Emotional Roller Coaster

Great news - the nurse FINALLY called me with information about the donor!! This felt like such a victory. I was thrilled to actually be talking to her and getting all the details about the donor. As she was describing her physical characteristics, everything sounded great. She is my height and close to my weight. Same hair and eye color. Is married, has three children of her own and is a proven donor with successful cycles. Plus, the nurse said she's a great person - a real sweetheart, she said. I was overjoyed! Perfect - sign me up!!

But then, it turns out she saved the bad news for last. There is something in her medical history that really concerns me. I debated even telling you all what it is but have decided to throw it out there. The donor's father died at the age of 48 from alcoholism. The nurse tried to act like this really wasn't that big of a deal especially since their is no alcoholism in my husband's family - that we know of. But when I started doing to research of my own, I've found that alcoholism is something that can definitely be inherited. Children (mostly sons) of alcoholics or alcoholic grandparents have four times the risk of becoming alcoholics as the general population does. (Is that a big risk? I mean how high does the number go - 100 times as likely, a million?)

Is this something I should be concerned about? It's really bothering me. I mean my husband and I are social drinkers - we drink wine with dinner on the weekends, enjoy ice cold beers on the beach or sitting around the pool, enjoy mixing up margaritas with friends etc. I would assume that we would continue to drink socially even once we have children. So would this increase the risk even more that our child would turn out to be an alcoholic? I have a friend who is married to an alcoholic - it's not pretty. If our son or daughter ended up like that would we feel so terrible knowing it's because of the donor we chose?

Or am I over reacting once again? Maybe the risk really isn't that big and I know people can get all sorts of diseases regardless of their family history - for example, my mother died from colon cancer, yet, before her, there was no history of colon cancer in our family. I don't know what to do! Would you accept this donor if it was you?

What worries me even more is if we don't go with this donor, how much longer will it take for us to find another donor - and then I'm sure there will be things about her that we don't like - no one is perfect and no one is going to be exactly like me (I'm not perfect either). I really don't want to delay this any more than necessary. To be honest, and I hate to admit it but my husband and I are getting close to that breaking point - we need to move in a direction -soon - either moving toward having a baby or finding a new way to live our lives without children. This living in limbo is really getting to us and we are ready to move in one direction or the other. We are both getting older and don't want to keep dragging this out.

I don't know what to do. I called my clinic and asked if I could talk to the doctor about this to hear what he has to say. Evidently, other people have used her - were they concerned about this? The receptionist told me to call the nurse and to tell her about my concerns and have her relay it to the doctor - not what I wanted to hear, but that's what I did. Guess we'll see what happens next.