Dreams and False Alarms

In which I compare failing at IVF to The Chicken Ranch

Hi.

Sorry about just dropping out like that. I'm not sure of what to say, of how much I even want to know about what I'm feeling and thinking at this point. This could turn out to be a long post, or a short post...

I am crushed.  Yes, partially by the negative--even though I was ambivalent and scared of a positive, it would have also have been wonderful. I literally feel crushed.  I think that the weight of what I've been doing for the last three years, and in the case of IVF, for the last year and half, finally came down on me.  I think that my way of coping was to repress how hard it was (not completely, but enough), and to keep my eyes on the prize.  As negative and as anxious as I was, I really believed that IVF could help us, and my faith was renewed when we found out about the translocation--maybe I really did have the same chance as a lot of other nearly 39 year olds.  This last cycle seems to indicate that my eggs are kaput.  Whatever it is that they need to have produce a healthy embryo/baby is just not there. Maybe in 20 years they'll know what that is, but for right now, it's unknowable.  In some ways that is a relief--to have a knowable problem, and to not be able to solve it would be a different kind of hard.

Another way that this has all crashed down on me is financially.  At the beginning of the cycle I kept having the idea that infertility treatment is like the Chicken Ranch, a movie that those of you who took Women's Studies classes in the '90's can probably remember. The scene that has always stuck with me was the girl Mandy who at one point in the movie, after a particularly lucrative session, is talking about how great it is to be a prostitute, and then later when she's pissed off the madam or the owner is forced to the an 'around the world' for the cost of a lesser act.  She is crying, she is raging, she is humiliated, she is ultimately fired for her outburst.  I think that scene has stuck with me all these years because it so clearly illustrated how when you are doing something hard, with the idea that you will get something good at the end (money in her case, a baby in mine), the humiliation, the hardships, the endurance that it takes to just get through the damn thing is tied to the end result. When you don't get it, the reality of what you've just put yourself though comes crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. In the past there was always the next cycle, the next idea, the next last thing. And now it is over, and it is sad, a relief, a huge loss, and more than I can even articulate.

I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.  If the DE/DS cycle doesn't work, we will be broke and still without a child.  I realize that may sound like catastrophizing, but just because we came out on the wrong side of the odds this time, doesn't guarantee we won't again.  Someone has to make up that 40% who don't get a baby with DE--I really fucking hope that isn't us for once.

It is getting pretty hard to keep taking money out of the savings account and telling ourselves that it is going to get us anything--pretty soon there won't be anything to take out...ugh.

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While I am grateful for what we do have (each other, our kitties, some version of healthy, a good job (husband) and a job that I love, I can't help but feel all that we don't have at the moment, and the dwindling resources we have to get a child. If we were to stop all this pregnancy stuff, and move to adoption, the cost would be about the same as a DE cycle, and the wait would be 2 to 3 years.  I know that county adoptions move faster, but not always as fast as people think.  It could still be 2 to 3 years.

I feel very isolated--not because people don't care, but because it feels so impossible to explain how profoundly and utterly lost I feel at the moment. And I don't want to hear that it isn't the cards I'm dealt, but how I play them. I want to hear "This hand sucks, and that's all there is to say."  It isn't that I don't want to feel hopeful at some point, but right now this is just fucking awful, and there isn't a silver lining.

I know that eventually I will feel better, but I think at this point I am really feeling the damage this has done to me. And I think that is reasonable. It has kicked my ass, and no amount of endurance has changed the fact that no matter how much we spent, or how hard I tried, or how good I was, or how stoic I was in the face of failure after failure, this didn't work, and it's not going to work, and it was harder than most people can ever imagine. I have been through some very very hard times in my life, but the difference was that I could do something to change them. I could leave my ex-husband, I could go to college, I could go to therapy, I could find a better man. I can't do anything about this. This is what it is. It is just over, broken, fucked, unfixable.  No child, no matter how they come to us, will change the facts of the last 3 years.  They may soften the blow, fill us with more joy than we can imagine, but this is immutable.

This is the end of an era. This is the end of IVF. This is the end of the idea that I can be helped. This is the end of feeling like every penny is worth spending if it gets us our child.

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Compared to most people, I don't have a lot of pregnant friends and baby showers to contend with.  But a friend and his wife are having a baby in November, and their shower is in a month.  I looked at their registry and thought "You two are missing so many really important things, and have way too many of the 'hyped but useless' stuff on here."  I felt so...annoyed. Here I am, having collected and observed, and thought through all this stuff for YEARS, and I'm still on the fucking sidelines.  In the end I bought them two things that I know have been lifesavers for my friend with twins, and left it at that. They'll figure it out, and I don't have to do a thing.  But ya know, it just killed me to do it again, to buy a gift I'd like to have for myself, to have for my child. And here I am again on the sidelines.  In this case, it was pretty painful, probably because of where I am (duh), but also because I feel so invisible. With my friend who has twins I don't feel invisible, and that makes it so much easier to really get in and enjoy the babies. With most people though, I'm just invisible. Of course I don't have to be but, what do you say? "I'm so happy for you, but I just got a negative pregnancy test for a cycle that cost 12K and buying you a baby gift is pretty much going to rip a little more of my heart up." No, I don't say that. I buy the gift, Husband and I lean on each other for support, and leave as early as possible.

Argh, I'm rambling.

We went to a bbq on labor day, all of the people there have kids. We didn't know 2 of the couples at all. The host and another couple were more of known quantity.  Somehow the subject of 'snowflake babies' came up, and embryology, IVF and all sorts of other things were just being mangled. Husband and I both just sat there dumbstruck. I knew that If I said something it would come out somewhere between a strangled cry and bitchy, and I just couldn't do it. The host is a dear, and she has been nothing but a true friend through this whole awful ordeal, but it struck me just how hard it is to be in 'mixed company'--I have limited myself so much to people who are in the know, that I've forgotten how hard it is to be with regular people who don't have to know the intricacies of embryology, or cryopreservation or the difference between IVF and insemination. 

When the hell with this stuff just be a bad memory?  I'm exhausted.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you feel like a can of mixed nuts.

Let me just start by saying, I am kinda nuts, but also, not as 'nuts' as I need to be sometimes.  If I were more nuts in someways, I think I'd feel better, not so bottled up.

Our dear friends, who I wrote about here, are pregnant. After about 2 months of trying, sperm met egg, egg invited sperm in, cell division party progressed, and then it went on a trip down the tubes and implanted. For you infertiles out there, this is how it works for other people. No sono, no shots, no surgery, no speculum with a full bladder, no catheter in your cervix.  Go figure.  The process actually works for some people.

As you can imagine my reaction to this news was pretty mixed. In one part of myself I am so happy for them; so happy that they are not in this hell of infertility. And in another part of myself, I am so envious that it is scary. I think that envy, that kind of jealousy that has an ugly edge to it, is one of the hardest emotions for me to deal with. It is sort of a cliché that infertiles are bitter and envious, and say awful destructive things about people who get pregnant. But not me.  I've indulged in the odd bitter outpouring of why me, but to really feel the ugly envy towards people I love, who have achieved something I wanted so badly for myself, and who will be such wonderful parents, and have been such wonderful friends to us, was pretty much intolerable. Of course, being the pillar of mental health that I am, instead of just feeling envious I attacked myself, my eggs, my effort, my fitness to be a mother and on and on. My husband, who is the soul of patience (even when he shouldn't be), finally snapped and couldn't take it any more.  He was tired of this implosion that happens every time someone gets pregnant instead of me, and get the f&*k over it. He did retract that last part.  Ugh. 

Again, my wonderful therapist gave words to some of my crazy thoughts, and it was such a huge relief to just admit these ugly feelings, and not take that energy and smack myself around with it.  To say I'm over beating myself up about infertility, goes too far, but at least I have something else to wrap my head around.

We didn't even try this month. both of us were emotionally a bit fragile after the maelstrom of the week, and then Sat am both of us suffered a sacroiliac joint pain extravaganza--husband can't sit, and certainly can't do the baby lambada.  So for the first time in 2 years, there is truly no chance I'm gonna get pregnant. I feel mixed about this as well. On one hand, to not even try feels very sad, but on the other, it is a relief. I know my period will come either on thanksgiving or the day after, and the IVF extravaganza will begin. 

In general, I'm working a lot more than I have been for the last year and a half, so my posting is suffering. But mostly, I've  been trying to live the not infertile part of my life a little more fully lately, and that is important too. I hope you'll stick around, even if the posts are a little sparse for a while. Remember, December is IVF #3, so posting of mundane but important details will resume at that time.

Rouge Ovary

I don't know if I have adequately conveyed the amount of pain I have been in since the retrieval.  It has been awful. From the moment I woke up from the TVA on Saturday it was clear that my right ovary was in distress. It took me an extra 3 shots of fentanyl to get off the table in the recovery room, and no positions, save kneeling next to my bed with my belly hanging down gave me any relief.  Also peeing has been horrendous. Each time I would sit down it was as if all of my internal organs would try to crowd down onto my bladder and the normal umpf one puts behind peeing was really painful. And then on Monday the pain from my bladder got so bad that I thought my ovary was improving. You guessed it, I had a bladder infection.  I was in such a state of accommodation Monday that I thought I was feeling a little better, as long as I stayed standing, didn't walk too much and hung my belly. That is NOT what I would consider a normal recovery. I was sort of getting the run around from my Doctor and Nurse, which was frustrating.

I woke up at 3 am Tuesday morning with some throbbing pain that was mostly distracting, but not excruciating. I took Tylenol, sat on the couch with my bucky bag, so as not to fall asleep with the heating pad on my belly. And by 6am I could tell things were not right. I waited until 7:30, called the IVF nurse, who again was having a hard time understating that I was not just experiencing 'regular' pain. Finally, on the verge of tears, I told her I was getting very scared and that I wanted to talk to the doctor.

Finally the doctor called around 8:30, mostly to tell us that we needed to do a 3 day transfer because we had one eight celled embryo and three five celled embryos, and it seemed as if we might not make it to a 5 day, but she wanted to examine me because she didn't want to do the transfer if I was in too much pain. I crab walked into the office, sat with my eyes closed just squeezing the life out of my husband's hand and trying not to mewl in pain.  We finally get in to see Dr. Calm and she could see that my right ovary was up and out in stead of down and in (should be lower and 'behind', to some degree, the uterus.). She gave us orders for a doppler ultrasound to insure that the ovary had blood flow, and then we had to talk about what to do with the embryos.

Ugh. She recommend that we either freeze them at day three and do an FET in October, or let them grow until Thursday, and transfer what we've got then.  The two of them bandied back and forth about the science and the timelines etc, but I just laid there and thought of how to minimize the heartbreak quotient.  After my husband had all his questions answered he asked me what I wanted to do. I was surprised at how clearly I could feel and articulate my preference : I wanted to attempt to go to day 5, because I believe that the lab medium is really good and what ever chance the 8 celled one had, I'd rather know it petered out in the lab, then to freeze it and have to wait until November to find out if it was viable beyond 8 cells. It seems sort of cold,but for me it was the most self-compassionate option I could come up with.  I want this cycle to be self contained--I can't bear to have it hanging out there.  So with that decided, we went to the hospital.

I had a 45 minute ultrasound, both looking at my pelvis and my abdomen (to rule out appendicitis). They determined that my ovary was out of position, but that it wasn't twisted, so that was great news because I really didn't want to have 'lost an ovary' as part of this whole extravaganza of the lamest cycle ever. Ok, I'm sure my first one was worse, but this cycle reminds me of a road trip.  Have you ever taken a road trip in a car that seems like its ok, but once you get it out on the open road the water pump goes, the radio only works on am, the tires are inexplicably bald etc etc? That is how this cycle has seemed to me. It is as if we have been driving down the road having to stop at repair shops every other day. Just as soon as all the problem seem fixed, another one crops up.  Ugh. Back to the US: they called my doc, told her it wasn't twisted and she said she'd call us at home. 2 hours went by. I hadn't eaten anything because she said we might do surgery. Around 2 o'clock the pain was the worst it has ever been. I was in my bedroom kneeling on the floor with my arms on my bed weeping. I got my husband to track down the doctor and get it across to her that the pain was excruciating. I think she didn't realize how bad it was because after her exam, where she might have moved it into a less awful place temporarily, I could walk out of her office. But also, I think she just didn't get it. I have that effect on people. It's as if most people, except my husband thank God, my physical pain doesn't seem to to be so bad. It isn't as if I hold back, or don't tell how much it hurts. Maybe my mother put some kind of invisible tattoo on my head saying "Pay no attention to the little drama queen." Anyhoo, Dr Calm got the picture, scheduled the Laparoscopy and got me admitted for pain control.

We made it to the hospital before our orders did, but my hero hunted down a live person in the doctors office and got me admitted, but quick. Have I adequately expressed how wonderful my husband is in these situations? He is a results-seeking-missile and very sweet to me. The down side (if you could call it that), is that he is fierce about monitoring my 'resting'. The upside and downside to his working at home.

The morphine, which is usually the one I count on did not much about the pain, made me nauseas and gave me a local reaction.  Thankfully the Anesthesiologist came by, gave me some relaxation meds (maybe versed?), and got me up the operating room.  I had to have throat tube, so my throat is a bit sore today, but my belly is NOT! From the moment I work up I could tell that things were going to be better. I had a little bit of throbbing, but it felt normal, not amping up to excruciating.  I got lots of Demerol, a cup of apple juice to sip and some of the best saltines of my life.

When we got home I had some chicken soup, more lovely saltines and 2 vicodin.  I toddled off to bed with my viocodin and a glass of water. I did wake up every 4 hours, not so much from pain, but because vicodin kind of makes me wired. I took, an ambian around 3:30 and slept until 7.  Then I snuck down stairs and did the dishes!!!!!!!!!  Good lord that felt good. It is really frustrating to have to sit around and not even do things for yourself. 

Next bit of news should be whether or not there is an embryo, or embryos to transfer tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Miscarriage: The gift that keeps on giving

Crikey. Random wandering (originally typed as wanding), grumpy post. Perhaps with lightening by the end.

It has been a hard week around here. After the post on Sunday I went into a bit of a depressive slide, which is ok because having a miscarriage and starting another IVF is depressing, but alas, it was not fun.  In addition my back was out in an odd way that made it really painful to sit, sleep or breathe. I got some relief Monday, but it has been an uphill battle around here. Not to mention the buckets of snot in my head.  Hello? What the Fuck?  I don't have a cold, the drugs are doing me no good. I demand, uh, I don't know, fairness in mucus production? Yeah, right.

Tuesday I went to the eye doctor, and low and behold, what was previously considered dry eyes of pregnancy (exactly the same symptoms when I went in June, mind you) was now an infection. No shit Sherlock.  So my reefer madness eye is fading back to white in the whites, if you know what I mean. Oh yeah, and the republican convention was kind of sucking my soul out through my pores.  Painful.  However, Mr. John Stewart helped a lot when he called Chris Matthews a lying sack of shit (after showing him contradicting himself).  That gave me a boost.  I wanted to grind their snotty little faces in the shit  they were slinging, but alas, nobody asked me. Thank goodness my proxy JS was on the job.

Now to the infertility portion of grumpiness. Where the hell is my stupid period? No, I'm not pregnant. Really. I tested again. And when it came out negative I took a huge handful of decongestants. If I apply a q-tip to the canal I get a faint staining of bloodish, uh, stain, but no flow. I'm assuming it will gather force by tomorrow and be the first day of the cycle, and then wanding on Sunday. I already scheduled it. Our clinic has two offices, one of which is open only during the week. The other one is about 35 minutes away, so having a 7am appointment would not be kosher on a Sunday.  I want my husband to come with me so that if there is bad or mixed news (a big honkin' cyst) I don't have to deal with it alone.

I have all my meds in the fridge, all my syringes ready to poke me, and a now all I need is the blood! BWAHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAH!

Healthy as a frickin' horse and a bit of a pity party

So it turns out I do have 1 copy of the MTHFR gene, but my homocystine is very low, so that means I doing a great job of metabolizing folic acid, and am therefore not clotting overly enthusiastically from that malady. Neither do I have the cardiolipin dealie, so basically we are back to "Gee, we have really no idea why you aren't getting pregnant, and no idea why you miscarried."  Argh.

I did manage to regain my calm, about Thursday, so that was good.  But I realized yet another way that grief had infiltrated my daily living: I had not done anything beyond the minimal paperwork at work so that I could avoid writing any of the days of the month of July.  As I started to do one task which required that I write 7/3/08 over and over, I realized I was reliving that morning and afternoon over and over again.  It helped to at least recognize that and then I could push through and do some of the more complex stuff that was weighing me down, and contributing to the feeling that I couldn't catch up.

Over the last 4 days I've been digging my way through paperwork at work, and all of the receipts, credit card offers and things to file that have literally be threatening to fall of my desk at home. It felt good.

AND THEN...

Ok, so that is a bit dramatic, but ya know, you are having a cleansing experience, and feeling like you are going to really make some headway and put the IF and M/C in perspective and just do your best to enjoy the next 6 weeks?  Yeah, well, if you want to do that, don't decide to attend your 20th high school reunion. Oh, and don't spend an hour looking at the class website with all of your classmates and their adorable pictures of their adorable children.  That is a recipe for a pity party.  I went to run some errands and get a mani/pedi and the whole time I was about 10 steps from the verge of tears.  This was yet another occasion I had imagined being at pregnant.  Crap.  So I came home, told my husband I was having a pity party, and even felt bad because I know my single friends were having their own pity parties about their singleness and there were probably pity parties going on all over town about one thing or another. Heck, were in our late thirties, there has been some shit that has transpired.  So I told myself to suck it up, and got myself together.  So, it was a short pity party, and I actually had a really fabulous time with some people I knew pretty well, and others I didn't, and myself and another guy put ourselves in charge of name tags and so for the whole party I was carrying around a sharpie and a clutch of name tags and having a grand time--give me a job and I am the life of the party. No job and I'm still making a spectacle of myself.

The pity party was also in part about feeling old looking and frumpy and feeling like everyone else would look so great.  Yeah, no so much.  On the whole, there were a lot of receding hairlines, some really slim and lovely ladies, many of them hotter than in high school, and then a lot of gals like me: pretty faces, but holding extra pounds on the hips.  WHOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Not the only one wearing a double digit pants size.  Yeah, I'm shallow and petty, I admit it.

Blargh. Ack. Ugh. Damn

Dr Calm called this afternoon to say that they couldn't complete a chromosomal analysis on Sparky because the tissue was too old to grow a culture.  Ugh. That means he (Sparky is a he in my mind) had been dead a while before it was detected.  Ugh. 

So now my calm is disturbed, just as I knew it would be.  Dr. Calm asked if we wanted to take genetic tests, we could.  She doesn't recommend it, but does want us to know our options.  She said it is 99% chance that it was a random genetic problem.  I'd love to be so sure.

My husband is less inclined to do the testing. I'm more inclined.  I feel like we have these two windows, and once they close, we are out of full bio-kid options.  And as controversial as that may be, but right now, taht is what I want. So, the current compromise is to get the codes, and check with the insurance company, and then go from there.

In terms of moving towards the next cycle, I have been haphazardly doing OPK tests (last one on Friday 7-25, resounding negative), and then I did one this morning, and it was a resounding positive, so the stabilization continues.  I probably got the surge yesterday (and uh, unknowingly, 'baby danced' [barf]), and today was likely day two. I'll do another tomorrow and if it's fading, I'll have a rough idea of where I am in my cycle. If my estimations are vaguely correct, I should expect my period around the 10th, be ovulating in the middle of my vacation (woo hoo!), and then getting my next period the first week of September.  All good, except I need to do another mock transfer between day 6 & 10, and I'll be in the woods.  Hmmm.  I'm sure my period will be a day early or something, so I'll deal with that freak-out later.

Onwards.

A streetcar filled with dangerous desires

So here is a new problem: it is day 12, and I haven't had my LH surge yet.  Except the months when I was on clomid, I averaged an LH surge on day 10.  So I'm a little freaked out. A lot freaked out, actually.  For the most part I haven't had the feeling of my body failing me, but at the moment I feel on edge about whether or not this damn cycle (in may), is going to happen. We have one year from when we signed our Shared Risk plan, to use the cycles, and every month we don't cycle is agony on the one hand and chipping away at time on the other.  We are going to talk to Dr Calm today, just to clarify some things about the protocol, and to consider whether to go ahead with this next cycle if the LH surge ever shows up, or to wait for another cycle.

It occurred to me this morning that one of the costs of globalization,for me, is despair. I am a Morn.ing Edi.tion/Al.l Thin.gs Consid.ered  junkie, but because of the state of the world, and the state of me, I just feel so much despair about the pine trees dying in Canada, and the cobalt miners in Congo, and anything to do with Ice Sheets.  I remember when I was small my family watched All in the Family.  When Gloria and Mike were planning to get pregnant, or were pregnant, Mike (AKA Meathead) was on a rant about bringing a child into 'this world'.  I feel like that to some degree, but on a more immediate basis, I wonder about myself; can I bear to be in this world?  Clearly this is the depression talking,and I need to turn off the radio. I hate feeling this numb and yet I am clearly so vulnerable and fragile.

I've been reeling from reading  Kateri's  birth mother posts. Lordy, she feels  just as I imagine I would if I were a birth mother, but the likelihood I will be the adoptive mother is much higher at this point (hey, that is something I can say with certainly!). I really got myself into a frenzy this weekend, feeling as if adopting was bad and wrong and violent. Violent was the word that kept circling in my head. I felt that if my desire to be a mother has to be built on the violence of ripping a child away from a mother, then maybe I just don't deserve to be a mother.  I felt overwhelmed by how awful it is to have a desire and not be able to satisfy it myself (even with IVF), and that if I couldn't I should just go a way and die. Yep. That is where I went. I don't mean suicide, but more of a psychic death; I would roll myself up and go away. I can't imagine the desire to be a mother  would ever leave me, so I would just be a damaged husk of a person, wrapped around my grief. It is as if when I am in the presence of someone else's loss, my gain feel sinister and sadistic.  It is too much to bear being both a loser and a sadist.  I know that there is more to adoption than this, and I know that cutting the birth mother from consciousness is the dominant discourse because it protects the adoptive family. I also understand that open adoption is a way to open up that discourse and shift so that everyone's losses are taken into account.  But inside of me, the feeling that I could be committing a act of violence is hard to shake. 

So here i sit with my quite ovaires, my desire, and not a damn thing I can do but pee on sticks and cry.