There are times when I wonder about God. Not about his existence, but his motives. My RE, Joyce Vargyas, passed away last week. She was only 60 years old. She died of pneumonia. After fighting it for months, in the ICU, she slipped into a coma and never came out. This woman single handedly changed my life. She was the only one, after three miscarriages, countless tests, and many many expert opinions, who saw past the lab results and looked at me as a person in deep pain over loosing three pregnancies. She told me that there were things to be tried, medications to be taken...no guarantees, but that she saw things in my labs that could be changed, even a little, and that until she had everything where she wanted it, she wouldn’t give up on me.

Now, if you know anything about fertility clinics, you know they live and die by their success rates. The more women they can get pregnant, the better their statistics, the more appealing they are to potential clients. Some clinics won't even take older women, or women who have had failed IVFs before, just to keep their numbers up. (Reality check, they are running a business.)

But this was a woman who didn't care about her "statistics". She was the doctor that women went to see when no one else would take their case. Believe me, I saw some of the top specialists in the world here in Los Angeles, and they weren't willing to try anything out of the usual protocol to change my fate. I ended up at her office, after already having given up hope. My husband and I believed what the other doctors said, that there was “nothing to be done”. We had started the adoption process, and had been in conversation with a birth mother in Texas. That is when my friend Bonnie called me. She said no matter what the other doctors had said, I had to go see Dr. Vargyas.

Bonnie had been through a surgery to remove an etopic pregnancy years before, and then wasn’t able to get pregnant. She had been through 5 IVFs, and then switched to Joyce. Joyce performed a surgery, and then 2 more IVFs, still no pregnancy. Bonnie went into her office to tell her she was done; she couldn't take it any more, physically, emotionally or financially. Joyce told her she wasn't done yet, and that she was changing a different element with each IVF. Joyce was sure they were getting closer, and there was one more thing she wanted to change. She told Bonnie she would do the next cycle for free, that's how sure she was. The next cycle worked and Bonnie now has a beautiful baby girl.

So, learning how strongly Bonnie felt about Joyce, I gathered my courage and made an appointment. I remember sitting across from Joyce… she listened to ME, what I had to say about the miscarriages, my personal medical history, my gut feelings. She looked me in the eye and said, "You have been through too much". It was at this moment I realized she, somehow, knew how difficult it was to open my mind and my heart to another doctor, and how much courage it would take to get pregnant again knowing the odds of failure and heartbreak.

But she convinced me there were things to be changed in my chemistry that could make the difference. Her passion for leaving no stone unturned gave me the strength to try again. I left her office with a renewed hope, (not a false hope), but a feeling that if I wasn’t able to carry full term with this doctor by my side, then I would be at peace that I had done everything possible.

I conceived again, and she started me on a cocktail of drugs that was not easy to take. I had to inject a blood thinner into my stomach every day, take steroids that gave me insomnia and migraines, progesterone suppositories that blocked my digestion up so badly I had to go to a gastroenterologist, and full bed rest. And each week, I would go to her office for an ultrasound and hold my breath. It was a difficult pregnancy, but it went full term, and now I have a beautiful boy in my life that never would have existed if it were not for her.

There are lots of good doctors here in Los Angeles, lots of competent REs who can perform procedures and "make" babies. And for each of those parents, that child would not have existed but for that particular doctor. But Joyce was rare. Joyce took the hopeless cases, the ones that no one else would touch, and she made families where no one else could, or would even try. I am one of thousands of patients she has seen over the years, and I cannot imagine how many lives she has profoundly changed. How many little humans are on this earth because she wouldn’t give up. How many of those humans will go on to do good things, save other lives, create art, teach. If a pebble thrown in a pond creates ripples, then she created a tsunami.

I am deeply sorry she is not here. Deeply saddened she will not see my boy, the baby she nurtured and cared for until he could breathe on his own outside my womb, grow up. I am deeply sorry for all the lives she will not be able to change with her gift.