Snow Why and the Seven IVF's (Chapter Two) - Dr. Doom



…Yes, the only thing to be done was go to the kingdom healer “Dr. R.E. Doom.” 

Getting the Prince to go to Dr. Doom’s lair was not easy.  The Prince had a foreboding feeling that getting Dr. Doom involved was going to call for a more active involvement on the Prince’s part…and he was right.  It was bad enough that Dr. Doom had charts of female organs and pictures of babies all over the walls of the cave he dwelled in.  But when Dr. Doom informed the Prince that he was going to need a “sample” from the Prince, the Prince freaked out.  Forgetting, or not caring, how hurtful his words could be, he yelled out (well maybe he didn’t yell…but it seemed like it to Snow Why at the time) “Snow Why is the one with the problems!  Not me!  Why do I have to give a sample?” 

Snow Why flinched at those words.  She had always been honest with the Prince about a curse that had been placed on her at a very young age – the Endometriosis curse.  The curse had caused crippling pain, and had led to Snow Why having multiple surgeries, chronic adhesions and random bleeding.  The curse had led to a decision to induce a sort of chemical menopause in Snow Why to prevent the spread of the curse into other areas of Snow Why’s body.  The curse had even taken away one of Snow Why’s fallopian tubes and one of her ovaries.  The Prince and Snow Why didn’t use birth control during their relationship because Snow Why had suspected that she would need a little help lifting the curse long enough to get pregnant.  If nothing else, she would have to discontinue taking the medicine that had stopped her periods for so many years - Lupron.

But the Prince had never expressed any concern about Snow Why’s curse until that moment, in Dr. Doom’s office…and it was as if the Prince had slapped her across the face.  Snow Why, for the first time, felt as if the Prince saw her as damaged and blamed her for their inability to get pregnant.  Snow Why would never forget that realization and a little part of the blissfulness that had once defined their relationship was lost, never to be found again.

Dr. Doom seemed to have dealt with difficult princes before because without skipping a beat, he stated “We don’t know what the problem is yet.  We really need a sample from you and then we’ll regroup.”  The Prince begrudgingly provided his sample (little did he know that this was just the beginning of what was to become a three year “love affair” with specimen cups).

At the next trip to Dr. Doom’s lair, he started by bringing out a large packet of papers.  One of the first papers was the analysis results of the Prince’s sample.  It turned out that the Prince had multiple “problems,” too.  Apparently, he had also had a curse placed on him.  Is curse caused him to only produce about half the tiny swimmers one would expect him to have and a good portion of the Prince’s swimmers didn’t swim or swam in circles.  As Dr. Doom explained the results, the Prince just listened with his mouth gaping open.  The Prince would eventually demand a second test…only to find that it yielded the same results (apparently even brave princes can experience denial when given bad news regarding infertility).  The Prince was placed on more magic pills and Dr. Doom stated that there was a turkey-baster technique that had helped some people who came to Dr. Doom get pregnant.  Dr. Doom, true to his name, informed Snow Why and the Prince that he held out little hope of the strange technique, which he referred to as IUI, working for the couple, but it was worth a try.

And so, the Prince took his magic pills, called Clomid, and Snow Why began injecting herself with a complicated mixture of poisons (Follistim, Menopur, Estradiol Valerate, and Ganirelix) provided by Dr. Doom and the Alchemist.  The poison was supposed to increase Snow Why’s chances of getting pregnant, but it made her terribly sick, moody, and caused her stomach to turn a dark purple color.  Luckily for Snow Why, one of her surgeries to deal with her curse had left her with no feeling on her stomach, so the injections were not as painful for her as they could have been.  Snow Why and the Prince took Dr. Doom’s mandatory class, explaining strange mystical terms that he would use in his “treatments” – terms like “follicles,” “ovulation,” and “beta tests.”  Prior to seeing Dr. Doom, the Prince had thought that he was already hearing more about Snow Why’s internal plumbing than he cared to.  After leaving Dr. Doom’s class, an ashen Prince didn’t speak for hours, overwhelmed and in disbelief of the effect that the class had on Snow Why.  You see, Snow Why, the Type A kind of girl that she was, was excited to soak up all of the knowledge being provided, because it provided her with hope that they could manipulate the factors and get the desired outcome.  If only she had known at that time that her hope was misplaced…