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  After seven years of tears, a childless couple ponders next step (Pt. 2)
They met as participants in a charity basketball game when just 18, two short, stout people among the last ones chosen for their respective teams. Brian Brant and the former Stephanie Potts recognized something more in common than that slight from their church acquaintances. They were two low-key, earnest people from small towns, attending the same business school Downtown, more interested in work and studies than any wild revelry even when young. A photo taken three years later shows Stephanie's long wedding gown trailing along the floor of the Lutheran church in Somerset where Brian grew up. Blown up to large dimensions, the photo hangs prominently over the living room sofa in the couple's ranch house in Monroeville. They talked about having children, two probably. "We had no idea what was in store for us," Stephanie would say much later. When Stephanie began experiencing abdominal pain before marriage, her gynecologist couldn't figure it out and even suggested she seek psychiatric help for it. She knew she wasn't crazy, she just felt like her "insides were being ripped out." Another ob-gyn later diagnosed her with severe endometriosis. Endometriosis afflicts about one in 10 women of reproductive age, and contributes to infertility in up to 40 percent of those who have it. Most women who menstruate shed lining that grows each month in their uterus. For Stephanie and others with the disease, the endometrial tissue grows outside the uterus and, because it never leaves, results in mild to severe pain. The growths around the ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes also may form barriers to any sperm and egg that want to meet one another to begin forming a baby. Stephanie, now 28, has been through eight laparoscopic surgeries for the endometriosis. In each, a slender, telescope-like device with light is inserted through a small abdominal incision to give the doctor a view of the reproductive organs. Other instruments such as tiny lasers can then be inserted to destroy adhesions and remove cysts and excess tissue. When her former ob-gyn told Stephanie she should forget becoming pregnant because of the recurring endometriosis and consider a hysterectomy, she left him for Pelekanos. He believes a combination of surgery, insemination and ovulatory drugs make pregnancy possible -- though still difficult -- for her. The hormone-bearing drugs spur growth of follicles that can be carefully monitored by ultrasound for the timed release of one or more eggs. The insemination procedure narrows the distance that sperm have to travel to find one of those eggs. The Brants tried five IUIs in 1995, enhancing Stephanie's ovulation with Metrodin, a drug Brian would inject daily for nearly two weeks into the muscle beneath his wife's skin with a large needle.
They'd repeat the cycle every couple of months, undergoing laparoscopic surgery, injecting drugs as required at the same time every night, carrying a container of ejaculate to the doctor's office the morning of insemination, waiting two weeks to learn the outcome by phone after a blood test. "The waiting is the worst part. Every little twinge you feel, you're wondering if that's a pregnancy," says Stephanie, now a desktop publisher at Westinghouse Air Brake Co. She's always been the optimist, enamored with the big follicles containing her eggs that would show up on ultrasound screens by virtue of the drugs. In anticipation, she'd buy baby clothes and nursery equipment when she saw a bargain or something she liked, such as an outfit with a train motif, since Brian's a railroad buff. Brian kept telling her, "Don't get your hopes up," knowing how disappointing negative results could be. She'd feel guilty that she couldn't bear him a child. He'd tell her such notions were ridiculous, that infertility was beyond her control, but he was almost equally devastated with each negative outcome. Gradually, the couple began avoiding friends and relatives with children, who seemed unable to understand their plight. They quit taking trips to public places like malls where so many families with kids were evident. With all of its other negative aspects, infertility also brought them isolation. "It's pretty safe to say we didn't lead a normal life like most couples," Brian says. Without a child, the Brants shower their affection upon a dog and three cats. They take them to be photographed with Santa. Their Christmas cards read: "From Brian, Steph and the kids." And when they're around the pets, the couple have nicknames for one another: "Mom" and "Dad."
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