And So It REALLY Begins

Jim and I met in a bar in New Jersey on March 11, 2000. During our very first conversations that evening, we shared with each other baby names that we wanted for our (individual, not OUR/together him and me, I mean... we just met that night!) children someday. In a whirlwind of love, we moved in together 6 months later as my landlord sold the house I rented in and I had to move out. Later that year, at my regular annual gynecologist visit, my Pap test turned up abnormal. As a chain-smoking, birth-control consuming, premarital-sex-having young woman, I knew that I was at higher risk for different kinds of cancers and other diseases, I mean...I got the package inserts with my monthly prescription! I was a little bit freaked out, but to be honest, I still felt a little bit invincible in those days. I didn't even tell Jim about the abnormal pap or the subsequent office visits and tests, I mean, we were still a new couple and weren't even passing gas in front of each other yet. I was certainly not telling him all about my gynecological...whatever this was! In my mind, it was just a routine thing. 
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In November of 2000, I had my first transvaginal ultrasound in an OB/GYN office in Hackensack, NJ. Then they performed, what I didn’t even know at the time was, a cervical biopsy. They informed me that the tests had revealed that my ovary was polycystic and turned in a weird way. It was unlikely that I would be able to have children as they suspected there might be other stuff happening in there. I had no idea what any of that meant, but getting pregnant was not even on my radar at the moment. I left the office that day and went straight to the bar to meet Jim. There, we proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk as I told him that I might as well come off the pill since there’s little chance of pregnancy.
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I had forgotten how bad my monthly menstruation had been. Boy…had I forgotten. I had been on and off the pill for about 8 years – off when I’d forget to pick up my prescription or would forget for a week or two at a time to take it…I was a horrible daily medicine taker! At the end of 2000, I stopped taking the pill. Pain started creeping back up over the next few months as 2001 rolled in, but I was still living a rather hard lifestyle fueled by alcohol and drugs, so I paid no attention.
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Jim and I got engaged in May of 2001. We never talked about having kids after that very first night that we met. I don't think either of us were thinking along those lines at that point. I was pretty sure he'd heard me in the bar that night when I told him the doctor said I couldn't have kids... sure, we might have been a little wasted, but we were all good...right?   
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On September 11, 2001, two planes flew into a building about 5 miles away from our home. Little did we know how much our lives were about to change...