my life, ad nauseum

Here’s my past 6 days: Wednesday and Thursday felt a bit off, slightly nauseous off and on during the day, low appetite but hungry when food is in front of me. Think little of it, go to dance class Thursday night, dance for three hours thinking about Em (I think she’s password protected so no link), go buy false eyelashes for the first time ever in anticipation of our flamenco recital Saturday night, get home, feeling tired, suddenly feeling extremely queasy, run to bathroom a few times, nothing emerges as I’ve eaten about 6 corn chips since lunchtime. Crawl to bed with large bowl, do tapping/EFT to quell nausea which works for about 5 minutes, can’t go to sleep as I must lie on back to relieve nausea and I can’t fall asleep on my back, eventually fall asleep after bolting upright to grab bowl a few times but still nothing. Wake up Friday – MOVING DAY – still feeling spectacularly shithouse, don’t eat, just drink peach ginger tea, and with numerous and frequent breaks during which I deep breathe and think of meadows and butterflies and mint and fresh air, manage to do packing and coralling of volunteers until about 1, at which point I am as white as the pale puking kid off The Simpsons and my aunt makes me go and buy some Gravol. Take 2 of those and assume horizontal position while my aunt cleans out my kitchen cupboards which the previous owner had neglected to do (note to you, previous owner: sticking horrid air freshner thingys everywhere is the opposite of cleaning, and I can still smell them, and I blame them for the headache I’ve had for the past few days, and you suck for not wiping out the fridge or the cupboards). Drift in and out of consciousness until my brother and sister in law arrive to check out house and give me early birthday present. Try to show them around but standing up is very very bad at this point so I tell them to knock themselves out and return to being knocked out on the couch. Happy to report I managed to visit with them from horizontal position and then open birthday present without vomiting. Said thank you and goodbye and crawled upstairs to bed where I fell asleep on my bare mattress on the floor covered by my winter coat. Wake up later on, manage some broth and rice crackers, feel slightly better then much worse. Want to die. Go to sleep on back (somehow have mastered this) and wake up Saturday feeling slightly dodgy but like a million times better than the night before. Skipped second meeting of women’s circle (boo), begin unpacking kitchen (still not complete, by the way – Mein Gott, I have a lot of kitchen stuff), feel better throughout the day, manage to make it to flamenco recital with Manny and my grandma, miraculously only screw up once in the harder dance I’m in, have tons of fun batting false eyelashes at everyone, resist eating anything but broth and rice crackers all day despite scrumptious empanadas being sold at recital, go home, sleep on back. Wake up Sunday, watch Coronation Street, unpacking, feeling worse and worse as day goes on, just an odd nausea that feels like being overly full after a huge meal and limbs that feel like plutonium, skip Grey Cup party aka Super Meat Bowl at neighbour’s/friends’/boss’ house across the street. Manage to sleep on side and not die. Get up Monday, get ready to go to work even though it’s clear I should not go to work, go to work,  in 20 minutes realize it’s a huge mistake, go home, stopping only to buy applesauce, blueberry juice and tea, assume horizontal position for the entire.fucking.day. Watch P.S. I Love You which is a bright light in what has become a dark world of nausea and boredom, and cry at the movie, and eat applesauce. 

Wake up this morning feeling still not good, but decide I have to go to work as am only one in office all week. Shockingly am still here with an hour to go until quitting time, and managed to eat a full meal of solid food (ok, it was still bland, but rice and stir-fried veggies is closer to food than I’ve had in nearly a week, so please forgive my excitement). Still feeling weird sensation of being totally full, and standing up is still not my favorite position, but it’s waning. Look like person in the first half of a What Not To Wear episode, but am ok with that, for today. 

Will return with real post and pictures of great new house once wireless is running in new house and plutonium-limbed feeling is completely gone.

the tao of when things get fucked up

Thanks, all you fabulous readers, for your comments, thoughts and good wishes. Every single one of you has helped me feel better these last few days. Truly, there are no words other than: “I’m so grateful for each one of you.Thank you.”

Things are feeling better. I had acupuncture on Tuesday and she worked on my emotional points, and I saw my counsellor on Wednesday, who reminded me that the medical system sucks, big time. Yes, those were her words. I love her. It was a good reality check – that they have shut down their compassion because they are in a difficult situation and a stressful system, so it is nothing personal when they are jerks, and I am not the only one who gets hurt by the system and its lack of humanity. It’s not that it shouldn’t be different, but it just isn’t. For some reason, it helped to hear this, mostly in terms of the other thing I took from our session, which is to be like water – gentle, persistent, and strong, not letting the obstacles prevent me from getting where I need to go. (Hence the title of this post.) She told me to expect resistance, expect obstacles – but don’t let them define me or my situation. I need to think more creatively – maybe we can do an insemination at home, maybe they will treat me if I just return to doing unmedicated cycles that don’t need monitoring but instead rely on OPKs, or maybe I can just be in process and take another break and maybe there are blessings in that I just don’t see yet.

The way I’m feeling today is that I’ll probably do the latter. We have been so busy with our moving preparations (more on that later) that I just don’t feel like I have it in me today to work out anything with my clinic. I’m just tired. I know that getting them to agree to doing inseminations at home – just vaginal insemination, nothing fancy – would be a stretch. To say that they don’t seem particularly flexible would be an understatement. However, it would just be the cost of the samples and it’s no skin off their noses. So I haven’t made up my mind yet.

We also have to choose a new donor, as we are out of the samples we bought back in April, and since they didn’t work, there’s no reason to stick with that guy. He had no reported pregnancies, so maybe he’s a dud. This time we’re going to go with someone who has reported pregnancies – I hope we can find someone we feel good about, though. The first donor seemed so perfect, to both of us, and it was nice to feel some kind of connection to the donor, even just through the profile. We are going with open ID, so there is a very real possibility that our child will meet this person some day, and I’d really prefer it if I don’t think the guy is sort of a bonehead from the beginning. I guess people can change a lot in 18 years, but when someone can’t think of a favourite book,  that just says “boring” to me.

Other than that, I’m up to my eyeballs in packing, and we’re running out of newspaper to pack with. We’re aiming to get our house listed by Wednesday, and I am feeling confident that the house will look great by then. Friends are coming to help, and a lot of stuff is already packed into the little shipping container sitting in our back yard. In the past week, I’ve learned more about mortgages than I ever thought I could understand – I am a financial idiot, and know nothing about that stuff. But it turns out I’m not so dumb – I just needed a chance to learn. I shopped around and found us a way better deal than our current bank is giving us, and I’m happy about that. Gotta factor in the next major sperm purchase into the whole budget plan, so saving hundreds of bucks on our monthly mortgage payment is awesome news.

There you have it friends. I’m trying to be like water. Maintaining a heart of peace, but fighting for what I need.

I’ll keep you posted.

distracted

Yesterday was a historic day, a fantastic day that may bring about a shift in the entire world. I’m so grateful that yesterday happened in my lifetime, and so hopeful that the change yesterday represents, to so many in America and around the world, will actually come to fruition and make the world a better place for everyone.

So I’m happy, really I am.

But yesterday was also a spectacularly shit day. My spotting turned to bleeding, which has continued to get heavier into today, crushing all hope that this was late implantation. I have a brutal headache that won’t go away. And yesterday morning, after getting to work late because we had a morning meeting with our mortgage specialist, I picked up the phone to call my clinic to report CD 1, and was told unceremoniously that Dr. Rational has suspended fertility treatments at this time because the ultrasound tech is very ill and in hospital, and their backup for u/s can’t accomodate everyone and of course pregnant women get priority over those trying to get pregnant. And that while the u/s tech is likely to be off for 6 weeks or so, that brings us into Christmas when the clinic “slows down” so basically no treatment until after Christmas.

After I bleated out a stunned protest that it might have been good if someone had thought to give me a call so I didn’t have to hear this way, which was met with what sounded to me to be a mild rebuke that “it’s been hard on everyone”, I hung up the phone. And then I laid my head on my desk and sobbed. I sobbed until the anger returned and made me pull it together. Then I realized that not only would I not be at the telling stage by Christmas, there was basically no way that I would be pregnant by Christmas. Then I sobbed some more.

My boss, bless him, asked no questions, just hugged me, told me it would be ok, and sent me home.

Where I stewed about how shitty my clinic is, how little they actually care about what I or any other patient there is going through, how reliant the system is a single individual, how those of us who are struggling to get pregnant are treated so poorly in the system, how we are always last in line, how we are reminded, by the head nurse in my clinic during a follow up call, that fertility treatment is elective and therefore we don’t rate highly enough to tax the system even more than it already is right now. And I stewed also about the fact that my clinic didn’t see fit to make phone calls to people in the middle of a cycle (although they must have phoned people with u/s appointments booked) but instead sent a letter out that I should be getting sometime, and when I challenged them about this they said there were too many patients to call.

Right. Cause leaving a voicemail for the people who are in the middle of treatment right now is too much for the full-time social worker, the 2 receptionists, the head nurse, and the half-dozen or so other people that work in the office there. Not even counting the doctors. Or the entire health region administration, for that matter.

I know it would have been above and beyond, I know everyone would have had to pitch in. But seriously? They couldn’t each have spared a half hour to let people know?

If I can’t get compassion from my clinic, can’t I at least get a phone call so I don’t have to hear that I won’t get another try until the new year on the day that I am calling to report that this cycle is another negative?

Fuckers.

So I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m overwhelmed. I’m glad the world I woke up in this morning is a different place than it was yesterday, but at the moment, my attention is elsewhere. Back in my solipsistic IF hell.

the good and the bad

Well, we seem to have bought ourselves a house! We made an offer on Friday afternoon, the seller came back with a counter that met us right in the middle, and we accepted. The cheap part of me thinks we could have got her down a bit lower, but it would have been a lot of haggling over a few thousand dollars, and there was always the risk someone could have made an offer and beaten us to it. And we really, really, REALLY like the house. I promise I will post pictures once things get more sorted out – we’re still waiting on mortgage approval although the bank has already said that we’re basically approved for the amount we’ll need. So once the deal is done I promise I will share the loveliness with you all. We take possession on November 21, and hopefully we’ll be able to get our house in good enough shape to list early next week. We’ve already done a fair bit of packing and decluttering and as we get stuff cleared out we can tend to sprucing things up and doing a deep clean in here. There are a few people we know who are interested already, which would be awesome to save the realtor’s commission. So we’ll see. The market for houses has cooled off a lot here after a few years of insane growth, but there are not very many houses listed right now in this price range that are not in the ghetto, so that is a plus for us. Also, lots of people have just gotten priced out of the market altogether, and a house like ours is a good starter home that doesn’t require a huge mortgage. We will be hoping it sells quickly, with the thought that we can cover both mortgages for probably 2 months, and if it’s not sold before then, we’ll get a tenant. Actually if we did that we would probably make money because the rental market here is absurdly tight. But all the hassle that goes along with being a landlord – we’d rather avoid it. Anyway, like I said, we’ll see.

The other news is that I appear to be spotting. It just started, and assuming a 14 day luteal phase, I wasn’t expecting my period until Wednesday. Damn. I was getting myself pretty convinced there with the feeling ever so slightly nauseous, the exhaustion, the ridiculous hunger….it did all feel different from previous cycles. I guess not. I’m not sure quite how I feel about it all yet. Disappointed, of course. Everything was going so perfectly – I was starting to let myself fantasize about telling my parents and sisters on Christmas morning (I’m kidding, of course – I started fantasizing about this weeks ago). Manny and I were joking over the weekend that our lives are the BEST.LIVES.EVER.

Not yet, I guess.