The Eternal Guest Room

Infertility kinda sucks.

when it’s really hard

January 29th, 2011 Posted in Family, General
Jan, 29 2011
10 Comments »

Most days are ok. Life goes on, and I am a functioning participant. I live with the reality that maybe we will have kids, and maybe we won’t. It’s hard, but I manage.

But some days, it’s really hard. Sometimes for no reason, but there’s usually a reason, or a trigger.

In general I avoid talking about any of my family situations on this blog. Because family members and friends who know them read it. Because it’s weird to talk about certain things without that anonymity that a blog not read by family members has. Because I don’t want to risk making anyone feel bad, or uncomfortable, by talking about them. But sometimes I feel like I have to, because not doing so would leave major gaps in my story, and for other people to really understand what I’m going through and to really give myself a chance to express my thoughts and feelings, sometimes I have to share these things.

I have three younger sisters. All of them are married. All of them plan to have children. As the oldest, I expected to have the first. When that was taken from me, I was devastated. It’s no one’s fault, but quite honestly, it sucked for me. The news was a total shock, and I did not handle it well. I’ll leave it at that.

At that point I fully expected to have the second grandchild. I had no idea of the challenges and heartbreak that were ahead of us. No idea.

I love my niece. She is perfect and precious and more adorable than words can describe. I’ll never forget the first time I held her; I was floored by the amount of love that I felt. But I hate that I am an aunt before I was a mother.

Today my second niece will be born. I am sure I will love her just as much, but right now it just hurts so badly. That I am going through this a second time. That it is still not my turn. That, once again, I get someone else’s good news just after I get my own bad news. That my family is so excited and so full of joy, and all I feel is grief.

I grieve for my own children, that I thought I would have by now, but that I now know I may never have. I grieve the loss of not being the one to have the first grandchild or even the second, because being the oldest sucks and you should at least get that, and at this point I’ll probably be lucky just to have the fourth. I grieve that I cannot share in this joy, because my own pain is too great. I grieve the distance that this has put between my family members and myself, because it hurts too much to be with them sometimes when they can’t understand what I am going through. I grieve for all of the things that infertility has taken from me.

This is one of those days when it’s really hard.

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at least there’s muffins

January 25th, 2011 Posted in Hysteroscopy, Polyps, Procedures
Jan, 25 2011
4 Comments »

A lot of things don’t seem to work out in my favor in this whole mess, but sometimes I get lucky. We already had an appointment scheduled to meet with our doctor today, so we didn’t have to wait any longer to get some answers about the polyp junk. It was nice to sit down with him and have all of our questions answered; last time we were just so unprepared and blindsided that our pre-surgery appointment was a 60-second blur. Part of that was because we just weren’t all that comfortable asking our old doctor questions. New Doctor is so much more approachable and likable. So we asked our questions, and he answered them.

What causes polyps? No one really knows. Why do I keep getting them, even though they’re usually seen in 40-50 year old women? Dunno, but it’s actually fairly common in infertility patients. Why did it come back? No telling.

It’s in the same place as the previous polyp, so basically the old one grew back somehow. It’s not as big as the last one, but it is pretty close to one of my tubes, and therefore could be preventing eggs/sperms/embryos to get to where they need to go. Plus it takes up prime implantation real estate. They’ve also been shown to increase the chance of miscarriage, so you really want to get rid of them.

I need to wait for the hospital scheduler to call me, but it’s very likely that the surgery will be scheduled for February 17. They do all of their surgeries on Thursday afternoons. It’ll be just like last time, except at a different hospital. He told us that this hospital is better – newer, with better equipment, and muffins. I just spent a chunk of time reading our insurance book, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself or jinx myself, but it sounds like the surgery *might* be covered at 100%. Might. Which is a hell of a lot better than the $1700 we spent last time. Again, I might be wrong – really, who can decipher those insurance books?? – but I’m hoping I’m right. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at understanding insurance. Fortunately and unfortunately.

We will have to wait 3 months after surgery to pursue IVF. Not, as they told us last time, to give me time to heal, but because insurance mandates the 3-month waiting period. Even though insurance won’t cover a dime of the actual treatment costs and medications, they will pay for the occasional doctor’s office visit and bloodwork, so that 3 month waiting period is a must. Don’t get me started on insurance and health care.

I’m coping with the new turn of events better than I was yesterday, but still, it totally sucks. Even if we don’t have to pay for the surgery, surgery sucks. Last time I was miserable for days. Surgery itself was terrifying. Recovery was worse than I expected. I was in pain for awhile. It was just not fun. To say that I’m not looking forward to it is a huge understatement.

I’ll have another office hysterscopy to endure at the end of the three months. The doctor said they usually don’t do that, but given my history and concerns he thought it was a good idea. I didn’t say much about it yesterday, but it sucked. It hurt. It felt like it lasted forever, even though it was just a few minutes. My insides were up on a screen, live and on-camera. D looked at the screen, but I kept my eyes closed, trying to pretend I wasn’t there. I couldn’t stand to look – it just looked so gross, and I didn’t want to see it. I thought that my first hysterscopy would be my one and only, but now I know that I will have at least 2 of each kind. Four hysteroscopies total.

This better be worth it.

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again

January 24th, 2011 Posted in General, Procedures
Jan, 24 2011
6 Comments »

I had my hysteroscopy this afternoon. I was really nervous – to the point that I felt like I was going to throw up – that they were going to find something. And I was right.

I have another polyp. Smaller than the one from last year, but in the same place. I have to have surgery to have it removed. Again. Surgery again.

I had a feeling that something wasn’t right, and I was right.

It’s not like last year, when we said, “oh, now we know what the problem is; we’ll get it fixed, and be on our way, and everything will work out.”

We can’t really believe in it so simplistically this time.

I feel so defeated.

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step 1

January 21st, 2011 Posted in IVF, Procedures
Jan, 21 2011
5 Comments »

I think that a lot of people read this blog, more than actually comment, I think. Some of them we know, and some of them are complete strangers. Some people know exactly what I’m talking about, and some people have no idea sometimes. So I try to strike a balance between giving updates to family and friends, sharing my thoughts, connecting with people going through similar things, and informing people who don’t really know what the acronyms and details all mean.

I’m going to try to explain all the steps of this IVF process to anyone out there who doesn’t know much about it and who wants to know, whether just for the sake of learning or to have a better idea of what we’re going through.

I hope I don’t bore anyone who already knows this stuff, but if I say something wrong, feel free to correct me. Sometimes I don’t really understand it all myself until I sit down and try to write it out.

And if I say anything that doesn’t make sense to anyone, feel free to ask.

As I mentioned before, we’re using this month to do some testing and planning. I had my FSH tested on Monday, which I was actually kind of nervous about because the doctor mentioned that it was a little on the high side when it was tested a little over a year ago. Basically, you’re born with all of your eggs, and you use them up throughout your lifetime. The best eggs get released when you’re younger (that’s why teenagers get pregnant so easily) and as the years go by, your body uses up the best eggs and starts releasing the eggs that aren’t so amazing. That’s why it’s harder to get pregnant as you get older.

You want your FSH levels to be low. When they’re high, it means that you are running out of eggs, and/or the eggs you have are not great quality. Your FSH number typically goes up as you get older, because you’re running out of eggs. So when the doctor said that mine had been on the high side a year ago, I got a little worried that it would be even higher. But when the nurse called, she said that my level was lower than it was last time. Yay! (It went from 9.9 to 7.4 and they told me that they like it to be less than 10, although from things I’ve read different doctors have slightly different opinions on what numbers are good…I think.)

The thing about IVF is that there are a lot of steps in the process. There are a lot of things that can go wrong along the way. So it helps to celebrate the little successes along the way and look at it as one thing at a time, instead of an overall success or failure. There are a lot of little “milestones” that we have to pass before we get to the end, and this was the first one.

On Monday I go in for a diagnostic hysteroscopy to check for polyps. This is different from the surgical hysteroscopy I had a year ago that involved going to the hospital and being put to sleep. This is just done in the regular office to take a look-see and make sure nothing weird is going on.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I am polyp-free!

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the appointment

January 10th, 2011 Posted in IVF, Procedures
Jan, 10 2011
5 Comments »

First, I just want to start off by saying a big THANK YOU to everyone who commented on my last post! I was so worried but of course you’re right – what matters most is that we feel comfortable with our doctor and I never felt 100% comfortable with the old one. It was so nice to get all the reassurance and encouragement that we had made the right decision.

We had our appointment on Friday with our new doctor and it went really, really well. Once we got into his office the very first thing he said was “I’m so glad you switched to me!” He then went on to say that we should not feel awkward or anything about switching, because they both understood and both had patients switching from one doctor to the other. So that set me at ease right away. (Of course, we saw our old doctor in the waiting room not once but twice and I felt weird about it, but life went on, as it usually does.)

With the old doctor, I never felt completely comfortable asking questions. With the new doctor, I felt totally fine. And I had a whole list of questions typed out, and he answered all of them. He even gave us a few different options, as opposed to just sitting down and saying “OK it’s time for IVF.” So we didn’t feel pressured or anything.

Which brings me to the interesting part.

We’ve decided to move forward with IVF. We feel that it’s our best chance at this point. It was not an easy decision to make, and in truth, it’s been years in the making. But I’ve come to the realization that most people who have been trying for 4 years don’t get pregnant until they move to IVF.

We talked about how we want to handle the “sharing” of the details, because there are pros and cons to sharing vs. not sharing. But we decided that we’re going to be open and honest about the whole process and tell everyone what’s going on along the way (for the most part). Truthfully I’m a little nervous about that but I feel that ultimately it will be the best decision for us. I dealt for this alone for too many years and I don’t want to go through this alone, because this is huge.

The entire IVF process takes about 2 months, and we’ll be starting the process in early February. In the meantime I have a bit of testing that I need to go through and some appointments with various people who will be involved along the way (the doctor, the embryologist, the financial people, etc.). There’s a lot of “pre” stuff because it’s a big deal.

I’m nervous, scared, and excited. I can’t believe we’re here.

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another year

January 3rd, 2011 Posted in General
Jan, 03 2011
5 Comments »

This was supposed to be the end.

The end of the year was supposed to be our cut-off date; we would either have what we wanted, or start to move on.

But we thought we would be a lot further along. I figured we’d be done with IUIs by the end of the summer. I thought that if we decided to move on to IVF, it would have happened by now. But the truth is that nothing is guaranteed to work out the way you plan, and this is no exception.

We are switching doctors. I’m having a lot of anxiety over this, because there are 2 doctors in our clinic and we are switching from one to the other. I’m afraid we’ll run into the “old” doctor and he’ll be mad at us, or something. The “new” doctor actually did our final IUI because ours wasn’t working that weekend, and we liked the “new” doctor better. He and his wife went through IVF to get their son and he is very understanding and compassionate and warm, all qualities that the “old” doctor pretty much lacked. Not that he was horrible or anything – we just liked the other doctor better. So we decided to switch.

We had talked about it for awhile, but the final decision to switch was kind of on an impulse, and then I started to get really worried that I did the wrong thing. Plus we had to wait for a “new patient” appointment and that isn’t until this coming Friday. If I hadn’t switched doctors, we would be talking with our doctor right now. Instead we start over at the end of this long week. My anxiety level is way, way up right now.

It’s hard to know what the “right” thing to do is sometimes.

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