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I bear in mind screaming on the high of my lungs on my method to get my first mammogram just a few days later. The story of my life was outlined for me now — solely drawback was, it was a horror film. They referred to as me a “previvor,” and from a medical risk-management perspective, there was no distinction between me and somebody with precise early-stage most cancers. I additionally bear in mind, across the identical time, studying a e book that mentioned that for a lady, battling infertility is as demanding as receiving a most cancers prognosis — and, although in actual fact I had neither of those circumstances (I used to be by no means sick, nor was I infertile), I used to be however now dealing with each. My solely prognosis was a prediction — however in case you’ve been informed the longer term, and it’s unhealthy, you then really feel doomed.
Each month I attempted, and failed, to get pregnant, whereas on the identical time present process an advert hoc program of high-risk most cancers surveillance with medical doctors on each coasts (the TV present required me to shuttle). It seems that continuously shifting throughout the nation in your high-pressure job whereas getting frequent breast M.R.I.s and researching prophylactic mastectomies in addition to hormone alternative therapies for imminent post-surgical menopause doesn’t create the perfect circumstances for an anxious, overly caffeinated 35-year-old to fall into that luscious state the place her womb softly accepts a fertilized egg. It was, nevertheless, actually a decent story. I used to be in a race in opposition to time, making an attempt to undo a Gordian knot of ovulation schedules and biopsy outcomes with 50 weapons held to my head. I had extra stakes and penalties on my arms than a e book of Greek myths. Within the midst of all this, I wrote a pilot during which Emily Dickinson finds herself driving with Demise in a spooky carriage. It was autobiographical.
After which, in 2017, proper across the time I bought the present about Dickinson, my husband and I did in vitro fertilization. Two wholesome embryos had been transferred into my womb through the Nice American Photo voltaic Eclipse. As I watched the moon’s shadow blot out the solar on the anesthesiologist’s iPhone, I althought, God, this higher work, as a result of we aren’t going to get one other second as properly–scripted as this one. And I suppose the nice community govt within the sky was satisfied, as a result of I obtained pregnant with twins. My little solar and moon. The organs that will be ripped from my physique as quickly as these infants had been born had executed their job.
Thus started 5 eventful, plot-heavy years the place I crossed the next objects off my to-do listing: Write, produce and ship three seasons of a deeply private TV present for a brand-new world streaming platform; carry twins; give beginning to twins (36 hours of labor adopted by an unplanned C-section); transfer backwards and forwards throughout the nation not less than eight totally different instances with two infants, after which toddlers, into myriad flats and little one care conditions; have my ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix eliminated, thus placing me into quick menopause; and, as a grand finale, bear a double prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction whereas releasing the ultimate season of “Dickinson.” Oh, and survive a pandemic. (Did I point out the twins?)
As I lay within the mattress outdoors the working room on Dec. 10, 2021 (Dickinson’s birthday — an accident of scheduling that felt a contact “on the nostril” from a screenwriting perspective), scrolling via fan reactions to that week’s episode whereas ready for the nurse to wheel me in to have my genetically flawed, but nonetheless completely nice-looking, breasts eliminated, one of many actual Emily’s strains got here into my head: “My life closed twice earlier than its shut.” My life, this story I’d been informed upfront and had then lived via, second by excruciating second, was closing. It was throughout. I’d gone from maiden to mom to crone in seven years. The whole arc of a girl’s life was behind me. I used to be 41 years previous, and the credit had been rolling.
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