The Eternal Guest Room

It’s a good thing I didn’t get my hopes up about this IUI cycle, because it’s been canceled.

I went in for a sonogram today and they found 5-6 mature follicles, which would put me at too high of a risk for multiples.

The doctor wasn’t in this morning when we went in, but he called me himself right before lunch to tell me. He also gave us the option to try on our own, but that was followed up by “are you open to selective reduction?”

No.

$500 and a week of shots down the drain for absolutely nothing – not even a chance.

What a waste.

I’m so tired of being poked and prodded.

I was halfway to my part-time job the other day when I realized I had been bleeding from my morning blood work – it had soaked the entire thing of gauze and had made its way all the way through my hoodie sleeve. Not a great discovery during rush hour traffic on Preston (a massively horrible street at 8:00am). Blood all over my car…

OK, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But it sucked. And now my light purple hoodie has bloodstains. Gross. I think my arm is saying “enough!”

In this past year I’ve been stabbed by enough needles to last me several lifetimes. I should be used to all the blood draws and injections in my stomach by now, but I still get terrified before every stab.

So, naturally, I decided to start doing acupuncture.

We’re running out of time. Our year is ending. The 4 year mark is creeping up on us. Either way, we’re planning on being done by then.

So I’m giving it everything I have. Including acupuncture for fertility. I’ve had a few sessions by this point, and they’re getting a little better. The acupuncturist let me bring a book to read once she saw how anxious I was, and that helped tremendously.

I feel the needles going in and out, but that’s not too bad – what’s bad is laying totally still for 10-30 minutes knowing there are needles in my ear, neck, or head, not to mention my hands, legs, and feet. For me, it’s absolutely terrifying.

But I feel that I have to try everything before this ends. So I know that I did everything I could. So I have no regrets. So I don’t have to wonder “what if I had done that?”

So it’s “poke poke” for me.

I’m really hoping it’s worth it though. I’m freaking tired of needles.

A word to the all the fertile people out there:

Don’t ever tell someone who’s having trouble getting pregnant to “just relax” and stop stressing about it. All the relaxing in the world won’t help if someone has blocked tubes or a husband with no sperm. It’s offensive, and it makes people feel invalidated.

But, that being said -

A psychiatrist that I went to for awhile told me repeatedly that depression can hinder conception, and then there are lots of people who believe in the power of positive thinking.

So I have to wonder: Does my mind, or my perception, or what I tell myself, have any effect on anything whatsoever?

In January my therapist encouraged me to “think positively” and believe that I would be 2 or 3 months pregnant when my sister’s wedding rolled around in June. And I did. For awhile I truly, really, actually believed that it would happen.

But it didn’t.

For the last IUI we did, we talked as if it had worked. We even talked about “the twins,” because I sincerely have a feeling that if I ever do get pregnant it will be two at once. It just seems ironic somehow – I don’t know.

But there were no twins, and there was no baby. It was all just empty again.

For this IUI, I have no hopeful feelings. No positive thinking. My heart is just not into it.

Other people have offered to carry the hope for me, which is unbelievably helpful and touching, but I can’t help wondering: am I dooming myself if I don’t carry that hope myself?

Does it really matter?

I have a hard time finding the right words. After all the Hope I was just left with Empty.

Most people already know by now that it didn’t work. Again. Of course.

This one has been, by far, the hardest to bounce back from. I don’t know if it was because of our high hopes, the good numbers, or a combination, but it’s hard to move on from it. We were so hopeful.

I kept myself busy and distracted immediately after the news, and I’d hoped that would soften the blow. I spent a week in Seattle and it was great; I’ve actually been back for less than 24 hours. Today is the first time I’ve been alone and the quiet is overwhelming. It’s back to reality today, and reality is hard.

Meanwhile, other people continue to get pregnant left and right, almost always with little to no effort. Even the infertile people seem to be getting pregnant more frequently these days – don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them, I truly am, but it still always feels like another slap for me. We’re closing in on 3 and a half years of this. When will it be my turn? Will it ever be? I struggle with the very real possibility that it may never be.

Life is full of uncertainty these days. In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m going backwards. But we’re finally taking off several “holds” we’ve put on life over the last few years. I have no idea what life will be like in a year. Everything is up in the air at the moment.

Our eight year wedding anniversary was last week. Eight years and no kids. It was kind of a tough day, even if I hadn’t gotten yet another pregnancy announcement first thing that morning. So many years have gone by.

My trip to Seattle meant we had to skip a month, but even if we could have jumped immediately into another IUI cycle, we wouldn’t have. I feel emotionally drained. I just don’t have what it takes to do it all again right away. The plan is to do another one around the end of this month, but I’m not ready to put my heart into it just yet.

I’ve almost been surprised about how hard this has been. At one point I remember thinking “how can it hurt so much to lose something I never even had?” It feels silly to grieve so deeply for something that was never even real.

But it feels terrible.

My ovaries are overachievers.

(Ovariechievers?)

Fortunately they didn’t release any eggs yet, but it’s only day 8 and I have 2 big follies – one is 24mm and the other is 26mm. That’s kinda big – I think they only need to be around 18mm to trigger.

The sonogram lady was finally back from vacation, which made me happy, but she couldn’t see much on the left side so I kept having to put pressure on various places on my stomach to try to get my intestines out of the way and it hurt. So it ended up being a very unpleasant sonogram anyway.

My lining was at 13mm (!!) which made me happy, since it was only 5.5mm at this point last time. They like it to be at least 7mm. I don’t know if it was just the lack of clomid or if those red raspberry leaf capsules actually did what they were supposed to, but whatever it was, it worked.

The nurse I don’t like took my blood and gave me the trigger shot. When I closed my eyes for the shot she said “Come on, have I ever hurt you before?” and I was thisclose to saying, “Yeah, last time you gave me a 3-inch dark-purple bruise that hurt like a bitch” but I didn’t. You really want to be on the nurses’ good sides. She’s the nurse that always makes me bleed and bruise and be in pain and I really don’t want her to dislike me.

I’m all triggered up. The trigger shot makes your follicles release the egg(s) about 36 hours later.

The IUI is scheduled for tomorrow and I can finally breathe. I was so worried it would be canceled. They require such precise timing it’s just insane.

This has to be the one.

In fact I have a pretty good feeling it will be, because if it works it will seriously complicate some things next spring. That’s how it goes, right?

Please please please…

This morning’s sonogram yielded good news and bad news – things are progressing correctly, but too quickly. We might miss it.

I have 2 mature follicles on one side that are pretty much ready to go, but it’s too early in the cycle to actually do an IUI. I’ll take one more injection of the regular dose (75mg), then tomorrow evening I’ll have a half dose (37.5mg) and go back in for another sonogram on Thursday to see how things are.

By then it may be too late, but we won’t know until then.

So frustrating.

We were in and out of the RE’s office in 17 minutes this morning – I’m pretty sure that’s a record.

We hadn’t been in what feels like forever – 3 months. It was weirdly comforting to be back.

I wasn’t happy at all to learn that the sonogram lady was on vacation, which meant that the doctor himself did the sonogram. It’s bad enough without having the male doctor do it; I’ll spare you the details, but it’s invasive. Not one of those happy gel-on-the-tummy ultrasounds like pregnant women have. Nope.

It was quick, though. The shortest sonogram I’ve ever had, for sure. There were a few cysts, but just the small blood-filled kind that everyone has. Lovely, right?

I start injections tonight and have one every evening until I go in for a sonogram on Tuesday. At that point they look to see how things are progressing, and then we go from there. He said the IUI would most likely be earlier than the last ones, which were around day 12. That puts us right around next weekend sometime, as long as everything works like it’s supposed to. Fortunately I had the foresight to keep both of these weekends free – it’s like I’m catching on to this stuff.

We’ll keep you posted.

A few people pointed out to me that I hadn’t really made it clear when our next IUI would be – but it’s supposed to be this month.

I go in tomorrow for my Day 2 sonogram to make sure everything looks ok. They make sure there are no cysts, check the lining of my uterus to see if it’s the right thickness, and draw blood to check levels of something (horrible, I know; I should know all this by now).

If everything is ok, I think I’ll be starting shots tomorrow. Woo hoo! I get to put them in a cooler and drive them to Amarillo and have D give me shots at my parents’ apartment. Fun! Pick me!

Actually that doesn’t really bother me anymore. I’m just ready to get this going.

For our last IUI, I took clomid (a pill) on Days 5-9 and did FSH injections (shots) on Days 7, 9, and 11, going in for a sonogram between Day 3-5 and one more on Day 12.  This IUI is going to be different.

No clomid (good riddance - that stuff is pure freaking evil. I can’t even put into words my intense hatred of the stuff; it’s treated me badly in too many ways).  

Injections starting Day 2 and lasting for about a week. Every day at the same time (between 7:00-9:00pm). I’m a little hazy on the details since I was given them seconds after bad news several months ago, but I believe I go in for sonograms starting Day 5 and have them every other day for awhile. I’ll have more details tomorrow I’m sure.

I’m ready for tomorrow. I’m ready for this whole thing. Let’s do it!

If this whole thing wasn’t so emotionally draining, I would laugh.

We first saw the RE in September, and we planned to do up to 3 IUIs before the end of 2009.

2010 is nearly halfway over, and we’ve been able to do ONE. (I don’t really count the one we did when I had the polyp.) That’s one realistically possible IUI in 9 months. Now that’s some sobering math.

Cysts, thin lining, and surgery all got their delays in. And then something went weird and put all of the potential IUI days on days when we are going to be out of town.

Our trip to Hawaii knocked one out. A trip to Seattle next month will knock out another one. And the current one is being cancelled because I’ll be out of town for my sister’s wedding.

What??

It’s almost funny – except that it’s not.

The decision to skip this month’s IUI for my sister’s wedding was not an easy one. Ultimately though, it was just too much, and that’s not the way I want to spend the week of my sister’s special day.

So we continue to wait.

This year will be over before we know it.

This has been going on for a long, long time. It’s just been awful. We know we can’t go through this forever – at some point, one way or another, it has to end.

We’ve made some decisions about how far we’re willing to go.

This will be our last year to try to have a child. We can’t take the heartbreak and monthly devastation for much longer. At some point we need to move forward – and we’ve decided it will be at the end of this year.

In the meantime we’re willing to try as many IUIs as our doctor thinks is worth trying. Our doctor doesn’t keep trying something that isn’t working, so there will be a definite limit on these – though I’m not sure exactly what that is yet.

 Our next IUI will be different than the previous 2, which were a combination of clomid (a pill) and FSH injections (shots). Our next IUI will be full injectibles – a week of shots, and no clomid. Any following IUIs will have a similar protocol.

Over the last few months, the terrifying letters I, V, and F have been creeping into our conversations. I’ve always said that I wouldn’t be open to IVF – it’s something like $12,000 with just a 50% success rate. I felt I couldn’t handle the disappointment if it failed.

But we’ve made a decision about that too: we’d be willing to try up to 2 rounds of IVF if it came to that. At this point, we feel that to come this far and not try everything we can would be a bigger disappointment and a potential lifetime of asking “What if?”

Of course, there’d be a lot of details to work out to do IVF – primarily funding – but if it ends up being an option, we’ll be open to it.

The decision for this to be our last year was made awhile ago; the fact that today is June 1 and the year is half over is a bit depressing, since we’ve only been able to try one IUI this year. But we needed a deadline, and we need to stick to it, for sanity reasons.

At the end of the year, if we aren’t expecting our own child, we’ll be moving on. I’m not sure exactly what that will entail, but we’ll be on a different path than we are now.

None of these decisions have been easy, and we still potentially have a lot of hard decisions ahead of us. But there is something about having a plan that is better than the uncertainty of not having any plan. Closure, perhaps. Being able to deal with things, instead of facing a complete lack of control.

So that’s the plan.