31st Oct - Just about 4 weeks now eeek.. I've started a blog which you can subscribe to to follow my progress.  You can also follow me on twitter - i'll be trying my best to update these whilst on the trip. Thank you all for your kind support. Rach

http://rachaelsvc-trip.blogspot.com/

@RACHRLH

 Lily Joan Holland.

The main reason for my participation in this event is the loss of my daughter Lily and the struggle through fertility treatment that not only myself and my husband had to endure, but our friends and family also. Such is the stress involved we lost a few friends along the way.

Below you'll find a brief account of a series of events leading to our unfortunate loss.  These are the catalyst, the driving force behind my involvement in this Charity Challenge.

Autumn 2000 my husband and I decided to start a family. Things didn't quite go according to plan and before long we found ourselves in the hospital waiting room in 2001.  Various tests over the next year or so revealed nothing untoward and so with some optimism and youth on our side we joined the NHS waiting list for a cycle of IVF. This giving us around eighteen months to try and get our heads around the journey that lay ahead. 

Cut to 2010 and 5 emotionally draining IVF cycles over a 7 year period and we finally had a positive result, it had worked...just.  At every single stage of the treatment the results were borderline; the egg collection only gave us 4 eggs. Of these 4 only 2 eggs were graded as usable, of these 2 usable eggs only 1 egg fertilised in the lab overnight so we really did only have this one last chance, this really was it.

 

10 days later the blood test returned a less than perfect result which indicated that the treatment had failed.  Having been here 4 times previously we'd braced ourselves for this.  Unfortunately we still had to endure another trip to Leeds and another blood test. This time the result had improved and the staff congratulated us asking us back in a few weeks for a scan.  Dumbfounded I requested another blood test so we returned to Leeds, AGAIN.  The blood test was positive and the 'levels' were progressing nicely. It had only gone and worked. 10 traumatic years and all of a sudden everything was ok.

I really am going to cut this long story short, but the complications continued despite Lily showing positively in all the scans.  I was hospitalised 3 times with abdominal pain.  None of the consultants could pin point the cause of the pain and I was monitored constantly and eventually released... still in pain.

Saturday May 1 st, only days after being released from a fortnight in hospital I awoke at home with severe abdominal pain.  My husband called an ambulance immediately and I was rushed to A&E.

A lot of what happened next need not be shared but we lost Lily at 32 weeks.  

I spent another 2 weeks in hospital, almost a week of which was on the intensive care unit.  A 10 year struggle had ended in disaster.  

The paramedics and consultants have since told us that I was 5 minutes away from loosing my own life but this was and continues to be little comfort.

8 months down the line and following a very different Christmas to the one both our family's were expecting I am going to whole heartedly throw myself into this challenge to raise funds for the Genesis Research Trust as their work is invaluable.

Thank you for your time and I'd appreciate any donations you can spare so that other women, other couples and other family's don't have to endure the nightmare we're still trying to make sense of.  

Love Rachael Holland.

More 'positive' training updates will be posted regularly.