Red Beans & Rice Noodles

My husband is funny

Thanks to Heather, who has a link on her site to this one. Both my husband and myself were entertained for a couple of hours/wasted a couple hours of time (however you want to look at it). So while I came up with a pretty standard little Sou.thpark me, Chuck's creations cracked me up.

Below we have, according the Chuck, “a photo from our upcoming vacation,” and “a shot... taken in the last week or so.” And if you're curious about what he looks like, I'm also adding a “self-portrait” he took. And, no, I don't know what is going on with the Freddy Kr.uger attire.

 

No shit!

And I mean that literally. I’m enjoying a nice post-surgery bout of major constipation. You’d think I’d be back to normal by now.

But you’d be wrong.

After five days of nuthin, my ob/gyn out of town, and no one in the doctors’ offices with the courtesy to return my call, I called my old RE again yesterday. He said to go to the emergency room. It might be nothing, but it could be an endometriosis-related obstruction, and they’d have all of the equipment and staff on hand to make a diagnosis. So I went, and it was the former. Big hoorah for me!

After x-rays and blood tests, they sent me home to do my very first enema. (Awwww!) I told Chuck we should do a scrapbook to commemorate the occasion. Instead I bought the latest Star magazine to read whilst on the pot.

One mineral oil and two regular enemas down (as prescribed). My body has reacted only slightly so far. We were supposed to go out with some friends tonight for fish tacos and margaritas. Methinks that may have to be postponed.

(Mom and Grandma would be appalled to read this indelicate entry. Erin, we do not speak like that! It’s improper to use that language or talk about such things. And maybe I’d get another book on etiquette from Grandma. I love Grandma, she’s so damn cute and proper.)

Is there a doctor in the house?

Here are two short dialogues which occured recently at ob/gyn appointments:

At the pre-op appointment:

Nurse: So I just have to ask you a few of questions before the doctor comes in.
Me: Okay.
Nurse: Are you allergic to any medication?
Me: No.
Nurse: Do you smoke?
Me: No.
Nurse: Have you ever been pregnant?
Me: Well... I had a chemical pregnancy a few months ago.
Nurse: Is that like an abortion?
(Sound of my jaw hitting the floor)
Me: Uh... no...

And then at my post-op appointment (different nurse this time):

Nurse: I have a few questions to ask before doctor comes in. Are you allergic to any medications?
Me: No.
Nurse: Do you smoke?
Me: No.
Nurse: Have you ever been pregnant?
Me: (short pause) No.

Why lie? Because it’s just effing easier that way!

***

So why do I bring this up now? I need to talk to my doctor. My bowels have been acting rather, er, strange since the surgery. My doctor, it turns out, is on vacation until April 17. Which is fine, I'm all for vacations. But I don't want to start from the ground up with someone else, because there are years of medical history to explain... and the chances seem pretty high that I explain all to one person only to get passed over to someone else and have to start all over again.  And what reactions will I get (based on past experience) from the new doc anyway?

Scenario 1:

Me: So, doc, blah blah blah, can’t seem to poop right... get really bloated... feel nauseous... have indigestion and a bellyache, and I never get indigestion or bellyaches.
Doctor: I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before.

Scenario 2:

Me: So, doc, blah blah blah, can’t seem to poop right... get really bloated... feel nauseous... have indigestion and a bellyache, and I never get indigestion or bellyaches.
Doctor: Hmmm... I don’t know. It’ll probably just go away on it’s own. Call me in a month if it hasn’t.

And I speak from experience on this. This is why my uterine fibroid went undiagnosed for nine months, and by the time it was I was so anemic from the bleeding it caused that I nearly passed out at yoga class one day. Ooh, and then there was the time that I got a horrible infection (fever, vomiting, bloating) after my HSG. The doctor said she'd never seen this before and the RE said this only happens to 1% of patients a year . An exclusive club to be sure, but did I really want to be a member? And a couple of years later the RE at Stanford told me – without him knowing about my HSG infection incident – that if my tube  (other one this time) was dilated and full of fluid an HSG could cause an infection. I swear I have about 50 more examples I could give, and I'm not exaggerating. But I won’t, it’s too annoying to think about in any more detail than I've just laid out here.

So what next? Well, I left a message for the RE at Stanford yesterday. Think I got a return call? Hah! So I'm going to try my old RE. Sure he's a cold fish on the bedside manners, but at least he calls me back (and sometimes I call and they connect me to him immediately!). But they aren't open just yet this morning.

Rantfully yours,

Erin

UPDATE: Called Dr. Coldfish, got through and was connected to him right away, and he told me what to do. Maybe the next IVF won't be at Stanford after all...

Calling all sprites

Not much going on in the realm of infertility these days. Except for that I still am infertile. And now with a whopping zero (count ’em, zero!) tubes, that is expected to stay the same unless I injest a colony of sprites and they fix things up for me. Go, sprites, go!

Things that are new with me these days:

1. I joined Weight Watchers. Yes I did. This is my fourth week on the program. I lost ten pounds during the first week. How, you wonder? Well, I’ll tell you! The easy way to lose 10 lbs in a week is to do a pre-surgery bowel prep (and seriously, kids—don’t do this to lose weight). So in the subsequent weeks I've kept from regaining that 10 lbs post surgery, and have lost another pound. Which is fine, but incredibly anti-climactic.

2. I’m at the beginning phases of writing a book. The only one who knows about this in my non-digital life is my husband (and now my friend AG if she’s reading!). It’s a big step for me to mention it here, really, because I don’t want to create my own hype then not be able to live up to it, and I’m also unreasonably shy about such things. I’m really excited about this new endeavor, and love the feeling of being in creative mode again. “They” say if you don’t use it you lose it. BS, I say. I believe it just takes a lot of work to wake it up again, but it can be done. And briefly, I’m writing a young adult fiction novel which has NOTHING to do with infertility. Yea, me!

3. Kitten fostering project is moving forward. The husband and I went to the SPCA on Saturday for volunteer orientation. I just filled an application and hopefully we’ll be hangin’ with some itty bitty kittens in a month or less.

4. Shit fire and save the matches, we’re taking an eff-ing vacation! I don’t know where yet, but we potential dates and I'm keeping my eyes open for cheap airfare almost daily. We want to go far afield, but doesn't take two days to get to,  and is cheap once we’re there. We’re looking at Eastern Europe, Turkey, SE Asia and China. Once I find an airfare we can afford, I’m hopping on it, wherever it is. So exciting! Now, if only those airfares would drop...

With all of the above going on, I have plenty of fodder for daydreaming (i.e. getting through the dull workday; distracting myself from thinking about IF stuff).

Not only that, the commercial for “Lost” tonight promises that “five life-changing events” will occur. Yeah, whatever. I have such a love/hate relationship with that stupid show. And as Public Enemy tells ya, “Don’t believe the hype”.

Back at work

I didn't realize that getting up on time, getting ready and going to work would be so tiring, and my insides would be so ouchy as a result. Maybe I'll get my work done and leave early today. I have to be well rested for the important stuff, such as going to see Belle and Sebastian tonight. That should be fun, I'm hoping there'll be a place to sit (as opposed to standing and getting more and more pain on my inner womanly recently-operated-on parts. I know, I know–I can be such a damn p#ssy sometimes.

And for an update regarding my “friend” mentioned in the last post–I emailed her back (see details in the comments of that post), and she emailed me back with something along the lines of “I'm sorry if I offended you, but I thought you'd want to know considering you knew what I'd been through, and the scares I had earlier in this pregnancy, I thought you'd be happy for me, I thought you'd want to know it was all working out. (and blah and blah and blah” ... To which I replied, “Thanks for that, and I do want to know, but please, if you're going to go the mass email route, maybe send one to your fertile friends and a differently worded one to your IF friends.”... I haven't heard back, and only time will tell if she writes me off the list completely or writes with a more sensitive approach. But whatever, I'm really beyond caring at this point as long as I don't get another missive about little 11-week old fetuses (fetis???) waking up and waving at her. Geez, Louise. The funny thing about it all is that she has always been the sensitive one, the one all of her other friends handled with kid gloves because they see her as being very emotionally sensitive. Or maybe that is just for sarcasm (she never got sarcasm, so we'd be careful with our jokes). Funny friends only from now on, I tell ya. I guess I'll have to keep my two humorless family members though.

~

Now that the lap is behind me, now there'll be another IVF ahead. When? Where? How? So:

When: In a few months, I want to lose some weight first, maybe summer? I'm likely to get impatient and want to do it sooner though, but giving my body a few months to recover from the lap might be good. Of course time is of essense with endo. Oh I don't know.

Where: Stanford.

How: Antigon protocol is what the doc mentioned, but I don't think that's definite yet.

I hate people sometimes

So I'm laying here, post-lap, minding my own business when I get a mass-email from a “friend” (more and more of an acquaintance every day) with the following:

“Hi all - I just wanted to let you know that ** and I just got back from the doctor a little while ago and everything looked great.  I'm half-way through my 11th week of pregnancy, and the little one was going strong.  We could see and hear the heartbeat (thank you modern science), and after ** made me laugh s/he woke up and waved his/her little arm at us.”

Okay, I'm stewing more than a little about this. And not just because she puts two spaces after sentences (gawd, that kills me-just kidding).

This person knew what my situation was. In fact, she'd had two miscarriages herself. So I wanted to know if she was through the woods on this one. But this seems more than a little tactless to me to send me news this way, especially with the fact that I'm currently laid up post-lap, starting to think about the next IVF, wondering if it is going to happen or if the endometriosis is going to just eat me alive. Then I thought, no that's self ish, she's just happy because it's finally working for her. But then I remembered how, for the two days that I thought I was pregnant back in December, how carefully I was in telling my two IF friends from my RESOLVE support group, and how I even felt guilty that now three of us were pregnant and two of us (from the group) were not. I just remember being very sensitive to the whole thing.

Now, this girl who could barely give me two hours of time to see her on her recent week-long visit to CA (when we used to be really good friends), and when we discussed the whole IF thing, she lied to me (through omission) about her best friend's pregnancy -- I knew her friend had had multiple IVFs and was now pregnant, but she told me that the friend was pregnant like la-de-da, she just happened to get pregnant. I bit my tongue then, rather than asking her why she wasn't giving me helpful info about said friend's IVFs, just pretended I didn't know anything about it and tried to enjoy the two hours. She also clammed up when I told her about how great the RESOLVE support group had been, and that with two miscarriages behind her she might find it to be very helpful. The way she acted after I suggested that, I actually apologized for being to forward with advice.

So today I get this email, and I'm ready to just call this friendship over. I don't want to make a big fuss, I mean I guess we've been mere acquaintances for a while, but I would like to do something other than outright blocking her emails to prevent myself from receiving one of these types of emails from her again. Because they upset me. Not the first time I've gotten a “la-de-da he just breathed on me and I was pregnant” type of emails, but the first time I've gotten one from from another person who's gone through the IF thing, and who has a best friend who struggled with it for years. Any ideas? Am I overreacting? Should I just take another vicodin and go back to sleep?

 

Vicodin and Viccysoise

Well it isn’t a real viccysoise, it’s warm and not cold, and has some grated cheddar on top... yummm. Hubby is doin’ me right. As is the vicodin (so far, ask again in a few days once the vicodin constipation is on full tilt).

The surgery went very well, and by that I mean I got to come home the same day and the main objectives were met. I was so happy to not have to spend the night in the hospital that I sent flowers to my doctor. No fibroid found in my uterus, so nothing needed removing there. Hydrosalpinx clamped off. Some other little pocket of fluid trapped by my endo found and drained. Only bad thing was that because of the ridiculous amount of endo scarring I have, my doctor couldn’t even get to (or see) my right ovary, let alone the cyst that's hanging out there. But I’m home! And feeling pretty good for just having had surgery yesterday.

In other news... I found out the fate of my cat that I surrendered last week. She didn’t survive her first day at the humane society. Apparently, as soon as they opened the box I’d put her in to move her to the examining room, she bolted, ran fast as lightening out of the room, and found a way into the warehouse, promptly found and climbed up a 20+ foot-high stack of cages, then in her freaked out state she lost her footing and fell. She hit her head and cracked her skull, damaging her brain, and so had to be euthanized. The guy on the phone told me that it was the 2nd in charge over there who was handling her, so for her to have gotten away was very surprising. They figure she came from a long line of ferals. So there it is, I had myself an indoor feral cat for 3 1/2 years. Poor kitty, but man was she a little mentally unstable mess. As soon as they told me what happened I said, “yup, that sounds like her”. Chuck and I have been musing, imagining if that had been at the airport (we'd considered – for  about half a second – bringing her with us to Virginia at Christmas). My friend Larissa decided she is in kitty heaven hiding under a big bed. A bed that has a giant self-petting kitty brush. And a big plate of corn beside her. Ah, little Futi, rest in peace.

Lams and bowel-preps and periods, oh my!

From medgyn.com:

“... Laminaria is a cervical dilator with more than a century of use. Laminaria is a sea grown plant. It is a natural product, so it does not contain synthetic materials. Once the plant is dehydrated, it becomes hygroscopic and swells to approximately four to six times the dehydrated diameter.”

I’m just home from the doctor where they just forcibly crammed a 3-inch-long seaweed stick into the opening of my cervix. Third time I've had this displeasure. The laminaria insertions have possibly been the most painful things I've ever experienced. Apparently not so bad for everyone, but for me it's excruciating. And I've not been exempt from pain, the standard stuff: car accident, boiling hot cocoa spilling on me (okay, that was probably much worse), a tattoo, a lip piercing (that was a silly idea. made my mouth close funny which caused me to always have tiny bits of drool coming out of the sides of my mouth, which not only looked silly but left the corners of my mouth dry and cracked; not to mention an eternally swollen lower lip because I think I was slightly allergic to the silver). As the doctor was inserting it tonight the only thing that was going through my mind is “I don't ever want to feel this again, and this must be what childbirth is like, and fuck it all, I'm adopting”. And then there's a lot of “why the hell is it taking this doctor so long, has she ever frickin done this before? Please let it end, motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker (another deep breath and attempt to relax my body, nope, doesn't help) mother fuck motherfucker!!!!!!

The OTHER fun thing I did today, is take a pre-surgery bowel prep. Fleet’s Phospho Soda. Mmmmm... boy! Just like a chocolate milkshake, except not chocolatey, or milky, or cold, or yummy... really more akin to adding 1/2 a cup of salt to a glass of water and then drinking, then spending the rest of the day within five steps of the bathroom and your poop coming out of your ass not so unlike it's shooting out of a firehose. About every five minutes.

For the squeamish out there, excuse my crudeness, but I've just spent my entire afternoon and evening shooting hot diarrhea out of my ass and then had a piece of seaweed shoved up my Lu.

For more added fun, the fleet's didn't work so quickly today. The past two times I've taken it, it kicked in within a half an hour. Today I got all constipated and bloated and stayed that way until it kicked in nearly four hours later. I told them about this at my lam insertion visit, they told me to drink some more fleet's, so I'll be skippin’ to the loo any minute now.

So tomorrow is the big day, laparoscopy to remove remaining fallopian tube and a chocolate cyst on my right ovary, and a diagnostic myomectomy (and possible real myomectomy) and removal of any fibroid they might find protruding into my uterine cavity. This next IVF better friggin work.

Did I mention that my period started today too? Of course that doesn't have a punch in the gut impact for me as it used to because it verified I was not pregnant that month. I don't have any expectation of getting pregnant naturally, so the period is just the annoying fact of life that it used to be before I was trying to get pregnant.

Anyway, the funny thing is—I've actually, overall, had a very pleasant day (and weekend) if you don't count all the above. Good weekend in general. And I realize that the constipation I had earlier was probably due to the eight or so glasses of wine I had last night at my friend's birthday party. My friend was out to get me tipsy so that my southern accent would come out (she seemed to think it was fun to have people there who hadn't met me before try to guess where I was from based on my accent, the only guy who played the game ruled me out as a southerner immediately, he decided I was from Boston. he he he it's fun to be tricksy.), but I digress...

So I'll be back when I'm on the other side of this event, and I'll likely be stoned out of my gourd on vicodin. Ta!

Mambo No. 5

I just found my mailed appointment card in the pile o’mail by the front door. My pre-op appointment for my laparoscopy is next Tuesday, which starts to bring me back to reality a little.

I've been enjoying my in-between cycle time, not even thinking much (read: only about 10-20 times a day versus 100-200) about the whole infertility thing. Relaxing, not thinking too much even about the upcoming laparoscopy and myomectomy. It's all old hat to me now, as this is surgery #5, I know what to expect, but I'm not looking forward at all to the undue stress this puts on my body and the time it takes me to get back up to snuff, and the inevitable lowering of my immune system and blood levels (I'm usually anemic for a while post-op). And then there are the underlying sadness of having my remaining fallopian tube removed... and the irony that taking it out will be the only way I can possibly even get pregnant (and have it stick this time!).

In a nutshell: my fun as an infertile

I have plenty of work to do but can't seem to concentrate for more than 20 seconds at a time. Perfect day for surfing the web.

I'm in a better mood this week. Two weeks ago I found out I was pregnant on Monday, only to find out on Thursday that the pregnancy was no longer viable. That was after my second round of IVF, and after two years of trying to get pregnant.

The icing on the cupcake was that my adorable, cuddly, uber-lovable teddy-cat, Pisco, died suddenly only a few days before all of that drama. And she was only three years old and the vet found no cause of death!

Last week was definitely one of the shittiest of my life. My husband, Chuck, has been amazing through it all.

Fun with Infertility

In brief, my diagnosis for infertility: I can't seem to make babies due to severe endometriosis, so bad that it works like superglue, sticking all my womanly parts (the inside ones) together, and the ovary can't get the egg to the fallopian tube. Not tubes, I only have one after an HSG showed a nice hydrosalpinx in my right tube. So that one's been taken out, along with a couple of ovarian cysts here, and a uterine fibroid there. Four surgeries later, I moved onto my first IVF. The medication dose was too low  for me (although the second to highest protocol), and most of my follicles didn't mature enough by my retrieval. Only two eggs were retrieved, though both fertilized; neither were very good quality. Didn't take. Second round, medication upped, nine eggs! All fertilized! Positive pregnancy tests! (Six tests... it was the first time I'd ever seen a positive, and I enjoyed seeing it again and again.) Positive beta. Then my hcg went down for my second beta, and down even more the next day.

And I ran out of zoloft on the same day, and it took nearly a week for the doctor to get back to me to get the prescription filled. Ugh.

The next step is getting a second opinion at Stanford's IVF clinic. My acupuncturist put me on some herbs which is supposed to help with the endo. Yesterday I began taking a vitamin/herbal formula called Fertility Blend for Women which I discovered on the internet. It's been endorsed by Stanford, and has done really well in clinical trials. So they say.

I turn 35 just after Christmas. Tick tock.

Chuck and I go tonight to sign a lease on a new place, about 100 yards away from the Pacific ocean (can you say "tsunami"?). It's about 10 miles from our current home, and will be a nice change of pace after 3 1/2 years in the same place. And a welcome distraction to my constant thoughts of infertility.

The worst part of it (besides the, uh, obvious) was losing the feeling that I could move on the the next phase in my life. I've felt like I've been in limbo for so long now. All plans I have seem to revolve around the next treatment. We don't go on vacations (big far-away excursions) anymore, because we can't afford that with the staggering IVF fees. I miss a lot of work for appointments and days off during the IVF cycles, and try not to work more than 40 hours a week so I can make sure I'm eating healthy, exercising and sleeping enough, as well as not getting stressed out at work. So I'm definitely not concentrating on career advancement. I've been acting like a hermit for a while now.