Jessica Knoll
I don’t remember if it was my husband or therapist who first floated the idea of surrogacy, but I do remember my response—an unequivocal no. I was 35 years old, healthy, financially secure and married to a healthy, financially secure and emotionally supportive partner. In the 12 years we’d been together, I’d never once tried to get pregnant and I should at least have to try. Surrogacy was for those who had struggled for years with infertility, who had gone through countless rounds of IVF and failed implantations. Surrogacy was for those who had suffered. Who did I think I was to treat someone’s last resort as my first?
Then I did suffer, though it had nothing to do with my fertility.
I had just moved into my new house and a friend asked for pictures. I stepped onto the fireplace hearth in the living room to get a better vantage. When I stepped off, I rolled my ankle and went down hard. I heard what sounded like a twig snapping.
It was a “good” break in the fifth metatarsal bone of my foot, one that would heal cleanly in eight weeks. For that time, I’d need to use crutches and wear a boot. I’d gotten a finger caught in a car door as a kid, but other than that, I’d never broken anything before. When I began experiencing pain in my calf, I tried to reassure myself that it was soreness from the boot. The dull ache flared hot at the lightest touch, not intolerable but also different than anything I’d felt before.
I emailed the doctor and described my symptoms. He emailed back that he could get me fitted for a different boot. “It’s super-unlikely,” he added, “but when we have calf pain in any immobilisation, blood clots enter our thought process.”
I wrote back asking how I could schedule an appointment for the new boot, adding that I was on the pill so blood clots were always somewhat of a concern. He reiterated that it would be “really, really uncommon.”
I almost left it there. In the months that followed, I would obsess over the phantom version of myself who was too uncomfortable to nudge one last time, who closed her computer and carried on with her day. Who did not go to the hospital for an ultrasound, where the tech discovered a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in her right calf. Who died because she hadn’t wanted to be pushy.