Aaack!

Today did not go quite as expected. This is thanks in part to the estrogen (I think) and in part to the fact that my ovaries seem to like to stick their tongues out at me in defiance at the most inopportune times.

It started out well enough. I had my lining check, and it was 9mm. Yea! And there was a triple stripe. Yea! And it looked like my ovaries were quiet, according to the monitoring RE. Yea yet again! (I need them to be quiet, because we didn't use Lupron or BCPs on this cycle.)

Then I got to the office. And realized that while I'm usually the most dressy one there, all the rest of the women had decided to wear suits today and even some of the men were more dressed up. I knew two of our VPs and two of our directors were coming in for their annual visit today, but I didn't remember everyone being that dressy last year. So I had chosen to wear an outfit (dress pants, button down shirt) that isn't really anything out of the ordinary for me.

Thank God for my one co-worker, who was in white jeans and a muscle shirt; at least there was one person there more casually dressed than me. And honestly, the VPs and directors weren't in suits or even in ties, so I'm sure no one else but me even gave it a second thought.

But still, being all hormonal, this did not bode well.

On top of that, one of my co-workers had suggested that we should all bring our families to the team dinner tonight. That meant 3 kids under the age of 2. I knew R couldn't handle that, so I planned to go solo. I knew at least one other co-worker's fiance couldn't make it, so I took some comfort in the fact that at least there would be two of us sans significant other.

Except that she told me her significant other was able to change his plans. At which point I began to cry. Sitting right there in my cubicle, with mascara running down my face. Thinking that I was going to be the only underdressed, solo one at the table.

She knows about the cycle, and about my unfortunate start with the extra patches. So she leaned over and quietly said, "Hun, how many of those patches are you up to now?" I held up four fingers. She shook her head in sympathy and handed me a Kleenex.

I knew I had to get out of there for a few minutes, but there is no place for privacy in our office space or in the bathroom. So I wound up sitting in my car (needed someplace with a/c) in the parking lot, wailing into the phone to one of my BFFs about being underdressed, solo for dinner and something else that I can't even remember now. Yes, I know it's ridiculous. After a few minutes, it sounded ridiculous even to my own ears, and I started to laugh about it and pulled myself back together.

What can I say? Me on hormones isn't a pretty thing.

Then just as I was packing up to go to said dinner (most of them were already there), I got a call from RE's nurse. Lining check looked great, but progesterone was at 1.5 and LH was at 23.

Meaning I am starting to ovulate. Even though I usually don't ovulate. Even though I have Never. Ever. had a d21 progesterone level above 1.0 without medication support. The one time I don't want my ovaries to cough up an egg, they decide to get with the program and function (sorta) like they should.

Since the progesterone is only at 1.5, it means I haven't ovulated yet, so fortunately the cycle can still go forward - one day early. And, I needed to start the progesterone suppositories today instead of tomorrow and rush to the pharmacy to pick up some oral estrogen, because that level isn't quite as high as it should be.

So I had to back out of dinner at the last moment in order to race home to start shoving pills up you-know-where. I've got nothing left in me today except what feels like the need for a very good cry, so I left it to Kleenex co-worker to make an excuse for me...

Just to Clarify

From some of your comments recently, I realize that I've left a bit of a wrong impression.

It's not that I don't have hope for this upcoming cycle - I do. Actually, that's kind of the crazy thing about it: I have more hope than I probably should, and that's freaking me out a bit. So what's coming across as a less-than-hopeful attitude is actually fear.

You see, I consider:

1) We're at the Big Guns Clinic
2) Our RE is the founder of said clinic
3) We have a ridiculous number of embryos that tested chromosomally normal
4) They're from a protocol that's different than our first 2 cycles, so maybe that will make the difference
5) My thyroid levels are finally stable
6) I'm on 80 ml of Lov.enox this time - I found a study that showed women who have a history of RPL and 2 clotting factors have much greater success on 80 ml as compared with 40 ml. I've only been on 40 ml in the past.

So I think about all of that, and a large part of me thinks "How could this NOT work?" I have to admit, having had 5 pregnancies in the past (so actually getting pg doesn't seem to be our issue as much as staying that way is), I even catch myself tending to think "when we get the positive beta..." instead of "if".

But the reality is, even with all those things in our favor, it could not work. So I think I keep reminding myself of that to keep the hope in check. I've even spent a fair amount of time (far more than I should) visiting blogs of fellow IFers who have had to endure the unthinkable - losses of babies in the second or third trimester. I know I've had a lot of losses, but they've all been first trimester. Somehow I tend to think that losses after that point are even worse, because you start to let your guard down and think "This could really work", and you feel movements and see your belly grow, etc.

So, yes, I've been reading about preeclampsia stories and cord accident stories and incompetent cervix stories and placental abruption stories. Bracing myself for what may be to come. Reminding myself that if it does happen, others have endured and survived. I guess somehow that helps me to think that I would be able to, too.

Because that's just how IF screws with your head. With mine, at least. But in my own weird sort of way, I do have hope. Really. I promise.

Yin and Yang

One of the things I've been most grateful for these past 7 years is that R and I have always been on the same page or able to quickly get to that point. The other thing that ranks up there at the top of the list is our ability to switch from yin to yang roles when need be.

You see, it's mainly R who has been the optimist in this process. Especially when we were first starting out, he was so confident that everything would work out, that we would get the results we hoped for. And I needed that, because by my nature I tend to be a bit more of a glass-half-empty kind of gal.

His optimism lasted a good long while, even through the canceled cycles, the failed cycles, the failed adoptions. Then when we hit miscarriage #4, after seeing that promising heartbeat for three appointments in a row, the optimism faded. He struggled more than he ever had in the past, and he didn't bounce back like he had with all the other disappointments and rounds of bad news.

Suddenly it was up to me to be the optimistic one, because one of us has to be, or what's the point of continuing to try? So we swapped places, and for the last year and a half I've played the role of cheerleader (hard to believe, I know, given the tone of most of my posts) while he struggled to believe.

And now that this cycle started and I began to hyperventilate a bit, at the moment I needed him to assume the role of optimist, there it was - his trademark confidence that this will all work out. It's wonderful to see that in him again; I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.

You Were Right

Turns out, quadruple overdosing yourself on estrogen isn't that big of a deal, at least not on the very first day of an FET cycle.

The nurse e-mailed me this morning to say no problem, just stick with the schedule from here on out. A lining check ultrasound has been scheduled for 4/29, and the transfer date couldn't be changed, so it's still set for 5/5. I've decided to just go with it and try not to freak out about the date too much.

So, in 20 days, I will officially be incubating. The first beta is one week from yesterday. It falls on a Friday, and there are no labs open on Sunday, so I assume I will have to wait until that following Monday to get the official results. Though I always give in and start POAS a couple days before the first beta anyway.

I shouldn't be surprised by how fast all this happens, but somehow I am.

I just realized today that it's been nearly 3 years (FET in June 2007) since the last time we made a formal effort to get pregnant. I can't believe it's been that long! I guess I forgot a bit about how much shorter FET cycles are compared to fresh cycles.

A Cycle-Cancelling Screwup?

No luck on getting the FET date changed with the lab, but I'm wondering if the cycle will still happen at all next month:

Does anyone know what happens if you put on four estrogen patches when you're only supposed to put on one?? Seriously? (Aside from turning into a royal *itch overnight, I mean.)

When the nurse called me yesterday, she said to start the patches as soon as I could get them. I swear I heard "patches", plural. I know there definitely weren't specific instructions to just use one and then work my way up from there.

And when I got the patches, the directions on the prescription information taped to the boxes said "Apply 4 patches every other day."

So I stuck 4 on my hip last night. Then this evening, she faxed over my calendar. It says to use 1 patch on the first day, then 1 patch two days later, 1 patch two days after that, then 2, then 3, etc. So I'm not supposed to use 4 patches for almost two weeks!!

I pulled off 3 of them as soon as I read that, but I'm wondering if this has already royally screwed up the cycle? I will call tomorrow to find out. My nurse is probably already tired of me, so I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear about this...

Hope, and Fear, and Hyperventilation

Our FET is approaching at a rapid pace. I thought I was ready. A few weeks ago, I was in a very Zen place.

Now, I'm an example of just how much infertility can screw with your head and make you seem like a crazy person to friends and strangers alike.

It started with a visit to the hematologist last week. RE doesn't want to manage the Lovenox, so a local hema doc is doing it. I was hoping I could just call and get another script, but since the last time I saw him was 18 months ago (before the retrievals), I had to go in again. With the retrievals, I was only on Lovenox for a few weeks, so there weren't any follow ups.

With the transfer, if the beta turns up positive, apparently there will be follow ups. Early. Ridiculously early. As in 4 weeks pg early.

He told me this, and I started to have a mini-meltdown. Because, you see, when he said "I want to see you around 4-6 weeks, closer to 4 weeks, to make sure you're not bruising or bleeding excessively", my infertility-addled brain thought, "By going in there at 4 weeks, you're signaling that you're arrogant enough to think you're going to be taking those shots for a while to come. Which means that you're just opening yourself up to fate reaching out and smacking you back down once again to prove you wrong. Which means that going to see the hematologist at 4 weeks = way to guarantee yet another miscarriage."

I stuttered, I stammered, I teared up. I pointed out that rarely do I make it beyond 6 weeks. He acquiesced and said I could just come in whenever I feel ready. Probably figured it was just easier to give in than to risk seeing what full-blown hysteria looked like.

Then CD 1 showed up on Sunday. The fact that it arrived wasn't much of a surprise since I had to do progesterone suppositories for a week to bring it on, but Sunday was a few days earlier than I had expected it to start.

I was supposed to start the patches and Lovenox last night, but there was a mixup because the clinic thought I had the patches when I didn't. So I got those today and slapped four of the clear little suckers on. As long as it doesn't generate some sort of weird rash, I'm all for patches instead of injections. And I've got plenty of real estate (i.e. flab) on which to stick them. Finally my hips come in handy for something.

The nurse called me today to talk about the cycle schedule and some of my paperwork. Transfer is tentatively planned for May 5th. Three weeks from tomorrow. Aaack - so soon! Another mini-meltdown ensued with me hyperventilating and calling one of my best friends to say I couldn't possibly be ready to face the reality of this in three weeks.

She had just managed to calm me down when another thought struck: May 5th is the 6th anniversary of our first miscarriage. Perhaps doing a transfer on that day isn't such a great idea. But the nurse is trying to find out if the transfer date can be pushed to the 6th or 7th anyway so that I don't have to take quite as much time off work. So rather than call her back in a panic and completely erase any doubt about my sanity or lack thereof, I decided to wait and see if she is able to get the date changed.

On the bright side, a transfer that week means we'll stay in Colorado and hide out during Mother's Day weekend. (We're celebrating two weeks early with our mothers for other reasons.) And I have decided that once the first 24 hours after transfer pass, we need to go stay at a place in the mountains where I can just relax and take cues from nature about how to get life to grow.

So at least there's one upside to that infertility-addled brain - it also makes the leap from "vacation" to "treatment-enhancing medicinal rest" without a second thought. Now if only we could claim it as such on our taxes...

So Very Thankful

We didn't have much luck tracking down the fill-in oncologist that my dad saw earlier this month, but on Friday a friend of mine who has connections in the medical world was able to help find another oncologist for my dad. (I don't know why I didn't think to ask her for help sooner.)

The new oncologist is about 1.5 hours away from where my dad lives. He had an opening for an appointment this afternoon, so my dad's wife spent Friday scrambling to get copies of all of my dad's medical records. (Another good argument for always getting a copy of your most recent records every time you go to the doctor, a lesson I've learned through these many years of IF.)

So they drove down to see the new onc today, and the appointment went well. Really, really well. I'm so incredibly thankful.

First, there's some amazing news that I didn't really go into during my last post. And the details of it are still a little fuzzy, since I didn't actually get to speak with the doctor myself. But, basically, the fill-in oncologist Dad saw earlier this month and the oncologist today think that he doesn't currently have leukemia!

Last spring when Dad was first diagnosed, a bone marrow biopsy showed 51% of his blood cells were "blasts", which are immature cells, i.e. leukemia cells. He had another BMB after his one round of chemo at the fancy schmancy medical center 4 hours from his house, and that showed 6% blasts. I don't think he's had another BMB until this month, and this month's showed 5% blasts. Basically, 20% or more is considered leukemia, 5% or less is considered normal, and I guess 6-19% is a gray area that is considered to be progressing to leukemia.

On the other hand, it's not that the doctors have said "Congratulations, you're 100% normal and healthy now!" The fill-in onc, at his one appointment with my dad and without the benefit of the results of all the tests he ordered, thought Dad might have a very rare blood disease called parox.ysmal noctu.rnal hemogl.obinuria. Today's onc, having the benefit of those test results in front of him, thinks that Dad has my.elodysplast.ic syndrome. Both of those have a 30% chance of progressing to the type of leukemia Dad was diagnosed with, and M.DS is still considered to be a form of blood cancer from what I gather in the quick research I've done online tonight. But both of those diseases can be managed, people can live for years with them, and a lot of people who have them don't die from them. So, again, very, very thankful.

The other great news is that today's onc got right on dad's transfusion issue. The iron chelator drug has already been ordered and should arrive by Thursday, and a blood transfusion has been arranged for Wednesday. Ideally he could have used it now given where his blood levels were at today, but I'm guessing perhaps the onc wanted to wait until it's closer to the time the chelator will arrive in order to try to minimize the amount of organ damage from excess iron, since Dad's now at the point where that is a concern.

I think there are also possibly some other drugs he can be given to try to address the M.DS more directly, but he and his wife didn't discuss the details of that when I talked to them tonight. I think we're all just taking a day or so to be grateful about the fact that this doctor didn't tell him to just go home and die; I'll ask them for details about the M.DS drugs sometime during the next few days.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.

Ups and Downs

Ups:
The antibiotic treatment in NY is done. My uterus should now be squeaky clean and bacteria-free.

I did not gain an obnoxious amount of weight during the trip, despite eating an obnoxious amount of junk - lots and lots of chocolate, a fair amount of other dessert, pizza at least 4 times, fish and chips, mac n cheese, etc. (Clearly one of my favorite things about NY is the food.) Must be all the walking and climbing up and down stairs to the subway and the apartment we rented that kept the pounds from piling on.

Our flight home landed an hour ahead of time. The pilot must've really been stepping on the gas pedal! But I'm not complaining - happy to be home, and got an extra hour of sleep as a result that night.

We have a tentative FET plan. There will be no Lup.ron, no BCPs. It looks like the transfer will be either the week before or the week after Mother's Day, which means no test results during that holiday timeframe (yea!).

It only took one phone call this time for the nurse and I to get beyond the issue of my unpredictable cycles. I don't ovulate with any sort of consistency. I've never, NEVER had a Day 21 progesterone draw that was above 1 during a non-medicated cycle. They are a fertility clinic. We've already been through this issue 3 times before - for the first one-day workup, the first retrieval, and last fall's one-day workup. So why the heck is it so hard to understand that when I say "I don't know when my next CD1 will be", the appropriate response is NOT "Okay, so do you think you'll get CD1 next week?" as if I had just spoken the words into thin air. But as I mentioned, we got through it (and landed on the "no Lu.pron, no BCPs" approach.)

Downs:
My first day back in the office, drama arose. I haven't shared this blog with anyone at work, but just to be safe, I won't go into the details. Suffice it to say that the drama does not involve me at this time, but depending on how it plays out, I could wind up being pulled into another job that is an area in which I have little experience and even less interest.

The FET isn't going to happen before our communicables expire, so we'll be coughing up several hundred more bucks for that.

Really Down:
My dad saw a new oncologist a couple weeks ago, while he was filling in for the oncologist in my dad's small town while she was on vacation. The new doctor (new to my dad, he's actually been practicing for 40 years and is semi-retired, so not new to medicine in general) gave my dad hope and said he thought there was more that could be done to try to treat him. But now the other doc is back, and she refuses to try. She discharged my dad from her care around Thanksgiving because she feels there is nothing more to do, that blood transfusions are pointless (despite the fact that they've kept him alive for the past 4 months), and she thinks he should just go into hospice, stop trying, and accept death. I'm trying to find a way for my dad to get in touch with the oncologist who filled in.

I could understand her feeling that it was time to stop trying if he was like he was in the hospital - delirious, constantly restless, sores all over his body, requiring oxygen to keep his levels above 90%, a respiratory system that seemed to be in decline at various points, etc., but that's not the case. He has his full mental faculties, he's able to walk without assistance, feed himself, talk on the phone (he sounds pretty normal, other than sometimes he has mouth sores that cause him pain), go out to lunch, lead an hour-long church service, and play Yahtzee all day long. It still seems to me like a life worth fighting for.

In the middle of all of that, another challenge arose this week: My dad's iron levels are way too high - 5,100, when the normal is below 400. It's apparently a common problem in patients who get a lot of blood transfusions. Because of the iron level, he can't have any more transfusions. But the transfusions are what's been keeping him going, and he's been getting them every 10-14 days. So we don't have a lot of time to figure out a solution.

The options seem to be phlebotomy (taking a pint of blood at a time out of the body) or iron chelation medications. Dad's not a candidate for phlebotomy because some of the other levels in his blood are too low; that's why he's getting the transfusions in the first place. So it looks like iron chelation is his only option, but the oncologist won't consider doing any sort of treatment at all. I'm hoping we can get in contact with the other oncologist tomorrow.

Obviously, depending on what's going on with him, the FET may need to be postponed again.

Info About the Antibiotics

First of all, thank you to all of you who commented on my last post and gave your thoughts about the transferring one vs. two question. I appreciate all the input, and it's given R and me lots to think about.

A few of you also had questions about the antibiotics stuff and who we're seeing. I don't usually mention the doctors I'm seeing by name (although I realize that by mentioning the location of our clinic, that pretty much gives that one away). But since there isn't much info about there about this topic as compared with mainstream fertility treatments, if you Google "fertile vs. infer.tile" (without the second period), you'll find one of the books that the doc wrote.

He's not an RE, and he doesn't do IVF or IUIs - he pretty much sticks to his antibiotic therapy from what I understand. He's a gyn and pathologist. For those who asked why I'm doing this: we've had several miscarraiges, and it was something that annother IFer mentioned on a bulletin board I'd read a few years back that had helped her after recurrent pregnancy loss. There wasn't any particular test result of ours that made me think "we definitely need to go see him, he's the one who could address this particular test result", we were just looking for another potential solution to all the losses.

I won't go into all the specific details of his treatments here, because there's info in his books and on his site that explains it better than I could; there's also a Yaho.o group started by some of his patients that has a lot of info, and I blogged a bit about what we did back in 2007 when we first went to him, so you can look at Sept. 2007's archives if you're in the mood for more in-depth reading.

What I will say is one of the reasons I chose to go with his approach (aside from desperation :-) ) is because I liked the fact that he is trying to address a root cause of infertility. So much of what infertility treatment is about, at least in our case, has seemed like treatment that attempts to find a way around the problem rather than address it. Sometimes there is no way to address the problem other than to go around it, but in our particular case I think perhaps there are things that can be done to try to address the root cause, and so I wanted to attempt to do that.

I don't know if it will work. Like all doctors in the infertility world, some people love him and some don't, some have great success that they attribute to his treatment and some don't. We'll just have to see what happens in our particular case.

Um, about 'the plan'

Mrs. LC's comment on my previous post made me realize that while I've alluded to various bits and pieces of it, I hadn't actually posted "The Plan".

In short, The Plan was:
- Lose 20-25 pounds
- Go to NYC and get antibiotic uterine lavages in March
- Lose another 5-10 pounds
- Do an FET with 2 blasts in April

In reality, The Plan is looking more like:
- Lost 14 pounds
- Go to NYC (tomorrow!), may or may not get lavages depending on if I'm bleeding
- Lose another 1-6 pounds, depending on how long it takes CD 1 to show up
- Do an FET, number of blasts debatable, in April or May, again depending on CD 1

So, not perfect, but I'm long past obsessing about perfect. RE thinks the antibiotic stuff is "voodoo", but he didn't expressly forbid it. And we got further during the pregnancy when I had the IV antibiotic than we have with any other pregnancy, so we decided to give it another try. (That was the pregnancy with the Turner's syndrome baby, so it's not that the antibiotics didn't work. My body held onto the pregnancy very well that time; unfortunately there was just no hope of the baby making it to the second trimester because it was a complete Turner's. Some babies with partial Turner's do progress.)

Honestly, I would kind of feel better about another IV since that's what we did last time, but NYC doc thinks that's unnecessary this time around. And the lavages are cheaper, so it's not that his recommendation is motivated by getting more money out of us.

With regard to the number of blasts to transfer, a year ago RE was thinking two or three. But given the number of twins from CGH transfers, he told us in October that he'd recommend two, definitely not three.

That sounded fine with me, except that I've been lurking on the boards lately, and there seem to be a lot of twins coming up from CGH/MA transfers of two blasts. A lot. And while I would love to have two at once, I'm concerned about the wisdom of that. I'm already at risk for lots of complications, weigh more than I ideally would like to, and don't even know if my body can carry one baby for any length of time, much less two.

Then I came across some very scary stories about preeclampsia and almost bleeding out during emergency deliveries of twins. R wanted to start packing last night, but instead I forced him to sit and read said stories.

So now I'm thinking maybe it's best to transfer just one. But on the other hand, I have a feeling that if we transfer just one, none may stick. Thoughts? Suggestions? At least we've got a little bit of time on that one.

I plan, nature scoffs

Today is CD 8. We get on a plane in less than 48 hours, and my uterus is supposed to start getting bathed in antibiotics on Monday. I can't be bleeding during that time.

Today I poofed out (my term for bloating) and started spotting. Almost everything about me seems to be so much more normal and healthy since the thyroidectomy - why can't that include my cycles becoming normal, too? Ugh.

I told R he is going to just have to go with the flow (no pun intended when I said it to him.) We have plane tickets, we have an apartment reserved, his parents are coming with us - we're going. Either the bleeding is going to stop and the lavages will start as planned, the bleeding will continue but eventually stop and the lavages will get started a few days late, the bleeding will continue the whole time (I really hope not!) and I'll get IV antibiotics instead, or the bleeding will continue and it will be just a working vacation and nothing more.

Whatever will be, will be.

A (Small) Success

It's amazing what time can do for perspective. When I was in high school and college, if I stood on the scale and it said 130 pounds or more, I was devastated, and my day was ruined.

This morning, I stood on the scale, and the number (notice I'm not telling you exactly what it was) equated to a BMI of 29.9 - the highest possible number it could be without falling into the "Obese Class 1" category on the BMI chart. And I was thrilled!

That's because at least the number is going in the right direction. A year ago this month, at my highest weight ever, my BMI was 36.55 ("Obese Class 2"). I managed to lose 28 pounds - which I don't even feel like I should take credit for since I lost them by eating more and not exercising - before my thyroid surgery. Then I spent four months at pretty much a standstill while my meds got adjusted.

Now, since the beginning of the year, I've managed to drop another 14 pounds, mostly by cutting back a lot on sugar and just being careful in general about what I eat. But still, it mostly feels like it's just my body doing what a normal body with normal thyroid levels is supposed to do, so I still don't feel like I can take a ton of credit for it. Instead, I'll just be grateful for it, and do my best to make it continue.

I don't think I'm going to reach my goal of 30 pounds before our next transfer, but hopefully I can manage to drop at least another 6 to 8 pounds before then, for a total of 20-22 pounds.

Speaking of the next transfer, we are off to NYC in a few days to bathe my uterus in antibiotics, and then as soon as the next CD 1 shows up, we'll get started on the meds for transfer. Although since my last cycle was 48 days, I'm kind of nervous about whether we'll make it for transfer before our communicables expire.

If we don't, I'm not going to stress out about it too much though, because it's dawned on me that if we are able to do a transfer before they expire, we'll either be mourning a BFN or reaching 6 weeks right around Mother's Day. In my world, historically Mother's Day around 6 weeks = miscarriage, so perhaps the transfer being postponed for a week or two wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

Back to L'IF'e, Back to Reality

It's been just over a year since our last retrieval (likely our last one ever), and the last few months in particular have been nice.

I've been hanging out in The Land of Hope, looking beyond into The Possibility of What Could Be, but not quite ready to venture over and explore that territory yet.

Now I have suddenly - a little bit unexpectedly - found myself there at the edge of that place, the starting line. That En Vogue song, "Back to Life, Back to Reality" seems rather apropo and is apparently now stuck permanently in my head, a taunting reminder that even the ostrich approach can't be maintained forever.

It's time to take a deep breath, pop a pill, and find out if we wind up in The Land of Blissful Joy in about 11 months or if something goes wrong and we just conclude another fruitless trip around Infertility Mountain sometime before then.

As usual, my plan has not gone according to plan. I have not lost the 30 pounds I was hoping for yet, and CD 1 has not shown up. I went from a 30 day cycle to a 16 day cycle to a 19 day cycle to a 23 day cycle to a 43-and-counting day cycle. It occurred to me that if CD 1 doesn't show up soon, we won't have enough time to go to NYC for antibiotics, get another CD 1 and get to Colorado before our communicables expire in the end of April.

So after doing some quick calculations with the help of a calendar, I called the NYC doc last week to ask for some progesterone to induce a withdrawl bleed. I started popping the pills last week.

I'm not quite ready. I like The Land of Hope - it's a nice, safe place, full of possibility and absent of any of the heartache of disappointment. But since it's also absent of children, I guess it's time to move out of this comfort zone, take that step, and see where we land.

Here's hoping that this time it's us kicking infertility's ass instead of the other way around.

Hopeful, but not insanely so

I've been a bad, bad blogger, seeing as how it's been more than a month since I've posted. And I'm not really sure exactly where all of that time has gone, but something strange has happened during that time - I've started to feel like a (fairly) normal person again, for the first time in a long time.

It's hard to say what's prompting this - maybe my wacky thyroid levels finally being normalized through the thyroid meds? Maybe just relief that my dad is (so far) stable? Maybe just that after 7 years of dealing with infertility, I've learned to co-exist with the pain?

Whatever it is, I'm just going to be grateful for it, for however long it lasts. It's not that there's been an earth-shattering change. It's just that somewhere along the way in all of this, I slowly went from being a person with a life and hobbies to a total couch potato who uses TV as an escape and no longer has an interest in hobbies (or even basic chores, like tidying up or filing papers).

For the last month, I've been more social, spent a lot less time with the TV, and finally started to work on getting our home office organized. (We've lived here for 3.5 years, and there are still boxes to be unpacked in there!)

Three and a half years of procrastinating leads to a lot of catch-up, so let's hope this positive vibe sticks around long enough for me to get to the bottom of all the piles of stuff! :-)

We still don't know yet exactly when we're going to go to NY and then CO, but we're continuing to hope for sometime in March and then April. I was in a bookstore the other day to buy a magazine for a friend (and walked out with $50 of purchases - how does that happen??), and I saw a book "101 Things You Should Do Before Your Kids Leave Home." I thumbed through it and toyed with the idea of buying it as a symbol of hope for our FET. Then I put it back on the shelf.

I'm hopeful, but not insanely so. I definitely don't need to tempt fate like that.

Quick hits on some of the other stuff...I haven't been perfect on the "no refined sugar" goal, but good enough to lose about 10 pounds in the first month. The goal is 20 more by the end of April...As I mentioned above, dad is stable so far. I made a quick trip to see him last weekend; I'm going to try to get out there at least once every month or two...School started two weeks ago (one class this semester), and so far it's been manageable. Only 10 more weeks to go before there's a break...I'm on CD29, thought I was going to have CD1 a few days ago, but only had one brief bit of spotting and then nothing since Sunday, so who knows? (I seriously doubt I'm pg, since the timing is off - I was visiting dad the weekend before the spotting, so it couldn't be implantation spotting.)

NY Resolution - What Was I Thinking?

Maybe the problem is that I wasn't thinking. Because on top of the crazy idea of trying to exercise 2 hours a day, dealing with dad's situation, and attempting to catch up at work from the time off last month, apparently I've decided that now is the perfect time to give up refined sugar.

Do you know how many different things refined sugar is in?!

I almost didn't make it through the first 24 hours. (I started yesterday.) I began to feel a headache and nausea come on yesterday afternoon - probably from withdrawl. :-) I wanted a Cok.e so badly!

Our house is also full of homemade (by R's dad) caramel corn, mint creme brownies I made before leaving to be with my dad (R's not a fan of mint, and apparently neither is my mom), a box of French mints she bought me for Christmas, and all sorts of packets of hot cocoa in fun seasonal flavors (gingerbread hot cocoa, anyone?)

And I could have none of it.

I did manage to survive the first day, though, and today was a bit easier. We'll see how long this lasts...

So, what is your New Year's resolution?

Dad Pulled Through

2009 did not start out how I expected (finding out just a couple weeks into the new year that we had no confirmed chromosomally normal embryos from our Nov. 08 cycle), nor did it end how I expected (hanging out with my dad in the hospital for the last two weeks of the year).

Amazingly, he is still with us. He actually got to be released from the hospital and go home on New Year's Eve, which I am very thankful for.

It seems that what caused his sudden turn for the worse was an adverse reaction to mor.ph.ine and Ata.va.n, not just the leukemia taking its natural progression. After we jumped on the plane and got out there, he didn't take any more pain meds for 8 days. When he did (on Dec. 21), they gave him the mo.rph.ine again but no Ata.va.n, and again his respiratory system started to crash, but not quite as badly as the day we flew out there.

The next morning, one of the nurses coming on for her shift said, "Oh, yeah, that can happen because of the mor.ph.ine. Why don't we give him something else next time?"

Uh, yeah, why don't we? No one else mentioned that to us - he's in a small hospital, and information doesn't seem to always get communicated well. So the next time he wanted pain meds, which was a few days later, they gave him something else. He slept, his pain eased, and his breathing remained normal.

He started to improve on Christmas Eve, and every day we noticed a bit more improvement. He's still in some pain, because he developed sores on his arms. We're not quite sure what caused them - could be the leukemia, could be all the medications they were pumping in to him, could just be a virus since he doesn't have much of an immune system. Basically his left arm looks like it's been badly burned from a few inches below the shoulder to a few inches above his wrist. His right arm isn't quite so bad. But he's been prescribed some cream that seems to be working amazingly well.

I came home on Dec. 29, and R and I celebrated our 14th anniversary the next day.

While he is home and continuing to improve, it's still very much a day by day thing. So we're just taking a wait and see approach; I don't know that our FET is going to happen as we had tentatively planned for the end of February. But that's okay for now. It will be 7 years TTC in February, so at this point what's a couple more months?

I'm sorry I haven't posted on many blogs lately. I had my work computer with me while I was with dad, and for some reason, it would let me post on my blog but it wouldn't let me comment on any blogs. I'm trying to catch up from missing the last two weeks at home, work, etc. (R and I haven't even exchanged Christmas gifts yet), but I will try to get back on track over the next couple of weeks.

Here's hoping for a better 2010 for all of us still fighting the IF fight...

FTF Update #1

Dad had a good day today, and I need a break from all the medical drama, so I figured I'd post a quick update about the Fight the Flab plan...

A couple of you asked if I had a specific plan (other than 2 hours per day). The short answer is, not really. But we have an exercise room that is part of our master bedroom suite. It includes a commercial-grade treadmill, an elliptical machine, a stationary bike, a weight bench with barbells, a free weights set, an exercise ball, a bun roller, and a tv with two Tiv.os connected to it.

So, really, I have no good excuse for not being the most in-shape person in the world.

Informally, I'll probably mostly walk and jog on the treadmill, because once I get to the point where I can run at least a mile and doing that feels good rather than feels like my lungs are going to explode out of my chest, I love that feeling - it's highly addictive. Also, it's easy to measure progress in terms of distance, time, and speed. (My goal is to get to the point of being able to run 2 miles without stopping at a 6 mph pace, i.e. a 10-minute mile.)

But I'll probably also do the bike and elliptical from time to time, and I'm making R play tennis with me on the weekends. He's much better at it than I am, but he's very patient with me.

So, here's how it went for the first week:

Day 1:
Did 20 minutes of walking on the treadmill in the morning. Was determined not to fall short of the 2 hours on my very first day, so walked another 1 hour and 40 minutes after work and dinner. Wondered how sore I would be the next morning. Began to think that maybe the one month plan would be better as a one day plan.

Day 2:
Stood on the scale. Down 1.4 pounds from the day before. The one month plan is back on. Not really much soreness to speak of.

Did no exercise in the morning before work. Still, highly motivated by the weight loss, so did 2 hours on the stationary bike after work. After the first 50 minutes, bottom was rather sore and a bit numb. Decided to rig a way to bike from a recumbent angle, so moved the bike to a place where it couldn't move, propped the bun roller up behind it so that I could lean against it (isn't that what those things are for??), sat on the floor and pedalled from there.

After about 20 more minutes, wondered if it would still count as exercise if I popped a bag of popcorn and ate it while continuing to pedal. Resisted the urge until after I finished the entire 2 hours. Popcorn (organic, low-fat) is particularly tasty after burning all those calories.

Day 3:
Stood on the scale. Down 0.8 pounds from the day before. Not quite as good as Day 1, but then again, I did spend an hour exercising while literally sitting on my ass on the floor, so figured it still wasn't bad.

A little bit of soreness, but it was the first day of rest on the plan, so no big deal. I could get used to the rest. Still watched what I ate and ate healthy, though.

Day 4:
Stood on the scale. Up 0.6 pounds from the day before. DAMN. 0.6 pounds equals 2,100 calories. I didn't even eat 2,100 calories in the entire day, plus I burned some just from, you know, breathing and stuff. Not fair.

Had an extremely early, long, stressful day at work. Didn't finish until much later than usual. Renting a movie and vegging on the couch with R sounded like a much better option than 2 hours of exercise. Did no exercise at all, but still ate decently.

Day 5:
Stood on the scale. Up another 0.6 pounds from the day before. Double DAMN. Again, didn't take in nearly enough calories to account for this weight gain. Have I mentioned that I hate my thyroid?? Well, technically I don't have one anymore, but you know what I mean.

Skipped the two hours of exercise again today, but spent hours on my feet in the kitchen baking cookies and homemade donuts with a neighbor and my mom. (Who, by the way, felt compelled to point out to the neighbor multiple times what a lazy person I am because I use a house cleaning service and what a horrible house manager I am because there is dust on the tops of picture frames and I don't fire the cleaning service over it, until the neighbor stepped up and said she'd probably still have a cleaning service even if she didn't work. At which point my mom - who was the one who invited the neighbor over for this festive little holiday gathering in the first place - left the kitchen and went to sit and pout in her room for two hours. Fortunately the neighbor is great, so it wasn't quite as awkward as it could have been.)

Anyway, had only hot chocolate, two pieces of pizza, and a couple of mini cookies the entire day.

Day 6:
Stood on the scale. Down 1.2 pounds from the day before. Yea! Eating practically nothing, although it really wasn't on purpose, paid off.

In a better mood because the backsliding on the scale had been erased. Talked R into playing tennis for an hour. Were on a set of courts that had two courts side by side. Had you glanced over casually while we were playing, you would have thought we were playing some weird made-up version of the game that involved both courts, for the amount of running over to the other court that we had to do. But, heart rates were up from all the sprinting and quick movements, there was lots of laughing, and I managed not to bean R in the head (or at the site of his ICD) with the ball, so the day was a success.

There was more last week, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head for now.

Overall, the progress has been slow. Before we left, I was down a total of about 3.5 pounds in just under two weeks. That's not bad, I know, but with 30 pounds as the goal, I was hoping for something a bit faster. But then again, if I had stuck to the 2 hour a day plan (I'm averaging closer to 1 hour a day), it probably would be coming off a bit faster.

It didn't occur to me to pack the scale when we were throwing things in our suitcase (yes, I'm serious - I would have brought it with me), but I think I'm still doing okay so far. My jeans are lose now to the point that I keep pulling them up several times a day, so I either need to buy a belt or get the next smaller size. And I spent half an hour on the hotel's treadmill yesterday. The fitness center had a scale. I stood on it after I ate breakfast, with my running shoes and workout clothes on, and I was okay with what the number was, so I'm hoping that means the number on my scale (na.ked, first thing in the morning after going to the bathroom but before eating) would have been good.

And yes, I am the kind of person who would cut my hair or shave my eyebrows off if I thought it would make the number on the scale lower. But I only have so much hair, and I suspect that being bald and eyebrowless probably wouldn't be my best look...

Dad's Still With Us

We arrived at the hospital at about 9:30 Sunday night to find Dad awake and talking, his personality and sense of humor totally intact. After his wife called us to let us know it looked like the end was eminent, he started to improve a bit.

She told him we were on our way. He had told her earlier that day that he was ready to meet Jesus, but when he heard we were coming, he told her he wanted to try to still be able to see us, and he didn't want any more medication that would cause him to be sleepy or not be able to communicate, i.e. no pain meds and no anti-anxiety meds.

So I've slept in his room (along with his wife) for the past three nights. He's having ups and downs, but he's a fighter, and now he's saying he has more living to do here on earth.

This afternoon, we were able to put him in a wheelchair, and his wife took him for a "date" sightseeing around the hospital. While they were out and about, I stayed in his room. I realized I was starting to feel a sore throat come on, so I called R to pick me up. I'm going to try to get a good night's sleep at the hotel and hopefully fight this off.

We're not quite sure what to do about the length of our visit, though. We only bought one-way tickets, and we've been extending R's hotel room day by day. When R's not chauffering me to/from the hospital or running around doing errands for us (like doing a load of laundry so that Dad has clean shorts to wear), he's been hanging out in the hotel room trying to work, but it's somewhat difficult for him to do remotely.

I may have him go home in a couple of days, but figuring out what to do myself is a bit more difficult. The doctors haven't really been able to give us a clear timeline; they say it's possible that there could be a sudden turn for the worse in a matter of hours, or it could be a month or more.

I'm considering trying to find an apartment that can be rented on a weekly or monthly basis and staying here, because it's easier for me to work remotely. Or maybe we should both head home and plan to come back in a week or two. I don't know what to do.

Rushing to Dad's bedside

His wife called a few hours ago. We may not get there in time. She asked if I wanted them to try to keep him alive until then, but I told her I'd rather we do what is best for him. We saw him in October, he was healthier then and happy. It was a good visit, that's the way I want to remember him.

We're rushing to the airport now. I'm holding up fine, except when my thoughts drift to "If we have babies, he won't get to meet them when they're born." And then the tears come, so I must stop thinking that.

We don't have internet access where he lives, so it may be several days before I have a chance to update again.

My Crazy Plan (aka Fighting the Flab)

I think I spent more than half of November asleep. During the awake part of the month, I managed to fire the endocrinologist (well, not so much "fire" as "slink away silently") and cajole my family doc into giving me an Rx for T.3 toward the end of the month(also lowered the Synt.hroid at the same time).

Miracle of miracles, the first day I took the T.3, I no longer needed a two-hour nap in the afternoon and haven't needed one since. It continues to astound me how much of an advocate thyroid patients need to be for themselves! Far, far more than you need to advocate for yourself during IF treatments, and that's saying something.

So, now that I am once again wide awake and have enough energy to do something more than just drag my sorry self back to bed, I have devised a plan. You all know how much I love a good plan. Hopefully this will be one of the rare ones that actually works out.

I feel like I need to lose more weight before we attempt a transfer, not so that I can look svelte on the transfer table - because believe me, the amount of weight loss I have in mind still won't get me anywhere near svelte - but so that I can approach a potential pregnancy from a healthier starting point.

Translation: I'd like to lose another 30 pounds between now and the end of February or March, which is when we're tentatively planning to do a transfer.

The first 30 pounds pretty much fell off between March and August after I realized my problem was that I hadn't been eating enough for my overactive thyroid. But since the little sucker was removed three months ago, the weight loss immediately came to an abrupt halt. I gained about 5 pounds at one point after the surgery, but I've battled it back down so that now I'm only about 1 pound above where I was since the surgery.

This sounds crazy, and ambitious, and probably ill-advised I realize, but I'm going to give it a go. Because what have I got to lose, except for hopefully an amount of weight that is nearly equivalent to one of our dogs? So, here's the plan: Starting with Dec. 1, the goal is to exercise for two hours per day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then take a break on Thursdays, back on for Fridays through Sundays, a break on Mondays, etc.

All in all, that should equate to 44 hours of exercise over the course of a month. Uhh, maybe I shouldn't say it like that, because that sounds like a lot.

Keep in mind, I'm not planning to do this forever. My goal is to start with one month, and if it works and I feel up for another month, I might continue in January, but that's as far as it will go, and then I know I will have to settle into a much more sane plan.

I'll post periodic updates, because I'm sure some hilarity (or hopefully at least some mildly chuckle-worthy moments) will ensue...

Wish me luck. And muscles that overcome soreness quickly. And joints that don't hold this against me.