In Vitro Fertilization

A woolen string tied around the wrist - an ancient belief carried from one generation to the next around the world, no matter the faith or nation - serves to protect the person wearing it from the evil eye and the surrounding evil forces. It is given to newborn babies and children, girls and pregnant women, but can it change the destiny of a person, or is destiny predetermined by the very act of birth?..... I gathered the nerve and courage to prepare and go to the hospital. They put me in a room with six other women, all over fifty, who had already been operated on and recovering. I soon found out that all of them had had a reproductive organ removed during surgery – ovaries, fallopian tube, uterus. I went to prepare for surgery; the hardest part was the bowl cleaning, the enema. During my lifetime I had never experienced something that made me feel so degraded and humiliated; I repulsed myself. Consumed by the unpleasantness I hadn’t noticed that it was night and that the nurse put all the lights in the room out, so that silence ensued, interrupted only by the snoring of the patients. I was lying in bed, sobbing out of fear of the operation and the possibility of never being able to experience motherhood....