Word: scars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...women, the most common reason for infertility is a blockage or abnormality of the fallopian tubes. These thin, flexible structures, which convey the egg from the ovaries to the uterus, are where fertilization normally occurs. If they are blocked or damaged or frozen in place by scar tissue, the egg will be unable to complete its journey. To examine the tubes, a doctor uses X rays or a telescope-like instrument called a laparoscope, which is inserted directly into the pelvic area through a small, abdominal incision. Delicate microsurgery, and, more recently, laser surgery, sometimes can repair the damage successfully...
Richard and Diana Barger of Virginia could be a textbook case of an infertile couple. Diana's fallopian tubes and left ovary are blocked with scar tissue, ironically the result of an intrauterine device (I.U.D.) she used for three years. Even if an egg did manage to become fertilized, the embryo might be rejected by her uterus, which has been deformed since birth. Richard has his own difficulties: his sperm count is 6.7 million per milliliter, considerably below the number ordinarily required for fertilization under normal conditions. Says Diana: "I never thought getting pregnant would be so difficult...
Doctors place much of the blame for the epidemic on liberalized sexual attitudes, which in women have led to an increasing occurrence of genital infections known collectively as pelvic inflammatory disease. Such infections scar the delicate tissue of the fallopian tubes, ovaries and uterus. Half of these cases result from chlamydia, a common venereal disease, and 25% stem from gonorrhea...
...McCormick once ticked the 10-meter platform with one leg after taking off, and "lost the water" (lost track of her position in the air). She landed badly, and the impact enlarged what she figures was a small cut on her shin to an ugly eight-inch gash, whose scar is still there. Seufert bruised the back of her neck severely in hitting the water on a 10-meter dive, later reinjured herself the same way, and eventually noticed a tingling in her fingers. A neurologist told her that if she continued to land on her neck, not her head...
...when his car was run off the road by enraged rednecks. Did die, clinically, the legend has it; doctors brought him back from beyond the edge. Should have died, probably; his life since then has been a washout. This is not because of his injuries, which left a facial scar but did no other permanent damage. It is because, as Novelist Rosellen Brown sketches him, he is temperamentally unsuited to be anything but the star of a protest movement...