5 “If”s that would have made your life somewhat different today.

Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. List 5 things that could make your life very different should it come true.
3. Tag 5 other people.

If I had been the winner instead of the runner up for a dream PhD scholarship I would have been to Antarctica twice by now

Ten years ago, during my honours year at uni, I applied for a PhD scholarship based at the University of Tasmania studying the impacts of climate change on Antarctic lichen, a topic which would be considered rather sexy nowadays. Sure it would have involved moving to Tasmania but it also involved two trips to Antarctica, something I have always dreamed of doing.  There was an international field of candidates and I didn’t think I had a hope in hell.  And then I was shortlisted. I couldn’t believe it, the dream was almost, almost a reality.

Then the worst possible thing happened. I was second choice. Now if you have any idea what I’m like you’d know I don’t do second very well.

And so the dream, and the ‘Dr’ title, slipped out of reach.

Maybe someday……

If I had ignored that forwarded email (as I usually do) I would never have met mr hissychick

You may have wondered how mr hissychick and I met. As it happens, one day back in early 2000 a friend of mine sent an email containing a joke exam and the answers that someone had written for it as she reckoned it was so my sense of humour.  It was a slow work day so instead of hitting delete I read on. And laughed myself stupid.

Intrigued, I emailed my friend as to who the author was. She replied that it was her cousin who had just moved to Sydney. On a whim I asked for his email address and then sent him a little note welcoming to our glitzy town and telling him that I thought his email had been rather funny.

To which I received a rambling reply staring with “You think I’m funny?” And then launching into this insane stream of consciousness, highlights of which included pointing out that he had nipples and most of which is unprintable here.

Needless to say I threw mr smartypants entirely when I sent a response back asking him to marry me.

Undeterred he sent me a pre nup which included such clauses as allowing him to watch the football uninterrupted and boasting to his mates about his prowess. And so on and so forth.

From there to our marriage is a little bit more complicated, but suffice to say I never did sign that prenup and it always amuses people that I was the one to initially propose.

If I had not taken a friend for a piggy back ride I would not be contemplating titanium teeth implants for my fortieth

A typical primary school playground, twenty three years ago. A young hissychick is horsing around with some friends. As she is the tallest by far, she decides to give one of her friends a piggyback ride for a laugh. All is going well until she trips into an unmarked ditch next to a new piece of pavement. Without  free hands to break her fall, she lands face first with a sickening crunch, that crunch being her top two middle  newly emerged adult incisors. So much blood, so much pain from the ripped and exposed nerves.

Foolishly the school nurse did not either attempt to place the teeth pieces back, nor did she make any attempt to preserve them before my parents arrived and rushed me to the doctor and dentist.  This oversight resulted in the blackening of my remaining tooth fragments, two lots of root canal therapy by the time I was ten (and repeated at eighteen as the first attempt had not been thorough enough)  and numerous invasive and painful procedures involving five zillion needles until I was finally able to get permanent crowns at eighteen and fully grown.

I am still rather self conscious about my front teeth, and hate the fact that a tiny section of one of my crowns has chipped away so that you can see some of the residual black tooth. Hence the reason I am looking into getting them ripped out and replaced with jaw implants when I am forty. You have your ways of celebrating and I have mine.

No I never did sue the school, funnily enough we used to have these things called ‘accidents’. And I am not scared of dentists one bit.

If I had not taken my cousin to the movies I might not have ended up as one of the one in four women who have been sexually assaulted during their life time

I was fifteen. I’d never been kissed. And this pathetic excuse for a human being decided that he would attempt to penetrate me with his fingers on an escalator  the middle of a crowded shopping centre while my eleven year old cousin was at my side.

And when I, frozen with shock, didn’t say anything he did it again.

That’s when I got angry. I pursued my attacker and, shaking, quietly told him that he would never do that again or I would go to the police.

Why I did not scream or yell or go to the police….sadly I didn’t want to alert my cousin to what was happening, and sadder still I mistakenly thought that because I was wearing my favourite short summery dress that it was somehow my fault.

To this day I freak out if anyone attempts to touch my backside, even my husband.

This will never, ever happen to my girls. This I vow.

If I did not have five beautiful embryos in the freezer I might not be finding it so hard to give up on my conviction that a third child would complete our family

As I sit here typing I have my six monthly bill for embryp storage fees in front of me, and will soon pick up the phone to settle the account.  The feelings this arouses only fellow IVFers will understand.

I know with all of my heart that a third child would complete our family. I love A and E so much, but to me it feels like someone is missing. It’s irrational.  But I have never believed in something like I’ve believed in this.

When fertile myrtles contemplate the idea of adding to their family they don’t have the worry of being part way there. You can try your luck, you won’t know if you have successfully created an embryo or not until you see those two lines.

Our possible third child already exists.

Sure, to be technical,  embryos are simply cells with the potential to become human only of they have a favourable uterine environment…but.

But.

I will agree to the donation of our embryos for research if it comes to that, seeing as it is through the generous gift of others before us that we have the technology that resulted in the miracles of A and E…but I don’t want it to come to that.

I want to meet in the flesh the little one who haunts my dreams.

Now it’s my turn to tag:

Jenn

Melissa

Simone

Averil

Cyntech