestites I treat in the Emergency Dept.  I guess maybe I thought pregnancy would prove my girl-ness.  After all, you can't get more female that that!

But there's nothing I can do, and as I wrote before, I am grateful that motherhood is still a possibility, and I have to remember that my goal is a baby (or two) in my arms, not my belly, and not (God forbid) in a stroller at my graveside.  So begone, bitterness!