Open Heart, Empty Home

BY JESSICA D. MATTHEWS THE SUNDAY TIMES 06/16/2002 Cummings lived to give life. When that was no longer possible, they went to the ends of the Earth searching for it. Their extraordinary journey begins here in Scranton in the first of this four-part series. They met at the local IGA in Scranton's South Side in 1985. Wendy Elizabeth Zubrickas was a checker. Michael Sean Cummings worked in the supermarket's dairy department. An 18-year-old senior at Dunmore High School, she asked the 16-year-old Scranton Technical High School junior to go to her prom. She thought the date went well. He didn't call her again. "A prom is a prom," he would later explain. "I was just a kid." A mutual friend stepped in and a second date was arranged seven months later. Over "Rocky III" and then burgers, they learned they had much in common, including similar working-class family backgrounds and life goals. They fell in love. They dated for nearly six years while they finished their educations and developed careers. They became inseparable. She got her bachelor's degree in math from Wilkes University in 1990. Later, she would become a junior/senior high school math teacher in the Old Forge School District. He graduated from the University of Scranton in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in marketing. Later, he would become the public relations director for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons. Then one night, while on a dinner date at Charlie Brown's Restaurant, he surprised her with an engagement ring. "Dinner was over and I was ready to go," says Wendy. "Mike was lingering over a salad. I thought that was unusual because Mike doesn't eat anything green." Mike told her to take her coat off. He reached down and pulled out a box. Overcome with joy, Wendy started to hyperventilate and cry. "Shh, somebody will think you're choking," he whispered, after asking her to marry him. It was a moment they would laugh about in years to come. The couple married Oct. 12, 1991. They decided to do things the right way, the old-fashioned way. The way they were raised. They worked hard, struggled and saved to buy a house. Not just any house, either. A house near their families, in a neighborhood where kids played on the sidewalk, old couples sat on their porches and life was good. Just like where they grew up. Then would come the family. A son named Andrew Michael -- in honor of Mike's grandfather -- and a daughter named Elizabeth Ona after Wendy's grandmothers. It was all decided. After all, that's how it was supposed to be. It was the American dream that millions of married couples find each year. Their dream started to become reality in 1994. They put a bid on a house in Scranton, just a few minutes from both sets of parents. The two-story house needed some work. But they saw the future when they looked at it -- a family room, covered front porch, three bedrooms and a fenced-in yard -- the perfect house for kids and their husky-lab, Molly. On Valentine's Day, the bid was accepted. They moved in soon after and turned the house into a home. Mike, who studied carpentry, remodeled the entire house. They were ready for children. An upstairs guest room would be turned into a nursery. "My number one goal is to be a mother," says Wendy. "I want a house full of children. I want them to come down the stairs on Christmas morning and see all the presents under the tree." She played out parenting situations in her head. Things she learned from her math students. They had embraced her and saw her as their surrogate mom, coming to her with personal problems, as well as for extra math help. "What would I do if my daughter or son came to me with that kind of problem?" she would ask herself. "How would I handle it?" Mike watched the fathers take their children to baseball games at the stadium where he worked. "I wanted that to be me," he says. "I wanted to be the father taking his kids to a game." They tried for more than a year to conceive a child. But life has a way of tossing lemons. Some you turn into lemonade; some are so bitter they can't be swallowed. Something was very wrong. Mike was the first to be tested and underwent a semen analysis which proved normal. "I couldn't imagine what it could be," says Wendy. "Why weren't we able to conceive a child?" Wendy made an appointment with her gynecologist. She was given several blood tests and an ultrasound. "Polycystic ovarian syndrome," the doctor told the couple. It is one of the leading causes of infertility and affects between 5 percent and 10 percent of all women. In Wendy's case, cysts had formed all over her ovaries, preventing ovulation from taking place. The doctor started Wendy on Clomid, a pill used to induce ovulation, and began to chart her basal body temperature, also called BBT. In most women, body temperature before ovulation is low, between 97.2 to 97.4 degrees Fahrenheit. It then rises to above 98 degrees just after ovulation. A slight temperature rise at the middle of the menstrual cycle indicates that ovulation could have occurred. "The highest dosage of the medication and it wasn't doing anything," Wendy sighs. In June 1997, she was sent to see gynecologist/infertility specialist Dr. John DeCaprio at his practice -- at the time, Wyoming Valley GYN Infertility Associates in Kingston. She continued taking various dosages of Clomid and began steroid treatments. With no results, she tried Fertinex an injection used to induce ovulation. "Every morning I got injections in the stomach," Wendy says. "Sometimes twice." Mike's job was to give her the shots. "It was tough," he says. "The injections caused major mood swings." Still, the couple was unable to conceive a child. Six month later, in January 1998, Wendy underwent laparoscopic surgery to have the cysts drilled off her ovaries. The goal of the ovarian drilling was to restore normal ovulation. Nearly half of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome have gotten pregnant following ovarian drilling. Surgeons inserted a thin telescope-like instrument through her belly button and into her pelvis so they could see the pelvic organs. Small holes were then burned into the ovaries with a laser. "It's very painful when you wake up because you're filled up with air," she says. Following the surgery, she began more injections in her stomach but this time with Gonal-F -- also used to induce ovulation. The medicine contains follicle-stimulating hormone that helps women who can't ovulate on their own. Studies show 70 percent to 100 percent of women ovulate following Gonal-F treatment and as many as half then become pregnant. "All of a sudden, I ended up with a lot of eggs," Wendy says. But she was still unable to get pregnant. The stress and costs of the procedures were starting to tax the couple. The surgery, medicines and shots had cost the couple more than $3,000 -- none of which was covered by their insurance. Wendy began blaming herself. "I'm the reason we can't get pregnant," she says. "It's my problem causing this. I know God has his reasons for doing things, but why is he doing this?" Mike grew angry with that thinking. "I wish it was my problem so she wouldn't blame herself," he says. "This isn't her fault." Their doctor was out of options. "Dr. DeCaprio did all he could do," Wendy says. "He thought he must be missing something." The couple was sent to Dr. Vincent Pellegrini, an OB/GYN who specializes in infertility care at The Women's Clinic, in West Reading, in May 1998. Wendy was tested again and the couple decided to try in vitro fertilization. The process called for several steps to be taken before eggs could be retrieved from Wendy's ovary and fertilized with Mike's sperm. It would cost another $10,000 -- also not covered by insurance. For more than a year, Wendy was given more fertility and hormone stimulation drugs and injections, including shots of human chorionic gonadotropin, also called hCG, progesterone, Metformin and Lupron. Dr. Pellegrini wanted to stimulate her ovaries to produce more follicles and increase the number of eggs. In September 1999, Wendy underwent the egg retrieval and Dr. Pellegrini collected 27 eggs. However, there was a new problem. Wendy's left ovary was lodged behind her uterus. Dr. Pellegrini was unable to get to the left ovary to remove eggs. In vitro fertilization requires the removal of eggs from both ovaries to prevent complications. In Wendy's case, it caused a severe complication. "This is a problem," he told the couple. "It poses a severe medical risk to Wendy." The life-threatening risk -- ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome -- left the couple with few options since 27 of Wendy's eggs were already retrieved. The Cummings did not want to do a frozen embryo transfer as typically 75 percent of all frozen embryos get discarded. "That's human life to us," Wendy says. "That wasn't an option." They decided to try an experimental procedure called frozen egg fertilization, or oocyte freezing. The process differs from frozen embryo transfer where eggs get inseminated and the embryos are then frozen, thawed and implanted back in the uterus, Dr. Pellegrini told the Cummings. "In oocyte freezing, eggs are frozen and then thawed and a single sperm is injected in an egg," the doctor explained. "It's one sperm per egg ... This process avoids potentially destroying human life. Technically, you're freezing eggs, not human life." However, he warned, the survival rates of the embryos in oocyte freezing are fairly poor. In the United States, only two pregnancies have resulted from the procedure; in Italy, there have been 10, he says. Wendy would be the first in Northeastern Pennsylvania to undergo the procedure. Another fertility specialist was called in -- embryologist Dr. Hak-Nam Kim, who was familiar with the experimental procedure. Wendy was started on more hormone treatments to prepare for the procedure. She was given estrogen patches and more progesterone. An allergic reaction to the adhesive on the estrogen patches caused large red welts to form all over Wendy's stomach. They would last for months. "It would itch so bad," she says. "I didn't care. I said to myself, 'If it will get us a baby, I'll do it.'" Eighteen of the 27 retrieved eggs were thawed but for various reasons, only two could be fertilized. Two embryos were then implanted in Wendy's uterus on Dec. 16, 1999 -- about three months after the 27 eggs had been retrieved. The couple was elated. After two years of excruciating injections and fertility treatments, they could be pregnant. Wendy was to drink lots of water and sit with her knees to her chest for two hours following the frozen embryo transfer. She would take a pregnancy test a little more than a week later to confirm what she was already sure was going on inside her. "I've got babies inside me. Twins. We're pregnant." To Be Continued... Look for part two of staff writer JESSICA D. MATTHEWS' series, The Making of a Family, in Monday's editions of The Tribune and The Scranton Times. ©Scranton Times Tribune 2002 Reader Opinions    Name: Anonymous Date: Jun, 20 2002 I think that this is one of the most hearttouching stories that i have ever read.         Back to top  NEXT PAGE          Questions or comments? 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