Fighting the good fight

So in case anyone was wondering, yes, we're going to do one last FET with our one last Frosty Pup, assuming it survives the thaw. Cycling while raising a toddler is both harder and easier. Harder because the drugs make me tired and I'm already completely exhausted as it is. Harder because I've got belly bruises, nasty headaches, brain fog, weight gain, all that fun stuff, and Mr. Squalling Tantrum Man doesn't take a break in his tantrums just because Mommy has a migraine. Easier because I'm so distracted by trying to keep Mr. Daring-Do from running into the street, jumping off stairs and breaking his neck, climbing up the cupboards, throwing toys at the TV, peeking in the toilet for the x-hundredth time, yanking food out of the fridge, pulling chef's knives out of the dishwasher (swear to god, he did that last night and I nearly had a heart attack), and so on and so forth, that I don't have time to obsess about the cycle or the potential outcomes. I'm just trying to get from day to day with everyone in one piece.

Last cycle they had me on bcp's for about 6 weeks, which was not a good thing. I got all depressed and had serious heart palpitations. Now that I know I have a clotting disorder (the second cardiolipin antibody test came back at the same level, so the APS diagnosis is confirmed), I'm surprised that all those years of bcp's didn't kill me already. Must be that Mediterranean diet and all those bottles of wine : ) Anyhoo, this time I demanded something different, so it was 3 weeks of bcp's and then 3 weeks of Lupron. Oh, Lupron ... how thou doest fuck up my brain! I remembered from back in our IVF days that it made me loopy, but I didn't remember that it also made me moronically stupid and foggy and about as useful at work as a big stuffed chair. The past few weeks, I've been hiding in my office with the door shut, desperately trying to concentrate on something, anything, focusing on the screaming emergencies, because those got my adrenalin pumping enough to cut through the fog for a few minutes. But the routine boring stuff? Big fat pile on my desk. Ugh. A few days ago, I was about to call the clinic and give up, tell them that I'm completely batty with loopiness and can't take it anymore, but then it was time to decrease the dose and start the estradiol patches -- ahhhhh, estrogen. SO much better. Of course the patches give me big-ass headaches too, so I'm mainlining Tylenol and caffeine. I'll kick the caffeine once I start the PIO shots. Somehow the progesterone masks the caffeine withdrawal. I can't explain it. But yep, I've got this stuff down to a science now ...

I might have mentioned that my old IVF clinic is doing my monitoring, since my new clinic is out of state. Every time I go to a monitoring appointment, I see someone different, and so far, I hadn't seen my old doctor. On Wednesday, I saw him for the first time in over 3 years. I was a little bit excited -- he's a very nice guy who tried hard to knock me up and was so truly sad when it didn't work. I thought I'd catch him up on my life, show him some pix of Squeaker, let him know things are turning out okay for me. But you know what? He didn't remember me. He had my thick file and was flipping through it a bit confusedly, squinting in his effort to remember, but I could tell that I'd become one of many disappointed female faces in his professional history, and that the details of our friendly relationship had flown the coop. He even seemed to think I was doing another IVF -- maybe the monitoring requests from my new clinic don't mention that we're using donated embryos -- but when he started counting follicles, I nearly burst out laughing. I would no more try to make a baby with these old eggs than I'd fly to the moon. But before I could correct him, wham, bam, thank you ma'am, I was wanded, proclaimed "suppressed", and he was gone. I was momentarily sad, and then decided that it was a fittting way to close the door on that part of my life. I'm foggy, he's foggy, and all directions are forward. No looking back.

Today I met a woman in our local bookstore. She was squatting in front of the two or three shelves of fertility books. I was looking at the adoption books, which are in the four shelves above them (which always struck me as kind of insulting -- it's as if they're saying "here, you pitiful selfish infertile women, the few things we have to help you are down at floor level. Once you give up and see the light, you can stand up and read all of these wonderful books about adoption! Until then, you must sit on the floor." And meanwhile, both sections are squeezed between parenting books, just to make you feel like a total loser. I keep meaning to drop a note to the store about this. Someday.). Anyway, I know every book in both sections well. I mentioned that to her, and she asked me if anything in particular had worked for us. I thought "Yes! Of course! Some books are definitely better than others!" and then my brain went completely blank, as is so often the case these days. All I could do was offer her my blog address, since all the books that have helped me are listed here. And then I mentioned the Stirrup Queens, because without Mel and her posse, I would never have survived those years of TTC. I outed myself to a complete stranger, which is totally out of character for me, but she seemed so hopeful and untouched by the madness that is IF treatments. I hope that she and her partner have the best of luck, and if she stops by here or Mel's, that she is able to find a community to help her find her way.

I was Skyping with my IF "twin" in London last week -- we have the same birthday, the same profession, musical husbands, and our sons are close in age. Every time we email, we find out something else we have in common. It's downright eerie. Anyway, it was our first "face to face" conversation, after over 3 years of online friendship, and except for my unreliable internet connection, it was an awesome conversation. At one point, we were railing against the medical community, talking about how much we've had to direct our own care, do our own research, put our feet down firmly to insist on getting tests that the docs don't think we need, telling them something specific is wrong with us and having them disbelieve us and then being proven right, how hard we've had to fight to get to the point where we are. And we both fight hard because we CAN. We both had all sorts of personal hell to contend with in our younger years, which made us tough (in a broken-toy-held-together-with-superglue kind of way; if you know where to look, you can see the cracks), and then we became lawyers. We're trained to fight, to argue, to defend the defenseless. We both feel that when we're battling the medical establishment in our quest to build our families, we're fighting on behalf of other women, raising holy hell when mistakes are made, filing complaints when it's necessary, making sure things get on the record so that the next woman with the same problem, who might not have the skills and knowledge we have, won't have to endure the same roadblocks and battles we've faced.

Many of my battles came too late, much of my knowledge is tempered with "if I had only known then what I know now ..." It might be too late for me, but if I can help one woman find her way through the IF maze in a way that is as painless as possible, then I'll feel better about it all. It will have been for something. So, to those beautiful women I met in the store today, may your road be smooth and may your child find you quickly.

Comments

[Sue]

Lupron makes me stupid too! Good luck with your FET - fingers crossed for you.

[Fiddle1]

Good God. You DO have this down to a science. I'm still angry about this late diagnosis of a clotting disorder. I know it doesn't do any good to be angry, but I am. I am inspired that you seem to have really stopped "looking backwards." I will think of you if ever I begin lamenting things in my life that happened the way they did. I know there is no point. Hope the FET goes well and you start feeling better soon.