Take Good Care: Season 5 Episode 10 – Infertility

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Welcome to Take Good Care podcast, an endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology. Our aim and mission, is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life. I am Dr. Mironda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.

All:

Welcome to our show.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Welcome to another episode of Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And I am Dr. Karen Greene.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

We are continuing with the series that we’re calling Life Lessons with Take Good Care podcast, where we have had amazing guests with us virtually, as well as in person here in the studio. And so we have another wonderful guest that we’ll be introducing to you shortly. But before I do anything, let me remind us all that we are live and on the air. What we have tried to do with this podcast, is create a space, an extension really, of the safe space that we try to create in the office with our patients, to encourage conversations on a wide range of topics. We try to go there, whether it’s political, social, personal. And so this is just another in those creative spaces that we would like to do to encourage us all to kind of really stay in touch with ourselves.

So before we get started, I will just put a little disclaimer out that this may be triggering, this topic may be triggering for some people. We’re going to be talking about fertility, infertility, the journey with that, and how we get to that point, from a very personal perspective from our guests today. But we feel it’s important to provide an opportunity for us to check in with ourselves, and check in with those who really have had a personal experience, so they can share some wisdom with us, as we try to care for patients, and then for our patients, and those who are in our audience. So Dr. Guthrie is going to introduce our wonderful guests that we have connected through our partner Dr. Greene, and she’ll talk about that in just a bit.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Thank you, Dr. Williams. Well, Marlynn Jones, like many women, she once believed that she had all the time in the world to build a career before starting her family. But life, as we know, it has a way of changing our perspective a lot of times, and it made her realize how precious time is. She was sitting in the front row of her mother’s funeral, at age 38, and she knew if something happened to her, that her front row would be empty.

Marlin then went out on a long and difficult journey to create a family, including a two and a half-year IVF journey that she shared with a close friend, and a 34-week pregnancy that ended in an emergency C-section. In vitro fertilization, IVF, is an expensive endeavor, and Marlin stopped counting after spending $65,000. She faced many disappointments and heartaches, but for those who were watching on our YouTube, or video channels, as you can see by her photo, she was able to smile again. Marlin’s story is a reminder that time is not a luxury when it comes to starting a family.

If you wait for the perfect moment, that perfect moment may never come. Marlin’s journey was difficult, but it was worth it. She now has a beautiful family, and a front row that will never be empty. In this podcast, Marlin will share her infertility journey, and how she was able to create her current family. It is an inspiring story, and we hope it encourages all to act, if you do want to start a family. You can’t wait for the perfect moment to create it. Now Dr. Greene has a personal connection with her, so I want Dr. Greene to share that with us now.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Thank you. Dr. Guthrie. I have known Marlin Ruth Jones.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Oh, you got the whole name?

Dr. Karen Greene:

Yes.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s how much you know her.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Yes. I have known her since I was a freshman in college. She is a good friend of my dean of pledges, and so I saw Marlin around all the time. Marlin was just there. And I remember when I got to my sophomore year, I kind of wondered, “Well, where is this other AKA?” Marlin’s, a Delta. We don’t hold that against her.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow. I didn’t know that until this moment. But it’s okay.

Dr. Karen Greene:

We don’t hold that against her, but it’s all fine in the Divine Nine.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s right.

Dr. Karen Greene:

But on the serious side, we became close, probably when I spent a summer in Durham, North Carolina, which is where she’s from. And got to know her mom and her dad, and they would invite me over for dinner, and I love the vegetables, Marlin doesn’t eat vegetables.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

What?

Dr. Karen Greene:

And so she ate all the wonderful meat, and I would eat all the vegetables.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Meat-atarian.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Exactly, exactly. She has the meat and a Pop-Tart, that’s what it was. So our paths continued to cross. As I left Durham, I ended up in Atlanta. Marlin was in Atlanta, and Marlin is one of those people that kind of knows everybody. If you meet somebody and you mention her name, she might actually know them. And I don’t care where it is because she-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

She’s Kevin Bacon, she’s six degrees to Marlin.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Yes, exactly. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. And so when I discovered that she had decided she was going to become a single mom, it didn’t surprise me, because anything she’s ever done and set her mind to it, she’s been successful at, and so that decision didn’t really surprise me. But then having to watch her go through, to get to the point that she is at now, was different for me, because at that point, I was a physician. I had treated people with infertility, and looked at it from that perspective. And seeing the personal side of it, it breaks your heart. It definitely, it breaks your heart watching what a friend goes through. And a strong friend, not someone that takes anything from anybody, has always been kind of at the top of her game.

And so just watching her go through that, and then finally having success, it’s always just warmed my heart. When we are doing our podcast and we were looking for some change, Marlin had a podcast. She’s the career skills architect because she knows a lot about a lot of different careers, and she can coach you on what to do and what not to do, because she has been successful in many different arenas. And she had a podcast. And so I listened to it a couple of times, and I said, “Wait a second, Marlin, who do you use for your podcast?” So of course she connected us with Eldridge Media, and here we are.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And when we made that connection, she said, “Well, maybe I’ll come on your show and talk about my fertility journey.” And I said, “Really?” And she said, “Yeah.” And I was so happy that she said that, and when we finally got to the point where we could have some guests virtually, she was of course, the first person I thought of, because I really wanted to get that personal side, to understand. Because I think, especially when I was in training and even as a physician, fertility was one of those things I said, “I’m not dealing with those people,” because what they go through, they’re a little crazy.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

A little intense, yeah.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And it’s very intense, but I understand a little bit more. And I think that Marlin can shed light on what it takes to do that, and what you go through. I even said to her, “Is there anything that we can’t talk about?” And because she didn’t respond as yay or nay, and because she gave us that wonderful introduction, I think that it’s important for other people to understand that too, that it is something that can be difficult to go through, but the result is worth it in the end.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s wonderful, Karen. So Marlin, first of all, thank you for your connection, and your agreement to be with us, and for just Eldridge Media that’s taken us to the next level, so we’re excited about that.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Eldridge is wonderful. And so it’s Keith.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes. We love our guys. Yes, we love our guys. So let our audience know, just where would you like to start in terms of talking about your journey?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Sure. And I’d like to say right now, my eyes are teary, not because of the subject, but I am in Orlando, Florida with flowering trees, and I forgot my allergy medicine, and so my eyes are going crazy, and so I apologize for that. I started, my mother passed in 2001, so I’m well beyond the early trigger states of this.

I was one of those people who saw the movie stars and the people on TV having these children at 48, 50, and listening to the male doctors who said, “You can have a baby whenever, it doesn’t matter. Just wait, wait, wait.” And not having any type of medical background at all, I believed them. And after my mom passed, that I went to see my fertility doctor in South Carolina at my first appointment, and I was about 39. I was telling her, “You know, in a couple of years, I want to think about having a baby,” and she laughed at me. She just broke out laughing, and I’m looking at her, and she was like, “Okay, so if you want to have a baby, you’re going to have one now.”

I was like, “Oh, no, not now.” All these people on TV having babies and stuff, because there wasn’t social media and all of that, so you saw people on the Inquirer or People Magazine. She said, “Well, first they’re not using their own eggs.” She said, “You’re not going to have a good outcome with some 40-year-old eggs,” that’s number one. What they’re not telling you is they’re using IVF to have children, and they’re having stepchildren because they’re using other people’s eggs.

So that was just amazing for me. Of course, there was no Google or internet, or WebMD to go to and get information. So you still have to go to the library and look up things, and listen to the medical professionals. And she said, “If someone is having a baby in their late-40s, it’s not their first baby. They’ve had one before, and so their body knows what to do.” So the first thing we had to do was go through a lot of tests, and when I lived in Atlanta during the Olympics, I remembered speaking to an OBGYN who said, “I think you may have some issues with your tubes, but if you’re not ready to have a child right now, we don’t need to look into it.” So I was like, “Cool, we’ll just look into it later.”

So we went through a bunch of different tests and, excuse me, I had two separate issues. One were that the tubes were blocked. The second issue was that my immune system was so high, that it killed anything that it saw as foreign, including anything it thought might be trying to grow as a child, so it would attack and kill it. So in addition to the IVF, I had to agree to when I would become pregnant, going through a procedure, I forgot exactly what they called it. But I had to have blood infusions, where they used the blood of 10,000 different people that they mixed together, and a nurse would come and administer the blood to me once a month. And then I would have to get blood drawn at a lab, send it off to the specialist in Chicago for her to check and make sure that my blood levels were doing what they were supposed to do, and my body wouldn’t attack the growing fetus.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

So when you said, I went through the cycle with a friend, I had another girlfriend who was having issues at the same time. And she was going through treatments in Maryland, and I was going through treatments in South Carolina, so we had each other as a sounding board as we would go through all of the shots. And I’m afraid of needles, so that’s the other part of this that was really crazy.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Do you think that was-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Because then it was like, “Well, you’re going to have to give yourself these shots.” “I’m going to have to do what?” And that lets you know when you want to have a child, you are willing to do all kinds of things that you never thought you could do, including give yourself shots in your stomach and your thighs, more than once a day for 30-some weeks.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Do you think it was helpful, I guess, having someone to talk to through all this, in terms of-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

It was. It definitely was. Because her husband was just oblivious, he wasn’t really able to talk to her. He wasn’t able to express his feelings and emotions, so she and I were able to talk to each other. And her mother was living with her, so I was also able to talk with her mother since my mother was gone, so all of that was helpful.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Besides her, who was your support, since Karen mentioned you-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

I’m sorry?

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Besides your friend who was going through the same treatments but in a different state, who was your support to go with you to doctor’s appointments and things like that? Did you have anyone like that?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

No, no. I was in South Carolina. I was new to South Carolina, and it was really crazy, because during those first sessions, you have to be at home at a specific time. So I’m working in athletics at University of South Carolina, with a huge athletic department, and so I’m having to make sure that I’m at home at 6:00 to do this, that, and the other. And we’re having all these different programs, it’s the wintertime and it’s cold, but I was hot because of all those hormones. So we’re going to functions, and I’m like, “God, it’s hot in here,” and I’m taking off my jacket, my coat, and people looking at me like, “What is wrong with this woman? It’s winter time.” But I was always hot, always hot, and to know it’s just looking like a crazy person over in the corner.

Dr. Karen Greene:

It’s interesting that you talk about how you had to do this and work at the same time. What are your thoughts now, on just being a woman having to go through this with a male-dominated field that you were in, talking about athletics, in terms of what do you disclose and what don’t you disclose? Do you just hide it, or do you just kind of be all open and let them deal with it?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

With athletics, it’s still very male-dominated, and unfortunately, the less they know, the better. Because they already don’t believe that you can do the job. And so giving them more ammunition and reasons that, “Oh, well, she’s going to have to leave and go to this meeting, and she’s going to have to leave and go get this shot.” And they don’t understand infertility until it’s them that’s infertile anyway, so yeah, I still wouldn’t suggest it.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yeah. Thank you. Hearing this perspective is exactly what I’d hoped, because as physicians, and we all trained during the same era, and hearing what you said, that’s pretty much how we were trained, which is until you’re ready to really try to be pregnant, there’s no reason to investigate, there’s no reason to do anything. And then because women have been delaying childbearing for a number of reasons, whether it’s professional, personal, whatever it is, then when you’re finally at the point where you want to begin your family, and you start to investigate, you’re like, “Wait a second, I’ve got a tubal issue.” Well, we kind of thought so 10 years ago, we were like, “Ah, no reason to do anything,” because that’s how we were trained.

But now, I think there have been so many advances in terms of the technologies and things that are available for the assisted reproduction, which is what IVF falls into, in vitro fertilization, as Dr. Guthrie mentioned. And for this, we’ve talked about fertility and some other things in some previous shows and podcasts, but we really want to keep this more personal. But Dr. Guthrie, I think you do have just a little clinical information, just to let the audience know when we talk about assisted reproduction, or in IVF, in vitro, what are we talking about?

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

So like I said, with infertility, there are multiple reasons why a couple can have difficulty getting pregnant. There’s never just one reason, and there’s not one fertility test that you do, and then, poof, you find out if you’re fertile or not.

What people don’t realize, it’s an equal chance that it’s a male and female problem. So 40% of the time, it’s a female problem, 40% of the time it’s a male problem. And then about 20% of the time, every test could be run, every test will come back normal, but for some reason, the couple, or that individual trying to get pregnant, will have difficulty getting pregnant. So those people need help. Help can range anywhere from just taking hormones, so it could be an ovulation issue where they give you medication to now help you ovulate, which now makes it easier for you to get pregnant.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And usually, that’s an oral medicine.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

That’s usually an oral medication. Though, when you get to in vitro fertilization, now they become injections. There could be a problem for the woman, where the sperm can’t get to the egg, there’s difficulty getting through the mucus from a woman’s uterus. So there’s a procedure called IUI, intrauterine insemination. So instead of the couple being intimate together, they pick the best time for women when she would get pregnant around ovulation time, and then actually inject the semen, the sperm into her uterus, to then help the sperm get past the roadblock, is the best way to describe it, to then help them get pregnant. You have where, as in Marlin’s case here, her tubes were blocked. You can have surgery to try to unblock the tubes, that’s another way to help. So all these are ways to assist couples getting pregnant

All the way up to the big daddy of them all is in vitro fertilization, where the egg and the-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Or big mama.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Big mama, there you go. The egg and the sperm are put together, and you have conception outside of the body, and it forms an embryo. And then they actually, then at the fertile time of a woman’s month, and she gets injections to get everything ready, it’s getting her lining ready.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

This is all about the timing.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

It’s all about the timing. They put the embryos inside the uterus, and then hope that the pregnancy takes that way, so those are kind of different ways. On a male side, see, I was trying to ignore a male again. Men can have medical conditions, anywhere from where they don’t make sperm at all, to where they have cysts in their reproductive systems that have to be removed. They may need hormones themselves. Not only women have hormone problems, men.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Fellas.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

So sometimes men need testosterone injections. So there are multiple different ways that couples can be aided to get pregnant.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

But to her point, Marlin, as you described, very often, the treatments, when you get to the point of the in vitro fertilization, you’re having to give yourself injections. You’re having to give yourself multiple injections. You’re having to give yourself multiple injections over multiple days, over multiple cycles. Because unfortunately-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

At specific times of day.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Of day. And so for women who are working, or whatever else you have going on, whether there’s other family responsibilities, that just can be beyond challenging.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Absolutely.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Can you talk a little bit more about how that impacted you, just in terms of trying to juggle everything and keep the timing so that you would end up with your beautiful, beautiful family?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Well, again, when your goal is to try and have a child, I think it’s more tunnel vision. So if I have to be home at 6:00, I’m going to make sure that I’m home somewhere between 5:55 and 6:02, and I’m going to be there. going to

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Just going to make it happen.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Regardless of what the reason is I have to have to leave work. Now with athletics, we work basically a 24-hour day, so I can go home and go back. With women who have other careers, I don’t know how much flexibility they have. If you’re doing surgery, I don’t know that you really have as much control over what time of day you could schedule it.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Right, and I think that, as we talked about, when we make this decision to delay our childbearing, we don’t really think about that.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Those things.

Dr. Karen Greene:

We don’t think about those things. What I’ll be doing if I have to do A, B, and C, because we make the assumption it’s going to be fine, everything’s going to be fine, everything’s going to work,

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Everything’s going to work out. Because we’ve been told that reproduction is something that’s just natural, and it just happens. And it wasn’t until I was actually trying to have a child, that I noticed everywhere I go, whether it’s the mall, the grocery store, I saw pregnant people, pregnant people, pregnant people everywhere. And I see pregnant teenagers, and I see pregnant crackheads, and it’s like, “Why are they able to get pregnant and I can’t?” And then you internalize it as there’s something wrong with me. There’s some reason that, divinely, I can’t have a child. You internalize it as an indictment on yourself, as to why you can’t have a child and other women can. We don’t look at it as a medical issue. We internalize it more as a personal issue.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s good. How did you work through that? How did you work through some of that internalization?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

I mean, my journey was just God-awful. The very first process, the guy I was seeing, the day that we were going get ready to do the transfers, he went, he gave the sperm, he signed the papers, he left. I’m on my way to go for them to insert the sperm, he calls back and revokes their ability to use the sperm.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Oh, my goodness.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

They call me, and say, “Yeah, he just changed his mind and said, we can’t use the sperm.” I’m completely hysterical.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Because that’s a lost month. That’s a lost month of inject… So it’s not something that you can just reschedule next week.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

No, it don’t. So they’re trying to explain to me how I can go through this catalog and pick sperm, and they can get some there by the next day. And I can’t even-

Dr. Karen Greene:

Can’t even process that.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Or process any of that, because I’m just hysterical. The next time I was trying to go through a cycle, I had a very good friend who had come up from Florida, and they told him that his sperm count was too low, that they doubt that he could ever produce children without medical help. And found out that actually, that journey was more about him than about me, because he was in a professional school setting with a girlfriend who was trying to manipulate him, and had just told him that she was pregnant.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Well, really? Wowzers, that’s another show.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Yes.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

That’s exactly what I said. So that’s why I said, sometimes your journey’s not always about you, but it’s for somebody else. Then yeah, finally got to a point where we were doing a cycle with donor X, donor sperm, and just when I was cleaning out my garage over the weekend, I found the pictures with the embryo and how they split and all, but they just didn’t attach. I said, “I’ve got one more try left in me. One more,” that was in the 2005. I had just moved to Tallahassee, Florida, still using my doctor in South Carolina. My father passed in January, right after Martin Luther King weekend, and I was scheduled for the treatment the very next week in South Carolina. I said, “Well, I’m already here in North Carolina, I guess I might as well go.”

I had a friend drive me down to South Carolina, had the treatment, drove back to his house, and I just laid there until it was time for the flight two days later. And that’s the cycle where I got pregnant. And I was actually in Maryland for a track meet on my way to my girlfriend’s house who was pregnant. She had gotten pregnant with her cycle. When the lady called me at the hotel, to tell me that my pregnancy test came back positive. So now I really am hysterical because what am I supposed to do?

Dr. Karen Greene:

Now that I’m pregnant?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

I’m in Maryland, I’m at a track meet. I’m working a new job. I’ve only been on the job since December.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Oh, my goodness.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

My dad just died. Did God and my dad just send me this baby so that I can get through this? Okay, but I’m high risk, so I’m not going to get excited. They said, “You got to get through 32 weeks.” Okay, so I’m not going to get excited until 32 weeks. So the twins were all over the planet, they were excited. Some reason I was in Durham for something that Taylor had, and the twins had connected it to also give me baby gifts at the same time.And I was like, “No, it’s too early. I can’t have gifts yet. I can’t have gifts.”

So took the gifts back to Florida, got to week 32. Okay, now I can get excited. I can get excited. I started buying stuff, putting things together. Week 34, that morning, so I was going to a specialist in between for him, the way he weighed the baby every month, looked at her. Left work at lunchtime to go for him to check the baby, and what you never want to see happen after he looks at her, he goes in the office. You know all those books y’all have on your shelves, those big, big books that you never use?

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

He went in the office, got one of them off the shelf and opened it. And so I’m like, “What’s that about?” And then he comes in, and then he goes back and he gets the book out again. And then he says, “You have to go to the hospital right now. You’re going to have to deliver today. We’ve just got to figure out if you’re going to deliver here in Tallahassee, or if we are going to send you to Gainesville where they have a specialty clinic.” And I’m like, “What in the world is going on?” And he said “The baby was bleeding from her brain, and so she had to be delivered by emergency C-section.”

And I’m like, “How can she bleed from her brain?” And of course, he was explaining it to me. Everything he said from then on, was Charlie Brown’s teacher, [inaudible 00:29:36]. I have no idea what he said after that, other than I had to get to the hospital. I went to the hospital where I had been going, because I kept getting dehydrated and doing excessive vomiting, vomiting, vomiting, and I’d have to go and get IV fluids. So I went to that hospital where my doctor worked, but they didn’t deliver before 36 weeks. And I was at 34 weeks, so they had to put me in the ambulance to send me to the other hospital where my doctor couldn’t deliver, so my doctor had to find a friend-

Dr. Karen Greene:

Oh, my goodness.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Who could meet me at the hospital and deliver me. And I’m just by myself going, “What in the world is going on?” And I’m also trying to get on the phone and call Blue Cross Blue Shield because they say you have to notify them if you’re going to deliver before 36 weeks. And the nurse is like, “We ain’t got time to do that right now. You got to get off the phone.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Get the baby out, and we’ll figure that out later.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

We’ll figure that out later. So we get to the hospital, I remember… I mean, they’re doing that. They’re like, “We got to get a catheter, we got to get an IV.” I’m just, again, it’s Charlie Brown’s teacher. I see the clock, it’s 7:00. They wheel me in. This is the first operation operation I’ve ever had other than oral surgery. I didn’t know an operating room was empty, because on TV, you got all this stuff in there.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Everybody, all the things.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

So I’m like, “This is an empty room. Why y’all putting me in an empty room?” But then they tell you to count back from 100, and at about 95, I don’t remember nothing else. I wake up, and instead of the clock saying 7:00, it says 10:00. Doctor comes in, he explains everything that happened to me. Don’t know the conversation. They roll me to where the baby is. They let me see her. They said they gave her three blood transfusions so she can stay alive for me to meet her, and I get to hold her. And that’s when she passed away.

I went to University of North Carolina, whose colors are Carolina blue and white. My favorite color has always been purple. I grew up in the Episcopal church, which is very close to the Catholic church. When they bring the baby to me, she has on a Carolina blue dress with a white cap and a purple rosary. And so they got a priest to come and baptize her for me. And then my brother, I didn’t know, right before I went into the hospital, I was able to call my best friend at home. And I said, “They sent me over here and they said, I’m getting ready to have a baby and I don’t know what to do.” And she said, “I’ve got to call your brother because you don’t have any family in Tallahassee, and he might have to make some kind of medical decision.”

So she called him. He had just lost his job the day before, so he was able to come to Tallahassee to be with me. I tell people I always believed in God, but going through this experience showed me that he was real, and that he has orchestrated things in advance for us.

Dr. Karen Greene:

That you never know.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

That you never know.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Before I’m leaving the hospital, I lived in a townhouse. They’re telling me I can’t walk upstairs, so my brother has to get all of the stuff and bring it downstairs. And then he takes me back to our home in North Carolina, that’s a ranch. Where my neighbor, who lives directly across the street from me, had three daughters, and her middle daughter had passed away. I had to walk every day for the C-section, and she would come out and walk with me and talk about how she was able to move on after her child passed.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Man, wow. Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Yeah.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

And tell us the name of your first, your daughter. Your daughter. What was her name?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Cameron Nicole, yeah. My favorite aunt growing up was Arlene, Cameron was her last name. And my father’s middle name was Nicholas, so I did Cameron Nicole.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Oh, that’s nice.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Beautiful.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And the same woman that walked with me each day, I grew up with her children. My adoption attorney ended up being her daughter’s adoption attorney when she couldn’t have a child through IVF.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow. Wow, full circle. How much of that do you recall Karen? And you talked about how going through this with Marlin from her perspective, shifted, or was different than from a clinical physician’s perspective?

Dr. Karen Greene:

It was just so… I remember when she said, “I can’t get happy.” And I was like, I was on pins and needles too, because I’m thinking the same thing. Okay, if she just gets to this point, she just gets to this point, just gets to this point-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

All the milestones, if you get to, yeah.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And then to have it end up in a neonatal demise, and the baby dies, that was just emotionally devastating. And you always say you don’t know what to say, and I didn’t. And I couldn’t be there, that was the one thing I was like, “I wish I could have been there,” because I didn’t have any words at all. There was nothing, Dr. Richard would come out, there was nothing that I could even think of to say. And for me, it was just, I had to pray that at some point, there’s got to be a reason for all this. But why? Why? Why did she have to go through all of this? The person not showing up, the person with the low sperm count.

As you were telling it, I remember all those feelings, thinking, “This is just not fair.” And I appreciate that you can come to the point of, because I was going to ask you, how do you get to the point of this is all orchestrated by God? And I think back then I thought that, but it still was-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

It’s hard to know.

Dr. Karen Greene:

It’s hard to know. It was just hard to know about what his plans are, and looking at all this. Because again, why? Why Marlin? I mean, this shouldn’t happen to her, because literally everything that could have happened, did.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And I think when you’re talking about people not knowing what to say, what was so amazing to me, because while I was in the hospital, a couple of people called, a couple of people, because again, this is way before social media and stuff. And the phone kept ringing. And there were coaches, and people I’d worked with from all over, who were just calling. And there were about three or four women that I had worked with, who were calling to say, “I know what you’ve gone through because I went through it,” and they were sharing with me the stories that they had, where they lost children. And I’d known them for years and never knew that.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And never knew.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Because it was something that we just never talked about. And so one of the things I wanted to do, is that when anyone wanted to listen, I wanted to be able to talk, to let people know they’re not alone, and they’re not by themselves.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s exactly it.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And when you were saying you didn’t know what to say, one of my girlfriends from law school called me, and I remember… She grew up in Miami, so one of the kids from her neighborhood was at school at FAM. And she called him, and she had him go pick up flowers and deliver them to me at the hospital, and tell me that it was from them. And when he got there, she had him let her know so she could call me. And she said, “I’m calling you, and I don’t know what to say. And so this is just me on the other end of the phone letting you know I’m here.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s it.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

But it was her being there that was what was important, and what I still remember 18 years later.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s right, that’s right.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Was she wasn’t not reaching out because she didn’t know what to say, but she reached out and said, “I don’t have any words. I had my child at 18. I still have my child, but I don’t know what to say, but I’m here for you.”

Dr. Karen Greene:

And I think it’s that part, because at that point I had had my first child. And watching Marlin go through all of this, you have this guilt of why is my friend going through this? She should be the one that should be able to do this, of all people. But she did it in a different way.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And we’ll get to that good story and good news about the wonderful, how you accomplished your family. But I just wanted to piggyback on something Marlin said to another episode that we had earlier in this season, where we talked with Dr. Carla Booker about her husband died. I was about to say she lost her husband-

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

[inaudible 00:38:53].

Dr. Mironda Williams:

But she didn’t lose her husband. Her husband died quite unexpectedly. And she talked with us on that episode, about the process of grief and how she turned that process into a book. But one of the things that she shared as well, is that you don’t have to say anything necessarily. That it’s the gift of the presence, that someone is just reaching out to you in person. She talked about how she connected with people on Facebook. This just happened, so this was in the social media. And it was just the fact that someone said, “Hey, I don’t even know what to tell you, but I’m just here. I’m just here.”

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

And how she appreciated that more than the platitudes that everybody says, “They’re in better place.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

“God has a way.”

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

“God knows.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And God does know.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

He does know, but just not saying it as just a saying.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Right, right, right. That’s amazing. So throughout that, before we talk and you let the audience know about your wonderful family. Throughout that process, what other wisdom, what do you think was the thing that maybe frightened you the most? What was the lesson you think that you learned? Or what’s the wisdom that you want to share with us, as providers, as well as for our audience of listeners?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Go back to when I arrived in Tallahassee. I had just gone through one type of procedure, I don’t remember which. And I had started bleeding, and I was reaching out to different OBGYNs. And because I was high risk, none of them would see me, so I had to go to urgent care. And urgent care found an OB-GYN office that would see me. It was a practice of two physicians, and I saw one regularly. Something happened as we got closer to my date, and I came on the off week, and I ended up seeing the other one.

So now I’m seeing this other one, and I really don’t know him, but he’s now my physician. And about a week before I went in for the 34-week checkup, there was a student who was there, and he wanted to know if the student could come in. Sure, I don’t mind students. And he told the student, “I know Marlin’s going to have a good outcome because she’s done everything that we’ve asked her to do, so I know this is going to work.” He couldn’t come to the hospital, but his nurse came to the hospital. She said, “I’m a nurse and I can go anywhere I want to go.” And she was at the hospital every day. And in fact, I just found a card she sent me, when I was cleaning out the garage.

He started reaching out to me by phone, because I had to have a post C-Session checkup, but I wouldn’t return his phone calls, because I’m like, “Why is he calling? There’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing he can do.” And he kept calling and kept calling. And when I saw him, he said, “I need to connect you with somebody.” He said, “My best friend is an adoption attorney, and I got permission from her, to give you her cell phone number.” I’m like, “Attorneys don’t give out their cell phone number, but I’m not trying to adopt a child either.” He’s gone to all this trouble. I guess, I got to reach out and talk to her. The first time I reach out, I didn’t get her. I got somebody who works with her, and this woman’s like, “Oh, well, I don’t know why you calling here because we don’t have minority babies, and we’re not going to be able to help you.” And she just went on and on and on and on and on.

I said, “I just need her to know that I am calling because Dr. So-and-so told me to call.” Okay, and I’m done with this.

Dr. Karen Greene:

I’m done with this.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Because I was done with it before the conversation, so now I’m really done. About two weeks later, the attorney calls me, and I said, “Oh, evidently you didn’t get my message. I already heard from the lady. You can’t help me. It’s no problem.” And she said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “S`he already told me that you don’t place minority babies.” And she said, “Tell me exactly what she said.” And I told her, and she said, “Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I’ve had some people complain to me about her, but no one would tell me specifically what she had said. Now that I know what she has said, I know what to do with her, but let me let you know that what she said is absolutely incorrect.”

And she said, “I place an average of 46 babies every year.” And I started to count. I’m like, “They’re only 52 weeks in a year. How is this woman placing 46 babies?” But again, I’m in Tallahassee. We have Florida State, we have Tallahassee Community College, we have Florida A&M University, got a lot of teenagers, and a lot of their parents wouldn’t let them have abortions. And she was like, “If you want a boy child, I can get you one next week.” And I’m like, “No, no.” I haven’t even gone through processing. I’m still trying to process everything from my first baby. Hadn’t thought about adoption, that’s going to be more money. Like I said, I stopped counting at 65 with IVF. I’m not spending a whole lot more money, so let me just think about it. And she said, “I want you to know that I can help you. I want you to get there.”

Okay, two weeks later, she called, “Have a lady, just went home. She wanted to take her son home for the weekend, but she’s coming back. If you want a boy next week, you can have one.” “Okay, can I really think about this, ma’am? Give me a minute. Give me a minute.” And then I love Vera Wang. I’ve always loved Vera Wang. I love her clothes. I love her style. And I read an article that she wrote, that she had an infertility journey as well. And she said when she realized that she wanted to parent more than she wanted to be pregnant, that’s when she was able to consider adoption as an option to getting there.

And when I thought about that, because I had always, they say, “God gives you what you asked for.” I’d always said I wanted to be pregnant at least once, because I had the equipment, and I wanted to know what it felt like. I never said I wanted to keep the child. I guess, I wasn’t specific enough for God. I asked to be pregnant. He let me be pregnant. Did I really want to parent? And that was what I had to decide.

And it was like, “Well, there’s still this money thing,” and I’m not going into any more debt. My father worked in insurance for over 35 years, but he also did Army Reserve for 20 years. And I got a letter in the mail from the Army Reserve with a Philadelphia postmark, I’m like, “What in the world is this?” Because at that time, we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of his death, he had an additional life insurance policy we didn’t know about.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And in that envelope was the premium plus a year’s interest.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

So it was like, okay-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Okay.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Daddy is sending me the money. Do you want to do this? If you do, here is your check.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Wow.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Man, I just got chills. Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

I called Madonna, and said, “What do we do?” And we fill out… The one thing Jeb Bush did really well in the State of Florida, was he changed the adoption laws so that single women, and that gay couples could adopt easily. And you got to remember, this is back in-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

I remember, 18 years ago.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Just like 18 years ago.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yeah, that’s true. I wasn’t even thinking, you’re right.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Wow.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

So at that time, it was very difficult for single women to adopt.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That’s exactly right.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

It was truly difficult for gay people to adopt. Single women were going to China, Guatemala, Russia, to just be able to adopt children. And so he made it so you could make an arrangement before the baby was born, but it wasn’t binding until after the baby was born. So the birth parent could change their mind up until they left the hospital, but once they left the hospital, they couldn’t change their mind. So you do basically a yearbook kind of thing, telling the birth mother what the child’s life would be like if the child lived with you. And the Madonna had called me, and that was my adoption attorney’s name was Madonna.

She had called me, she said, “I know you work in athletics. I have a volleyball player at Florida State. Father of her baby plays football at University of Texas. They’re going to have a baby at the end of the month. I’m sure it’s going to be athletic. It’s going to be a boy.” I said, “I cannot, me, raise a boy child by myself. I don’t know how to teach a boy to be a man. I cannot do that. I know I can’t.” She was like, “Okay, just wanted to throw it out there.”

So when I put my stuff together, got a call from her in January, I’m on my way to the NCAA convention. And she says, “Birth mother looked at your profile and she was looking for a single professional Black female to raise her daughter, and so she has selected you.” She had her first child at 16. She was getting ready to turn 19. She was having her second child, and she was studying to be a nurse. And she said she could finish nursing school with one child, but she couldn’t finish with two. So the deal was I would get baby two, and she would go back and finish becoming a nurse.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow.

Dr. Karen Greene:

That’s such a wonderful story.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And that’s how you achieved your family. That’s wonderful. As I’m listening to you, and just thinking again, what do we glean when we share these stories with all the guests that we’ve had in previous episodes, and then from today. And what you just said was, what is our goal? Is our goal to be pregnant, or is the goal to be a parent? And so from a provider standpoint, we can help you achieve pregnancy. We can do all those things, but we have to also realize it’s not as simple as us prescribing a plan of care, because that woman, that couple, they have life that they’re negotiating. And so I think it’s really, this has been helpful for me, to remind myself, make sure you’re hearing the whole person.

Understanding, as we talked about with equity issues and access issues. You can say, you need to do this, but what are their schedules? What is this? What is that? What was the other? But then if the pregnancy either is not achieved, or if there’s an unfortunate, poor outcome, the journey to being a parent doesn’t stop, that there still is another option. Especially now, thankfully, with adoption for Black and brown babies, and single women, it’s still, you can achieve and get to the end of that journey of becoming a parent. Now, of course, Karen can talk about, and Marlin too, because we don’t have no babies. The next 18, 20 years or so after you become a parent, we’ll have to do that on another show.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Yeah. She should be coming to the door in about a minute. She’s 17 now, mouth almighty.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

But remember, this is what you wanted.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

You want to be a parent.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Yes, that’s what I tell myself. I’m like, “Maybe God knew what he was doing.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

No, I’m sure it’s all beautiful.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

The other thing is she looks and acts just like my father.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Wow.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Yeah, she does.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

So when we go out, people are like, “Oh, she looks so much like you.” And I just laugh. I’m like, “That is what God will do.”

Dr. Mironda Williams:

That is the divine. That is the divine. That’s amazing. Did you have any other questions, or anything else you wanted to talk about?

Dr. Karen Greene:

I guess, the only thing, you mentioned Jeb Bush, and it made us realize how long ago that all of that happened. And with everything going on now with IVF, and with the laws-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

The challenges to it, yes.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And you spend a lot of time in Florida, and the challenges that women have now, as a lawyer, what are your thoughts on that? From a mom’s perspective, and a person having gone through it, you have kind of a whole different lens.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Yeah, it’s unfortunate all around. Come on. Oh, I got to open the door.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Let me in, let me in.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

[inaudible 00:53:31].

Speaker 5:

Why?

Marlin Ruth Jones:

Because they want to see you.

Speaker 5:

Who?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Ms. Karen. It’s unfortunate, because when I think about the possibility of having a child to be subjected to rape, and I’ve worked in Title IX for the last eight years, where I’ve investigated cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence on campus. If I had a child who’s been subjected to rape and she got pregnant, and you tell me that she can’t have an abortion, it’s going to be a problem. Come here.

Speaker 5:

Wait, what am I doing?

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Just say hey.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Hello.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Hi.

Dr. Karen Greene:

We’re talking about you.

Speaker 5:

Y’all were talking about me. All good things?

Dr. Karen Greene:

All good things.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

All good things. All good things.

Speaker 5:

Okay. I just wanted make sure.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And I named her where she came from, she’s Trinity Faith.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Oh, beautiful.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

It’s her birth mother, her birth grandmother, her birth sister, my mother, my father, and my daughter in heaven, and in the Holy Trinity.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Beautiful.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

It’s really unfortunate that we still have majority men making rules and decisions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies. And I think I might feel differently about it if the same people were making provisions for what happens to these children once they’re born, particularly our Black and our brown children, who are not able to be placed in private adoptions, who become a part of the group homes and the foster homes systems, and never find forever families. You are forcing people to have children that they’re not equipped to raise, but you’re not providing any provisions for these children to be able to grow, to be productive citizens. What you’re doing is providing opportunities for the for-profit prisons that you invest in, to have future residents, and I find that appalling and sinful.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And as we talk about a lot here, the issues that we sometimes broach, are very complex. They’re very intense, and there’s a lot of emotion on all sides. But we somehow have to be able to come to a table, metaphorically speaking, and come up with holistic solutions, processes, plans, that try to deal with the whole, or the totality of the situation. It’s not just about abortion, yes, no. Okay, you have children that are being born in situations and circumstances that may or may not be as ideal as you would want them to do, so how do we then create safety nets? How do we then create processes? How do we then create other things that we can allow these children to still be nurtured and developed and educated and cared for, so that they grow up to become productive citizens that are not necessarily falling to the wards of the court, whether it’s-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Correct.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

In the foster care system or the penal system. It is like we have to look at the whole picture, that’s why we’re supposedly having conversations and community. This is why have government, this is why we have all these things, so that then these wonderful smart people can find out what are the best ways to set things up. It doesn’t always work. Similarly, we had mentioned earlier, just among conversations with ourselves, the challenge to IVF that’s occurring currently. And that in the process of making what they felt to be the correct laws to protect life, they inadvertently, potentially, cause a problem for people going through in vitro fertilization. Because now there’s a whole other set of issues that has been unearthed, that was unintended, and now you’re having to come back behind that and make adjustments. And that was, was it Texas?

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Alabama.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Alabama that passed the law. And then the IVF community-

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Had to shut down.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Was thrown into just upheaval, because it’s like now we’re going to be prosecuted because we are taking care of people who have spent time and money and emotional resources, and now you’re going to say that we can’t continue with that. That’s why, and again, disclaimer, we’re not political, we’re just having a conversation. But what we’re trying to emphasize and highlight, is there is a real human side to the fertility journey, whether that’s through IVF, or in vitro fertilization, assisted reproduction, whether it’s through adoption, there are human beings and stories that are attached to these issues. And you can make a decision over here that seems perfectly okay and good, but now you’ve wiped out a whole segment of society’s journey to being a parent. And if that’s what we’re really talking about, is having children who are parented and loved and nurtured and educated-

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

All about family, but you’re preventing families from being formed.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes. That’s all we’re going to say about that.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

You always complete the analysis, and we have people who want to start the analysis and stop where they’re comfortable, but they don’t take it all the way to the end.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes, yes.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And I think having these real conversations, as we said earlier, as physicians, it allows us to say, “Okay, we can give the medications, but if we don’t take part in whatever else discussion has to be had, who’s the breadwinner? Who’s at home? Who has to stop their meeting with the sports manager to take an injection of Lupron that’s going to give them a hot flash that they’re going to go back into another meeting, then they’re going to be sweating.” I mean, we don’t really think about all that. And we really try to, and I think that if we, as physicians, can have that discussion, and really broaden our concept of what it is to care for the patient, then other people should be able to broaden their mind in what it is to care for our country, to care for your constituents, to care for all of that. So that we try to make… It’s not going to be perfect, but the best decision, or a better decision, like you said, making the whole analysis. We try to take all things into consideration.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

One of the problems too, is I’ve worked for the Florida Senate for a short time, and people come into political positions with good intentions, but when they start getting the perks of being in the position, they quickly become consumed in who they now see themselves as being, because people are giving them so many things. And when you have unearned privilege, that’s the hardest thing to let go of.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Also, the intentions that they came into politics with what you think is just, “Okay, I’m going to go and fight for this particular issue.” In order to have somebody support you on an issue, you may have to support them. It’s not just issue, just support my issue.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Exactly.

Dr. Karen Greene:

A lot of give and take.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

So many things come into play with lobbyists, and when a bill, a bill is never… They’re not single bills, where it’s the bill for abortion, or bill for this. It’s always attached to other things, so now you have to deal with all these other people just to even get those bills passed.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Not Schoolhouse Rock, “I’m just a bill. I’m only a bill.”

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Nope, nope.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Not that anymore. A lot more complicated.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

A little more complicated.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Exactly.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

A little more complicated.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

So a lot of, what’s the word I’m looking for? My brain just-

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Compromise.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

There you go. That’s the word.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Compromise.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

That’s a compromise.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

And once you compromise on one thing, it becomes easy compromising on something else, and then you end up compromising your integrity. And once you start doing that, it’s just the slippery slope. And then you forget why you went there in the first place, because now you’re caught up in the “I’m this person and I get to go to this, and I get to go to that and be with these people and other people.” And Jeffrey Epstein killed himself because so many people were involved in the web that he wove.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

It becomes very complicated, very intense, sometimes dangerous for sure, so real conversation is needed. I think real listening to understand, and not just listening to then have something to say, is important. And we, again, just thank you so much, Marlin, for taking time out of your travel, your business, your mothering, your parenting. Thank you for sharing your beautiful daughter on screen for those who are looking at our YouTube, or on our website, so that you can see the video of this podcast. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for sharing you’re your story.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

You’re so welcome.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

And letting us see the wonderful ending, or the continuation of the journey, because you’re still parenting.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Oh, my God.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Parenting will never stop. So we’re just so happy to see that.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Thank you all for the care that you provide for all of the women there. Even though you aren’t on TV, I keep telling Karen whenever I see Married to Medicine, I think of her. And that’s only because she’s in Atlanta, not because she reminds me of-

Dr. Mironda Williams:

The characters.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

They go on. Only because she’s in Atlanta. But my daughter insists she wants to go to Spelman, so we’ll see how that turns out.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

I’m not a Spelman grad, but I’m a Spelman groupie.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Okay.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

So she comes, she’ll have aunties.

Dr. Karen Greene:

Aunties, lots of auntie.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

There’ll be plenty of aunties.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

It’s a great school. My purse just says different.

Dr. Karen Greene:

I know that part.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

I know, I know.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

But we will see. And I just thank you all for having the platform, and for providing the information on all of the different topics. Healthcare is so, so important, and it’s really so important for Black and brown women. The last month, my heart has just broken, when I saw the young Black woman at Lincoln University who committed suicide for being bullied. Black women in higher education are under attack. And then when I saw the young cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs, I lived in Kansas City for about three years, who died a couple of days after childbirth. We’re still losing Black women after childbirth. We should not, in 2024, nobody should die because they gave birth.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Yes, yes, yes, definitely. And thank you. And we hope to continue to expand our platform, and continue to have wonderful guests such as yourself, to help us with getting the message out. Dr. Guthrie, do you have something for Marlin?

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Oh, yes. So we just… Here we go. Again, just as a token of our appreciation for you, we have a special little gift that will be mailed to you. I just want to thank you.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Aw, well, thank you.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

Yes, yes. So we’ll be getting that to you.

Marlynn Ruth Jones:

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And Eldridge and Keith, thank you guys. You’re the best in the business. I hope to get back in the studio this summer with you two.

Dr. Mironda Williams:

Awesome. Yay. Well, we’d like to just thank our audience for tuning in to another wonderful episode of Take Good Care podcast. We hope that again, we’ve created a safe space to just have conversation, as you’ve seen and witnessed that we’ve been able to do today with our wonderful guest, Marlin. And so until we meet again, please make sure you share this website, and share our podcast with your friends and family. Take Good Care podcast, the name of our website is Rosagynecology.com Again, that’s Rosagynecology.com. And until we meet again for our next episode, I’m Dr. Miranda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie:

I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene:

And I am Dr. Karen Green. Take good care. Yay.