Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Turning Lemons into Lemonade

I’m baaack! after a little hiatus. The time off was good. I needed a break. I felt that I was really at the precipice of something and I needed to pull back. I skipped one cycle after the Tougher than Tina Cycle went bust. I took some time to regroup.

Here is a short list of things I did during my hiatus in no particular order.

10. Taught myself aromatherapy
9. Watched The Wire on HBO
8. Started to look for another job
7. Taught myself how to sew
6. Asked myself ‘why’
5. Bought more sweats
4. Received a stuffed bulldog as present
3. Tried not to think about the TTC
2. Obsessed about the TTC
1. Figured out how to Nadia’s health insurance to pay for IVF

Not bad, eh?

Well, I knew that AF would come on either last Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. My body runs like clockwork, what can I tell you? I called the doctor’s office to find out when Dr. Feelgood would be there because I did not want to deal with Dr. Killjoy.

The nurse told me that he would be in on Monday and I told her that was trying to avoid Dr. Killjoy, if possible. She said many, many patients feel the same way I do.

She gave me a tip—“Drink lemon juice”, she said.

‘Huh?’ I replied.

She said that drinking lemon juice can delay your period by one day. I told her I was on my way out to buy a bottle of lemonade. Actually, I drank lemon tea for the entire weekend, so AF did not come until Sunday night.

Anyhoo, I woke up early on Monday and arrived at the doctors at 7:20am and the room was packed. I have never seen it so packed.

I had to wait an hour an a half to see Dr. Feelgood. When I was finally back in the stirrups, he discovered that I had a cyst left over from the last injectible cycle—two cycles ago. He told me that I should go on the pill and return in two weeks. The egg drop drama continues!

So now I am on the pill and waiting to start my last injectible cycle before I go to IVF. If this doesn’t work I will have to wait until I can get on Nadia’s insurance sometime this summer.

It’s good to be back. Thanks for hanging in with me.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome back!
Sorry about the cyst, but I'm glad that news wasn't broken to you by Dr Killjoy.

Anonymous said...

Yea! It's great to hear from you. I'm sorry about the troubles and setbacks, but your attitude is great and you've got a supurb plan! I'm all hopes hun. ox

Anonymous said...

Dearest TTC Sistah,
Though I'm a recent interloper, I'm glad to have accidentally run into your blog. I'm sending you all of my wishes for conception. Like you and Nadia, me and my partner have been on this TTC roller coaster ride for some time, and boy does it have many unexpected twists & turns, enough to make you wanna puke. We started our journey maybe less than a year before you all did and it involved dealing with decisions of donors and finances, of internet researches, of dealing with western and non-western health care and so on. One of the differences with us is that my partner also wants to conceive, so you can imagine the pressure we both felt every cycle I got AF. It was like living in a pressure cooker, struggling with a menagerie of emotions. So, I can relate. And of course it's never fun having the medical system emotionally discourage you due to being over 35 y.o. We started the process with frozen fellas and were disheartened to learn that our donor's numbers dropped drastically from 70 million (average) to 7 million. His did not survive the freezing process very well. A midwife we consulted early on said his numbers were almost like being sterile. We were aghast. We had already fallen for this guy, an open donor who we liked, who we'd connected with, and traveled to Europe to meet. I'm African American, my partner is European American, and we had already envisioned what our our kids would look like being part Kenyan, part African American, part European American. So when the midwife suggested we give him a few months and move on, it was a hard decision. We'd invested so much, emotionally and financially. We used all of his stored frozen fellas then ran out. We were on "E" (empty) in every sense of the word. The decision to move on was difficult, given the finances of sperm banks & donors, or of traveling back to Europe to reconnect with him, or even bringing him to the U.S. for more donations. I even wondered if frozen would work for me, given my proclivity for the warmth. With heavy hearts, but with the desire to have children, we moved on. We had also been trying the low tech way and wondered if that was a good decision or a rash one. We didn't want to have to endure RE visits etc. We "paid" for 3 months of other sperm yet nothing resulted, and it was as if we knew nothing would happen. Call it instinct. Call it negativity. I don't know. But I knew they were long shots that wouldn't work. Nearly at our wit's end, broke, discouraged, and trying to ignore the continued medical advice of going the IUI/IVF route with drugs before it was too late, we decided to say to the universe to lead us in the right direction. Be it fate or fortune, during this rest period I reconnected with a friend I hadn't spoken to in more than 10 years, and we went to this long lost friend's party, where we "bumped" into a wonderful man, whom we courted and then propositioned in a 30 days. Were we desperate? No and yes. The clock was ticking for sure, but it also turned out that this great man has the qualities we wanted for our future kids, and that he had always imagined what it would be like to have children with multi-ethnic women who didn't require him as a co-parent. To make a long story short, he agreed and became "our man." We went through all the screening tests (imagine us finding out that his live sperm count was 250 million per mm!!! Way better than our first guy), signed agreements re: parental rights, and then decided that given our ages and frozen sperm's loss of potency, we'd continue the low tech way with fresh sperm. This led us to cycles of juggling three people's schedules and ovulation timing and learning about the ins and outs of keeping the fellas "cool" in your average stryofoam ice chest, ensuring they not get too hot nor too cold during L.A. commute from his home to ours. Eight cycles later, I learned I was pregnant and today I'm approaching my 14th week.

I know I'm lucky and blessed, especially when I see our little one in the ultrasound jumping about, sucking its thumb. I write this to let you know that we are the same age, and though I'm fortunate not to follow in the footsteps of my mother, my aunts, and my cousins, in not having fibroids, I too struggled with a glut of feelings like hopelessness, fear, frustration etc. I think what helps is listening to that little voice inside that tells you what you know, and if that voice says it will happen, it will happen, perhaps in its own time, and it's own way, but it will. When I was at my lowest points, when I struggled with acupuncture, with herbs, with western medicine making me feel that my ovaries were too old, my partner reminded me that I had to have faith in your body, faith that I could still conceive. I don't mean like in a Judeo-Christian way (though for some that may be how it presents itself) but the kind of faith I'm talking about is the one where you shut the world out, and you just listen to your body, you listen to its inner voice, and you flow with it, telling it and the universe that you hear it, that you want this child, that you open yourself to the spirit waiting on the other side to come into you. I know, it sounds all hokey-pokey but I grew up in the Bronx, and consider myself a prgmatist, so it's not a Cali thing. Anyway, I won't go on but after reading your moving blog and understanding most of what you are feeling, I wanted to reach out to you and to let you know that bit of the equation. I will keep you in my prayers and send you & Nadia baby conception vibes.

Be well. Don't drink too much caffeine (wink). And have faith in your body more than in science.

Warmest regards,
Lorna

Lizzie said...

You don't know me, but I'm delighted you are back!! Thinking all good thoughts for your new plan/attempts. xo Lizzie

Anonymous said...

yay! you are back!
Sorry for the crappiness.
I am holding out hope for you for this cycle and that you never have to cross that IVF bridge

Anonymous said...

I missed you, mamacita!

I think perhaps the looking for a new job is a good thing.

Also, though it made me cry and cry at the time, I think the birth control may be a good thing as well. Look what it did to me!

C&L said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
None said...

I am glad you're back, and glad you took a cycle off. (And that you avoided the evil doc.)

You know, a similar thing happened to me after a Clomid cycle. I did a Clomid cycle that didn't work, took a cycle off and then found out I had to spend 3 weeks on BC pills to make a leftover cyst go away. But it did and then I did injectables and had a kick-butt response. I also had Flipper 39 weeks later. I also was planning to do IVF the next cycle if that cycle hadn't worked. And it was March. If you can't take optimism from annoying me who has a baby, feel free to hate me. But who knows? Maybe it's history repeating itself. I can hope for you, right?

Take care. Let us know how it's going. And good for you for looking for a new job and wow, teaching yourself to sew.

Melissa said...

Welcome Back! We missed you :)

sara said...

I'm really glad you're back! I've been checking in just about every day just to see-- it sounds like you had a very productive "break" and I am thrilled to hear the news about your insurance!

Eva said...

Thanks for all of the supportive comments, gals! It's good to be back.

Lorna, you need to start your own blog, girl!

Good Luck!