I'm sitting here alone in a quiet house listening to a clock in the kitchen tick away the seconds. Minutes pass, hours go by, days keep moving by us and it feels like time is running out. Running away from us. Panic. That's what I feel. Sheer panic. Throw a little fear in there and you have my soul right now. Quiet in the house, dark destructive loud chaos in my spirit. We are running out of time. Whether it's my biological time or my emotionally able time, it's running out. I'll be 32 this month. I have a few years left of "prime fertility" (which is clearly SO prime) before my fertility starts to decline (doesn't have far to go, right?) and you get into the ages of more likely miscarriages, birth defects, etc. I can't believe it. Sometimes I wish I could go back seven or so years and punch the 24 year old me in the face for being such an idiot about pregnancy and marriage, "I don't know that I'll ever get married and have kids. I love being an Aunt and who wants stretch marks? ick." Oh to wish stretch marks were my biggest fears these days. I was so in denial of what I wanted because I was so afraid of it. Sure, I wanted a husband and a family but I was terrified of being dependent and weak (which is how I viewed marriage at the time) and of "destroying my body" because I was in such great shape. How completely ignorant can a person be? I guess it was also immaturity and not being "ready" for what life was about to bring my way....Rik. Thank God for him. If it wasn't for him, some days I don't think I could get out of bed. He changed my life and I like to think I changed his as well. We needed each other and God couldn't have sent a better man into my life to help me through what was heading our way. I highly doubt I've been the pillar of strength for him that he has been for me. Eating my words on the dependent and weak situation these days. No idea how this post turned into this heap of stinking emotional garbage, but I've been wallowing in it for a few days now and I want you to smell horrid with me, I guess. Back to my point....which I guess I just made which is that I'm at my emotionally able limit, or will be soon. Does that make me a quitter? The doctor said give it six months post-surgery because those are your prime months of fertility after having endometriosis resected. The thing is, I didn't have it bad enough (or in the yuckiest places) for it to have a huge impact - negative or positive. We are in that beloved gray area. You know the place where people look at you with bewildered faces, slightly pudgy cheeks and look much older than they should because the stress of the situation is aging them at an alarming rate. Yep, that's our stop. Unexplained Infertility. Another failed attempt. I have officially lost my hope. Each time we've gone through this, each time we've tried to conceive, I've let myself hope. I've let myself crawl out of the dungeon three or four days into it to start the next cycle and somehow, I end up thinking this is it. During the two week wait, I let my body convince my mind that every twinge I feel is a sure sign we're pregnant. It's a total mind screw. It's not healthy. Rik is here and he is wonderfully supportive but he has so many other things he can focus on that sometimes, I just feel alone. Not because he's not here for me by any means, it's just that I feel like I think of it more because I have nothing else to focus on really. Up until now, I've never had that feeling. I mean, honestly, we started the fertility plan because he wanted to. I wanted to start with adoption. How have I left this "possibility" suck me in and keep me going month after month? We said three IUI's to start. Then we had surgery and the doc said give it six months. So here we are still chugging along. Up and down the emotional ladder like we're stuck in hell and this is our punishment. To climb up and down this ladder that is thousands of feet high. I'm exhausted. I'm defeated. I'm sad. I'm lonely. I'm just........inside out. I literally feel like I have been ripped at one of my seams and turned inside out. All my sensitive spots are exposed. I tested Thursday morning. I knew it was negative before I even tested, I only did it out of necessity. I had all the signs of unpregnancy. One line. Negative. I crawled back in bed and went to sleep for another hour. Numb. Not shock or bewilderment or disappointment, just numb. I got up, got ready for work, kissed Rik good-bye and headed to work. I got to work and started my day as usual. Then my Mom called and wanted to discuss how we could generate more revenue for "baby money" and I told her I couldn't talk about that because I had just found out about our BFN. She meant well, but after another 20 minutes of discussion about IVF costs, adoption, fostering, etc., I had to let her go. I hung up the phone, laid my head down on my arms and literally felt months of HURT rush up to the surface. I couldn't stop the tears. I cried and I cried and I cried. I couldn't stop it. Luckily, my office door was closed so you couldn't hear me unless you happened to walk by...unfortunately, someone did and wouldn't you know who came to check on me? The 7 month pregnant girl in our office who is accidentally pregnant. She knows what we're going through and I do love her to death, but wow. Rubbing my back with her belly in my face didn't help. I couldn't even look at her. I ended up asking my boss if I could take a personal day and ended up leaving work because I could not pull myself together. I called Rik before I left and told him I couldn't get myself back to the upright and locked position. He was sympathetic as usual. I think he forgot I had to test that morning so I threw him off a little calling him sobbing. Poor fella. There isn't a place you can go that makes you feel better when you feel like your heart is being blown to smithereens. I went to a place in the park that usually makes me feel happy and peaceful. It just made me think of things in a more painfully clear manner. This is probably not going to work for us. With each passing IUI, our chance of conceiving decreases. I sat there and cried some more. Feeling 150% sorry for myself. (obviously, I still am) Sitting on that bridge, shivering in the cold, my feet dangling over the water, I just wanted to scream. Then I noticed there was a leaf on my shoe and so I kicked it in the stream and watched it float away. I feel like that leaf. Floating along, no clue where I'm headed, getting stuck in the muck then swept up in the current again, finding myself in a bottleneck now and then, waiting my turn to eek through....I don't know how much longer I can do this. I try to be positive, I try to feel upbeat. It's getting harder each month to do so. This week, I had three different people at three different places (two of them were at new doctors offices I've gone to) give me unsolicited advice or thoughts on infertility. Why do nurses feel the need to tell you a success story they've heard about just because they read your "Meds" list and see the reason you're on the medicine is due to "infertility"? Why do people think telling you to "stop thinking about it so much" or "relax and stop stressing about it" or "God will give you the desires of your heart if you are just patient".... He may not. Ok? God may not ever give us a child. Show me one place in the bible where God says, "Hey, I will give each person that comes into this world a child or their own." Why do people say this to me!? Is it because they don't know of anything else to say?! Relaxing will NOT get you pregnant! You try NOT thinking about a disease you have that is altering the path your life takes forever! That's like telling someone who had an arm amputated to stop thinking about it. I feel like a part of me and my life is being carved out, amputated, removed, eliminated, erased, forgotten. Hearing a success story is great, but don't get your feathers ruffled when all I say back is, 'They must be so excited' in a pretty monotone voice. I can't fake excitement for your cousins friend who tried for six months to conceive, gave up and then got pregnant two months later because they "weren't stressing anymore". Yes, they were. If you're TRYING, you're stressing. And no offense, but 34 months of this crap (Mom, I used crap there for you but it is NOT what I wanted to type in this situation!!!!!) is plenty patient and if God needed me to be patient, He should have given me the gift to start with because that is not something I excel at. In my case, patience doesn't get you pregnant. Relaxing doesn't get you pregnant. Sex doesn't get you pregnant and apparently reproductive medicine doesn't get you pregnant either! So don't mind me if I'm unfriendly, if I glare at you for even opening your mouth about how miserable you have it because your kids are out of school and driving you nuts, if I don't shoot confetti out of my rear end when you announce your 21 year old just had her 3rd child ("maybe you should sit next to my daughter because all she has to do is look at a man and she gets pregnant" - Yes, bring her in and I'll dry hump her to be sure I get all kinds of her fertile mojo all over me!), if I yell at you for doing everything your doctor told you NOT to do while you're pregnant or if I beast cry at the most inappropriate times and make you really uncomfortable. I'm fighting a battle of bloody epic proportions in my heart and mind and soul and I don't really have a lot of energy left to spend on niceties, false or otherwise.
I know it's not Thursday so pardon the vomitous eruption of emotions here.....I had to get it out and while I am probably not even close to done, I feel like a negative parasite and should probably wrap this up before I suck every happiness and hope out of any of you still reading this jumbled, garbled deluge of self-pity.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Thought Vomit Thursday! Get It While It's Hot!
I have literally felt so uneducated this last week. I don't mean like the "I didn't get the proper education" uneducated, but more like the "I don't know enough about my "situation" to know if I'm on the right track, the wrong track or no track at all" uneducated. I read your blogs, I see your stats and your measurements and your test results and I can't help but wonder why I don't know all of mine off the top of my gourd and does that mean I am not serious about this infertility business? I feel like I'm serious business. I also have no clue what 90% of the hormones the doctor is testing me for are supposed to do and if mine are at normal or abnormal levels? I will say though, I have come a long way in the past year or two.
Before last year, I had no idea where my cervix was or what it did, where my uterus was hanging out in there and where it all was in relation to my fallopian tubes and ovaries (which I was semi-familar with). Up until one year ago, I had NO idea that your cervix was a little tubish shaped thing with a hole at the end. I kind of thought...never mind. You get the point. Sure, I have seen the diagrams but they are usually a frontal view and I needed a more accurate and lifelike illustration to help my visual-learning self come to grips with what the doc was seeing when I was on the table being fileted during my once a year appointment. Thanks to a lovely book my friend gave me, I now get it and understand and can pretend to be knowledgeable during my procedures that involve discussion about such things.
What I do NOT get is how medications work, how they effect my body, why we use them, what my hormones should be doing, which tests do I need, which tests have I had and ultimately, why is nothing we're doing working and by working I mean getting pregnant?
Tuesday, I had my 12 day scan. I had done what Dr. S asked of me and taken the crappy anastrazole for the alloted time and so there I sat, with bated breath, while we waited for the ax to drop. As you'll recall, last month, the anastrazole did nothing more for me than my body was naturally doing. I produced ONE follicle, released one egg and didn't get pregnant. What happened, was not at all what we expected. Who happily gobbled up an entire humble pie and asked for seconds? This girl.
We had three follicles. They measured in at a lofty 10, 12 & 14 mm's. All on the right side which is usually my "quiet" side. The left was completely silent this month. A ghost-town if you prefer. Dr. S was pleased and said my endometrium was nice and fluffy, triple-striped and measuring 9 mm I think it was. She told us to go home, continue the OPK's and when we had an LH surge to call and report it but if we didn't have one by Thurs or Friday morning to let them know and we'd do a trigger shot Friday with an IUI Saturday. Easy as humble pie.
While we were there, Rik asked if we needed to sign up for the class on the injectable meds and go ahea and have those ordered so they'd be here for next month just in case this month was another failure. Dr. S basically said that she didn't think injectable meds would be a good benefit for us because it would only increase our chances about 1-2% because we have already had so many failed attempts w/ IUI's after good responses from Clomid & now Anastrazole. She said there gets to be a point when you have to start questioning the fertilization process, egg quality and other more serious problems. It wasn't easy to hear at all. I have to tell you at one point I thought I was going to fall over. She said those problems were confirmed and worked around by IVF. The three letters I never wanted to hear. She said she would recommend continuing with the oral medication and IUI's until we couldn't do it anymore emotionally and then move on to IVF if we still weren't successful.
We left with our results both happy and sad. Overall, I felt pretty good because that little light of hope was already starting to shine through the clouds and lift my spirits. Three follicles this month! Then my mind started working and thinking and wondering about things that maybe it shouldn't, but usually does and I end up emotional, frustrated and cranky. By the end of the day, I was all of those things.
Total sidenote here: At the old clinic, they did lots of things to/for me like prescriptions, scans, bloodwork, trigger shots and tests during a cycle (albeit with wretched service) . It sounds like the same happens for all of you ladies as well. I got accustomed to that level of pampering (not that being stuck and jabbed and poked with the DC is pampering, but in this twisted IF world we live in, you get my drift) and at this clinic, it's more hands-off, let your body do the work if it's working and we'll do our part when it decides to cooperate. My body cooperates and they do their thing and viola! No baby.
So my thoughts were centered around why they were letting me ovulate on my own instead of using the trigger shot to release more eggs, does my body only release one egg naturally, and if so, why the heck are we trying to create more follicles with medicine when we are only taking a stab at one per month anyway? So I started trying to figure out if the hcg shot causes more than one egg to release (I had no idea!) and it seemed like that was a true statement. Then I started researching ovulation and it seemed like what I read stated that the most mature egg would release during ovulation. Naturally, I was confused. I felt like we should be getting two or three follicles to release each month so that we had more than one shot to get pregnant. Again, I've already admitted I'm uneducated about this girls so don't beat me over the head if you already see where this is going! :) Ultimately, I just needed to know one thing, "What's the point?"
I received a positive LH surge yesterday morning and called it in. They scheduled our IUI for this morning. While I had the nurse on the line, I asked her the above questions and she stumbled around a bit and ended up sort of confirming what I was thinking and then also saying I should ask Dr. S. So, Rik and I discussed everything last night and I typed out a few questions this morning that I wanted answers to. I always get nervous or anxious in the room and all of my well planned questions and coherent thoughts take a vacation the second the doc asks if we have any questions for her! She surprised me when I pulled out my sheet of paper today (with about 9 questions on it) by pulling up her stool and reading them all one by one, taking time to thoughtfully explain each and every one of them for us. I had to fight back tears the whole time and ended up covered in hives by the time it was all said and done, which also happens when I am nervous or anxious or both. The IUI didn't help things either because it had actually been the most painful one I've had to date. Stupid tilted thing-a-ma-jig aka uterus.
Here were my questions and her answers and hopefully, this will help someone else that might be uneducated and confrused about what the heck is going on down there and why we are doing what we're told to do in the first place.
1.) Does ovulating naturally (without a trigger shot) release only one egg? Dr. S = Not necessarily. If you have two that are mature, two can release naturally and the same goes with three. That is why we have you take the oral medicine so that you have as many mature follicles as possible by the time you have an LH surge or we give you an hcg injection.
2.) Does HCG cause more eggs to be released if there are several mature follicles? Dr. S = Yes and no. It causes you to ovulate when you're body doesn't naturally. The reason we let you ovulate on your own is because at times the risk outweighs the rewards in that hcg can cause your eggs to die if they aren't mature enough when released. When you're not ovulating on your own, obviously that risk is worth taking because the benefits are that you will then ovulate and hopefully one or two will survive. (this one, i got a little fuzzy on because I thought about it too much so this may not have been her exact response but it's close)
3.) What is actually considered a mature follicle? I think she said anything over 13 or 14 mm's.
4.) If ovulating naturally releases only the most mature follicle/egg why are we taking medicine to produce more follicles and then being allowed to ovulate naturally, releasing only one egg anyway? ((See above so she didn't really have to answer this one.))
5.) What benefits are there to taking medicine if this is the case (above)? Dr. S = The goal is to get several mature follicles by the time you ovulate so that you do have a couple of eggs that are released.
6.) Can we be more aggressive without moving on to IVF? Or is this our next best option? Dr. S = Not in our case. Basically, we fall into a grey area in that we are partially unexplained infertility, partially explained by endometriosis. The possibility of getting pregnant doubles for people with endometriosis during the six months after having the surgery and getting it all cleaned up. With us, however, it's not really that cut and dry because I didn't have any of the closed off fallopian tubes, seriously effected ovaries or misshaped/deformed uterus that was corrected in surgery. At this point, it's a waiting game and if it doesn't work in six months or so with what we're doing, we'll have to decide if we want to move forward with IVF to check egg quality and fertilization issues. My body responds so well to oral meds and I ovulate like clock-work it seems so it really doesn't make a ton of sense why this isn't working.
7.) Why were injectable meds mentioned at our last IUI if not it's not something that would really increase our chances of conception? (I had gotten excited thinking we were heading in a new/agressive direction and now I feel really let down and like we have hit a dead-end.) Dr. S = At the time of the last IUI, we hadn't gotten any response out of the Anastrazole. If we hadn't gotten the response we needed from it this month, she was going to pair it with something to stimulate my ovaries and just let the Anastrazole do it's thing with my lining. Since we did get the response we needed this time, there is no use in using injectables because getting five or six or more follies is not something they want to see (and I don't either). I just had NO idea that's why she recommended it or why it was no longer something that could benefit us. I am happy with this answer, most of all.
8.) Do we have any idea why this isn't working or what our problem might be? Dr. S = Nope. Hopefully, it's just a matter of time and we do something right and get a positive result. I have to keep reminding myself we have had one IUI since surgery (even if only slightly increased our chances) and it was working with ONE follicle. Patience.
9.) Are there any other tests that can be done? Dr. S = You've had them. Other than retrieving eggs and testing them in the lab/doing IVF, there aren't any other tests to do.
So, I'm still a mystery....but a smarter one now. I'm still frustrated but more so at my body than anything else. I'm still cranky, but mostly just because I'm tired of all of this, depressed that I've gained an extra 10-15 lbs, exhausted from the emotional mess I stay these days and annoyed that I haven't done more Q&A in the past. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had thought to ask all of this information on the front end or at least during the past year.
Anyway, she sent us on our merry way today by telling us to take a home pregnancy test in two weeks and let them know the results. Sure, I still wish I could go to the office and have them draw my blood and then let me know, but I'll do it the ol' fashioned way and POAS like the rest of the TTC community. She also recommended that I start taking a different Progesterone supplement, one that doesn't cause me to look like Sponge Bob Square Pants.
And to round out this post which has turned into a seriously long novel that could have been delivered in a Trilogy (a la Matrix or Lord of the Rings), I give you (insert dramatic drumroll) my stats, measurements and a few test results. Yep, I asked for a printout! I'm such a big girl these days (and I don't mean because I'm chubby now)!
Baseline Ultrasound (I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS MEASURED!!!!!): Antral Follicle Count 10-20 (read somewhere that this is "normal")
IUI Cycle #1:
Clomid 50 mg x 5 days starting CD 5
3 follicles greater than 16 mm (one was 30)
Endometrium 9mm
10k hcg given
TMC (what's this stand for exactly, I know it's the specimen that was used for insemination) 13 million
Provera 10mg started for 10 days (this is NOT true - I didn't take Provera, ever....Thanks old clinic!)
BIG FAT NEGATIVE!
IUI Cycle #2:
Clomid 50 mg x 5 days starting CD 3
3 follicles greater than 16 mm
Endometrium 9 mm
TMC 11 million
hcg 10k given at home by hubby
E2 = 254 pg/ml (Estradiol is at a normal level)
THIS is when I started taking Prometrium 3 x's a day on CD 14 but it's not mentioned in my chart. Thanks again old clinic!
BFN
IUI Cycle # 3:
Clomid 50 mg x 5 days starting CD 5 - I still think I was at CD 7 at this point but devil nurse insisted
3 follicles greater than 15 mm (I had already ovulated at this point though - Thank you old clinic!)
Endometrium 12 mm
hcg 10k after natural ovulation
Progesterone was 8.9 when tested (no clue what cycle day this was though)
Prometrium 3 x per day for 12 days starting CD 14
NO IUI performed, just timed intercourse (the name of which makes me think you're supposed to use a stop watch or something - makes me giggle)
BFN
IUI Cycle # 4: NEW CLINIC
Anastrazole 2 mg x 5 days starting CD 3
Endometrium 9 mm
1 follicle @ 16 mm on CD 12
No hcg given
Motile Sperm Count 39 million
Prometrium 1 x per day for 7 days before eye-bulging incident and discontinued :)
BFN
IUI Cycle # 5:
Anastrazole 2 mg x 5 days starting CD 3
Endometrium 9 mm
3 follicles - 10, 12, 14 mm on CD 12
NO hcg given
Motile Sperm Count 32 million
Progesterone supplement to be started on CD 16
results: TBD
If you hung around this long, thank you and I love you.
Shannon
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