Future Fortner's

Today was an interesting and LONG day. We started out the day with two known appointments and ended the day with three appointments. First appointment was with my fertility doctor, Dr. Phy. I just want to say one thing....she is amazing and I just LOVE her! She went over all the pre-op stuff and did another sonogram and we could see the tumor. The good news is that the tumor hasn't grown or shrunk and she said that it is in the perfect spot for a total removal...Praise God!! She then told us about the surgery and it will take about two hours to remove everything so that's not to bad.

After the surgery I will have a healing time of about two weeks and then we jump right in to fertility treatments. She will have a new game plan for us and we are excited about this! Surgery is scheduled for next Wednesday!

After seeing Dr. Phy we were sent to the hospital to get registered for surgery and that was an experience in itself. I love how God places people in your path and I know its my job to just be a little ray of light. Our nurse who checked us in was Doris and she was the cutest little old lady. She was so friendly and so sweet. Then I met Ruben who did all my lab work and he was amazing! He asked about Dr. Phy and I told him just a little bit about her and then he told me about him and his wife and they are trying to adopt. I love how God uses our story to bless and encourage others.

Then we had an appointment with a genetic doctor. Dr. Phy had requested a full line up of blood work and last week we received a call from Dr. Phy saying that was a hiccup in James' genetic test. She asked us to see a genetic doctor so they could explain everything. This is the part that we have waited for a week for. I'll be honest we were scared and all we knew was that with a problem in genetic testing could mean that we would have a baby with handicaps. Handicaps like Downs Syndrome, missing limbs and severe health problems. So needless to say we had a lot on our mind!

We met with Dr. Trotter and Dr. Yoemans and they were both so great. It's hard to explaining all the genetic stuff anyways and they both were so encouraging. Long story short is that James' 13 and 14th chromosome are stacked together. We all have two set's of 46 chromosomes. So this means James has one 13 and one 14 chromosome and then the other 13 and 14 chromosome are stacked together. This pretty much means that James is a healthy person but when it comes to having children it raises factors in pregnancy. Factors like higher risk for miscarriages. Dr. said that we have a 15% chance of having a miscarriage due to genetic problems and 85% chance to have a normal healthy baby. There is a chance that if I get pregnant and the baby will become a carrier and when they want to have children they could have problems getting pregnant. The doctor did say that if anyone has to have this they would rather the man be the carrier over the lady.

Another thing is that if James only gave the 13th chromosome and I carried it full term that baby would only live a day or two at the most. This is usually why the pregnancy ends in miscarriage during the first trimester. This is only a fraction of the information they gave us. To tell you the truth we are still trying to process everything. We went to this appointment expecting the worse and left with being encouraged! The doctor said that the average of 1 in 10 pregnancies will end in miscarriage with us due to a genetic problem.

We are excited to see what is in store for us next. We have traveled this journey for over 10 years and we are not about to give up now! We serve a mighty big God and we know He is in control. Thank you for all your prayers and support! Please keep them coming!