Silver lining

When a student in his screenplay class said she was struggling to express herself through writing, he shared his essays with her, hoping it would help her find her voice. The student eventually became his publisher. After reading what he had written, she convinced him that turning the essays into a book was something very much needed, especially to help couples struggling through IVF.

Thoo agreed — after all, he himself did not know much about IVF, and in his words, was woefully unprepared for just how tough it was. “I just wish that I had known [all this] earlier so that we could maybe have adapted our timeline or been more prepared,” he said.

But he didn’t want the book to be too serious, either. “There are so many wonderful communities for infertility and IVF and all these things, but I think the impression that I got was that it is very supportive but there’s no introspection, there’s no really being honest.

“I mean, there are times that are bad, right? Times when you think less-thanpure thoughts about friends who have kids, and [you ask] ‘why can’t I have kids?’ I felt like there are times where sarcasm or levity would maybe have helped us, and you know, the ability to laugh at yourself. The first chapter that I wrote was about how I messed up so many times trying to get a sperm sample into the small tub. I thought it’d be worthwhile to just show that, you know, it can be laughed at. Don’t get me wrong, it is extremely serious and nobody was more upset than I was about my situation, but it helps to laugh at things,” he says.

The result was Palooka — an extremely heartfelt, well- written and intimate book. It is also hilarious; laugh-out-loud funny in a way you’d not expect from such a serious topic, because Thoo found a way to both inform and entertain in a self-deprecating, honest way.

More importantly, it is written with a great deal of vulnerability, depicting the round after round of knockouts and losses: like the great boxers of the past, who were his childhood heroes, and whose stories form the structure of the book.

Indeed, that was what IVF felt like to him — 12 rounds of bad news after bad news as they spent a year and nearly $100,000 to have a child. Worse yet was how ill-prepared he was for the process.

IVF is the process where an egg is combined with sperm outside the body, or in-vitro. It involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, removing an egg (ovum) or eggs from the woman’s ovaries, before artificially inseminating the eggs in a laboratory. For many couples who cannot or have difficulty conceiving, it is often the best, sometimes only, option to do so.

“I was not at all prepared [for it]. I just had no idea of how complicated and how difficult it was. I thought it was just, you know, they go in to get the eggs, they do the thing, but it’s not like that,” Thoo says. “The woman’s body has to be prepped [with hormones and numerous self-administered injections] and even then, when she is ready, a woman has a limited number of eggs and not all those eggs are usable.”

“And every time, there was an additional thing that could go wrong,” he says. In fact, things did go wrong. A lot.

Thoo tested positive for carrying the thalassemia gene, which causes a genetic blood disorder. Thankfully, two more tests subsequently cleared him of the false positive of the first.

Alicia had a condition called diminished ovarian reserve, which meant that the number and quality of her eggs is lower than expected for her age.

Upon implantation of two embryos, Alicia suffered a miscarriage. Initially, they thought it was a miscarriage of one embryo, since they had implanted two successfully. However, it was later discovered that it was actually an ectopic pregnancy, something incredibly rare in an IVF procedure. An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants itself somewhere other than the uterus, where it should be.

Worse still, the embryo had implanted itself on one of Alicia’s fallopian tubes, which meant it needed to be operated on and removed immediately or it could be seriously life-threatening. There was also the possibility that both her fallopian tubes would need to be removed. “It just became bad news after bad news after bad news,” says Thoo.

Thankfully, Alicia pulled through, and they eventually tried again. This time, success at last: their daughter, Zoe, was born last year.

When I asked Thoo what he is most grateful for throughout this entire nerve-racking and excruciating experience, he immediately said it is Alicia, his wife of four years.

“When I held my child for the first time, all that I felt was more love for my wife because of the incredible hardship that she went through,” he says.

He never worried about the strength of their relationship or marriage [when he first found out about his low motility]. “I was just worried about telling her, because I felt like I had let her down, that our life was going to be so much more difficult now because of me.

“I was the one who had been pushing for kids from the beginning. And you know, this comes out in the book, but I only realised later that I’d never actually really took the time to ask Alicia if she wanted to even have kids,” he says. “And so I was pushing her to do this and then we were going to have to do [IVF], and we’re gonna have to spend copious amounts of money. She was going to have to go through this emotional and physiological hardship.”

Honestly, says Thoo, if there had been a silver lining through the process it was a reaffirmation of how much he loves Alicia.

“It was just a reaffirmation of how much I love my wife and how lucky I was to have her, and she demonstrated strength I didn’t know that she had. I think, maybe up until that point in our relationship, I always had the impression that she was soft, because, you know, coming from a very masculine upbringing and being you know, very physical, I had this notion that I was the tough one — but that’s totally wrong,” he admits. “She went through all of it while having a stressful, high-flying job.”

“Hopefully our daughter will get that from her because she certainly wouldn’t get it from me,” he jokes.

Toxic masculinity

IVF, perhaps, was also Thoo’s journey to reassessing the ideas of masculinity and what it means to be a man, and reflect on his ( now improved) relationship with his father, a tough, no-nonsense and conservative man, who tolerated no weakness in his sons, as it were.

Thoo is introspective, and thoughtful, when asked about what he feels about toxic masculinity — the ideals that a man is expected to adhere to, at all costs, to be deemed as masculine or manly, often to their detriment.

“I always hesitate to use the word ‘toxic’ masculinity, because I know that this is all going to come back to my dad, and I don’t like to use the word ‘toxic’ because I’ve never felt like I was beaten over the head with it, or that there were things about myself that I never felt I was allowed to express,” says Thoo.

Still, he believes that many young Asian men have a very difficult time dealing with ideals of masculinity. “I have so many friends, who, whenever I ask them about their kids or anything personal, that conversation either just abruptly ends or they move on to something else.

“It’s difficult, I think, because the message is muddled a little bit as well. On one hand, you’re supposed to be masculine and strong. But on the other hand, the vast majority of strong male role models in the world are not Asian, they’re white or black; so what is the strength that we’re supposed to demonstrate?” he says.

“I think, then, that the greatest [masculine] quality that Asian families seem to hope to cultivate in a young man is the ability to provide financially and to do it silently and not talk about it — no ‘thank you’s’, just do your job and get on with it.

“I was definitely brought up with the belief that fathering a child is a necessary component of being a man,” he says. “And so, to be unable to hold up my end of the bargain and produce a family…”

His father features prominently in Palooka, but while he may first appear to be the “villain” in the book, the book has ultimately improved their relationship.

“I knew that there was a point where he’s gonna have to read it, and he was going to be the ‘villain’. And so I warned him that this is going to be the case, but don’t worry, by the end, you’ll realise that I was the idiot and you were right. Then when he read it, it’s like he’s compensated completely the other way, he’s said the book is incredible and he wouldn’t change a thing.”

They meet for lunch regularly, and now, with the safe distancing measures amid the pandemic, his father video chats with Zoe as well.

Once, his dad asked Thoo, “Was I too hard on you?” and he answered no.

“I said, I don’t think so. I’m the person I am because of it. I am competitive and always want to do the best I can, and am glad for whatever he did; that I’m now not the person who just settles for whatever,” he says.

The family album has a picture of Thoo, his brother and his father which his father took, with the caption “me and my favourite boys”. One could say, perhaps, after all that — Thoo’s journey to fatherhood has come full circle.

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