In light of all the recent executive orders and sweeping US department cuts, I’ve been reflecting a lot on what research means to me—it offered me a future.

My birth story is one that my mom shares every year over the phone or in person right when I wake up—she saw Lorelai do it in a Gilmore Girls episode, and since then, it’s become a thing we do.

I grew up knowing my birth was a miracle, that it wasn’t an accident. All the odds were stacked against me; I wasn’t supposed to live past a few hours. This fucked with my head in lots of ways, as you can imagine. From age five to ten, I thought I was destined to become a superhero or a supervillain—I guess there’s still time. But recently, in light of all the executive orders cutting deeply needed programs and whole departments, I’ve been wrestling with how I owe much of my existence to the researchers who made it possible.

Before me, my mom had five miscarriages. Each was devastating. But she couldn’t ignore her call to motherhood. She got tested and found out she had a rare form of lupus that specifically manifests during pregnancy. The way my mom explained it to me was that the body recognizes the fetus as a foreign invasion and tries to attack it. In the late 90s/2000s, a few clinical trials in Chicago tried to fix this.

Luckily, through the Chicago research hospital network they found my mom.

The first trial was some drug. She had to take it every day. Unfortunately, she was a part of the placebo group. My brother didn’t make it full term. It took some convincing for her to be a part of the next trial. After so many heartbreaks, it’s hard to believe she’d want to try again. Let alone after one that ended up being so intense.

So, because her immune system was attacking the fetuses, they decided to put her on something to dull her immune system’s attacks. This was a part of her pharmaceutical cocktail that she had to inject herself with each day. Researchers recorded her labs and ran tests on her all the time. But she was carrying the baby much farther than the others—so far, everything was okay.

Her baby shower was in the last week of April 2000. That is when the real battle began.

My mom’s immune system finally reached its target: the placenta and amniotic sack carrying me. Her water broke two months early and the shower turned into a medical emergency. My mom was rushed to the hospital, where they were initially going to keep my mom in the hospital and pump fluid into the placenta to try to keep me full-term. I’m not sure how that would work—it sounds like science fiction. But because of the pitocin they gave her, my mom became preeclamptic, which put us both in distress. It was my aunt, who had flown in from Seattle for the shower, who caught this and alerted the nurses.

After an emergency birth, my mom was on the verge of a stroke, and I was taken from the doctor’s arms and ran to the NICU. My mother screamed at my dad to follow the nurse taking me—this was around the time when people were stealing babies. Although I’m not sure, anyone would have wanted a scrawny little spider monkey-looking baby like me. If I were to steal a baby, I’d like one with a higher chance of living past the first week of its life and a fully functioning respiratory system.

In the midst of the chaos, the researched hospital doctors stepped in. They saved my mom and me.

See—too many wires and scrawny scrawny arms—not a baby for stealing.

When everyone was stable, a week or two later, a nurse snuck my incubator into my mom’s room in the ICU. She told my mom that I’m a fighter and was bouncing back quickly. My mom still jokes that I really wanted to be at her baby shower. What can I say? I have always loved an excuse to party.

I wouldn’t be here without the researchers who decided to be interested in a rare form of gestational lupus. I wouldn’t be here without their questions, curiosity, and bravery to try, fail, and try again. Thank God they kept trying, and thank God they had the funding to do so. I’m glad I get the chance to ask questions, be curious, and try, fail, and try again.

Izzy Nunez

Izzy Nunez graduated from Calvin in 2022 after studying graphic design and sociology. Today she lives in Durham, North Carolina where she is a graphic designer for Duke University. She is growing to love Durham and all its southern charm even if she complains that its breakfast choices aren’t as good as they are in the Grand Rapids.