Mary Scarlet

Five years on

Once or twice a year I remember to pop on to make sure this blog and associated accounts haven't expired and I'm paid up. So I just noticed that my first post here was on October 5, 2005, and this is my 98th post. In keeping with the overall not-much-in-touch-with-self theme that defines my life, I cannot, cannot, cannot remember what I was thinking and feeling and needed to write about that would have filled all those posts. Maybe, I will celebrate NaBloPoMo http://www.nablopomo.com/ by just rereading them all.

But probably I won't.

But maybe this is still a good opportunity to try to reflect and self educate a bit.

Originally this blog was mostly about dealing with the horrendous pain of miscarriage and infertility. How's that going? Pain: pretty much gone, I'm happy to say. I can still get a little emotional and weepy attending mass with my parents on Mothers Day and at Christmas, but it's for a confusing jumble of reasons: no kids of my own, love and concern for my own aging parents, and, I must confess, church music. Church music makes me emotional. Roman Catholicism wins again.

We don't have kids. I never did a fourth round of IVF. I never went back and reopened the conversation about adoption. I am very pleased to report that right now, I am happy and life is good. I do not carry this around with me and think about it all day long. It does not interfere with my relationships with friends who have children. I actually find that I have a little tiny bit of secret and shameful pleasure when I occasionally make people (only those I know really well, and I like to think they'd forgive me) uncomfortable by referring to our sad, barren, childless status in an oblique way when they are being annoying and bellyachey about life and how their kids are making them nuts.

I believe that life is easier for me without kids. I do not know how I will feel about this in years and decades to come, when everyone else is going through high school, college, post-college despair years, marriage, grandchildren ... I am sure I will have periods where I feel worse about it.

The only thing I've learned that I do hold very close to my heart about this whole experience is that there is only one TRULY good thing about wanting but being unable to have kids: not being able to have kids means not having sick kids. I feel like there's been a lot of this happening lately, I know a few people personally who have had children with serious health problems and I feel my brain start to crack and wobble when I try to feel how this would feel as a parent. Laws of probability dictate that this will touch me much more closely than I would like in future, cousins, siblings...somewhere.

So that I don't edit, undo, regret or retract I'm going to stop there and hit the publish.

We Live For Love

I didn't say I didn't believe you. It was snowing hard by the time I got around to 1F at the end of the arrivals terminal but it was clear on the drive out. I can see it hanging over you. You have to make it to next month. You were distracted; this time I didn't even get out of the car to help put your bags in the trunk, and you didn't even stop talking on the phone. You were nagging me about driving too fast, and you tried to skip "We Live For Love". It was snowing too hard and we should have just gone home but we always stop at Superdawg. Your sister called while we were waiting for our food. I love your hands, one held the phone and you rubbed your eyes. You were wadded up in your seat so your pants were pulling over your thighs. On the way home later, talking about what we were going to do to each other, I told you they were beautiful and you didn't believe me.

I believe you. About being the last flight to get in before they shut the airport for weather.

Note: I wrote this almost exactly a year ago, Dec 15, 2007. It didn't really fit anywhere but it just seemed like it was time to release it ... if I am not going to ever get back to being an IF blogger. Love to DD and Pru.

The brain and the womb

Hi. We're back from South Africa. No, we didn't visit Tertia, she doesn't know us from jack so that might be weird plus it was a complicated trip and we had little unplanned time. Yes, I am still jetlagged.

Ok. So.

Hysteroscopy went fine, whatever that gunk was she pulled out, it wasn't retained pregnancy material. So no solution to the mystery of the annoying bleeding other than it doesn't seem to be related to my generally problematic woo and woo-parts.

I finally, after about 4 months of trying to navigate two insurances, had an appointment with a real psychiatrist yesterday. My GP had put me on Zoloft in March, and while between that and the weekly therapy I was really happy to see a general turnaround in my anxiety levels and general coping ability plus sleep, I was not comfortable not having someone specifically monitor my meds.

I was all set to tell him once I got into his office that his nice and competent office staff unfortunately are almost impossible to understand on the phone when I walked in and he greeted me in the same thick Russian accent and broken English. Oh well. Plus it turns out he's a sleep specialist and his office is a sleep clinic. This was not a good start to things and it only got stranger.

To cut to the chase, I am not depressed, I am "upset, angry and worried" about the infertility. And I need to have my "physiology" tested (guess how you do this? spend a night at a sleep clinic). And did I know that a lot of infertility is not a "hardware" but a "software" problem? I started to get tense at that point, anticipating the "you just need to relax" line. So I interrupted him to give him a bit more history about the physical causes of my infertility. He nodded and continued in his original vein, then threw out a few possible theories about the value of just not thinking about it, and the possibility that either me or my husband could be dealing with reverse ejaculation or reverse peristalsis of the fallopian tubes, or just a rhythm problem that could be set right with a course of melatonin. All of this was accompanied by some nice little drawings that metaphorically illustrate how SSRI's are like a piece of metal with holes in it and other clever things.

So to sum up, I apparently had an appointment with the Eastern European psychiatric equivalent of Dr. Nick Riviera .

Other interesting things that have been happening inside my head lately include some trippy dreams about my teeth decaying or falling out, including a specific dream in which Al Gore and I head-butted each other's teeth out. Apparently this either means I'm anxious about change, lying to someone, or embarrassed, but I am hoping that it means I'll soon be growing a second row of teeth.

Now that we are back and mentally and physically unpacked from the trip, the next step will be to start trying to navigate the insurance and get going with a new RE. I have to admit, I'm really not dying to dive back in. My brain is definitely backpedaling on me.

In the meantime, happy, happy congratulations to DD on the wonderful new arrival!

Very slow progress

Two ultrasounds later, apparently the "cysts" on my right ovary are nothing other than proof I am ovulating. I appreciate that my GP was being cautious but I'm a little annoyed by the amount of intrusive wanding I had to endure to find this out. Ovulating was never my problem, it was the one-two of blocked tubes/hydrosalpinx and apparently some super crappy egg quality. Both possibly attributable to a bout of PID, according to my former RE.

I am now under the care of a realio trulio OBGYN, and next up on the diagnostic menu is a hysteroscopy. I have been a heavier and a longer bleeder since my miscarriage a few years back, and since nothing is showing up in bloods or ultrasounds to explain why I get a week of red and a week plus of brown every month, she's is going to go in for a lookaround and do a little "gentle scraping." Once again I wish I had not opted for the natural miscarriage route; it is possible I still have some retained products in there that are causing the trouble. Other possibilities include overgrown lining, precancerous stuff, fibroids (unlikely as nothing shows on ultrasound) or maybe just a ball of serpents. Since I already tell everyone my womb is full of serpents when they ask why we don't have kids, I'm hoping for that last one.

So two weeks to the hysteroscopy, then a week and a half later my husband and I depart on our fabulous international trip (vacation for me, workish for him). When we get back we get bizzy on the IVF, assuming I can find a new RE and figure out what my new insurance requires of us, and get appointments scheduled. Since by far the most stressful part of my last three rounds (other than the sad conclusion to the one pregnancy we did achieve) was dealing with bureaucracy and insurance, I'm taking a really deep breath right now. But lucky we at least have the insurance option, and making progress forwards, ever so slowly.

Thanks for all the lovely comments, all, and I'm sorry to have missed you fabulous UK ladies while I was there. It was an insanely jammed and short trip considering the distance. Next time I will be more leisurely.

Plans

Tomorrow night I fly to London, and the day after I get back I have an ultrasound to see if that thing they found on my right ovary last month has gone away. Assuming I don't have something there I have to worry might kill me, we take another big international trip in July. When we get back in August, we are going to move to a new RE and give this one more try. Two years later, IVF # 4 coming up. Stay tuned.

For historical reference

I know this is a ridiculous thing to be posting about after more than 6 months of silence, but I finally looked through the records I'd requested from my RE. My RE had refused to give me actual beta numbers for the cycle I'd miscarried, but there they were, and kind of interesting. At 3w6d I was 67, and at 4w1d I was 117. So, like, that seems a pretty good sign things were not headed in a great direction, right? I really wish they'd just given me the numbers so that I would have been a little more prepared for the heartbreak and devastation that followed.

I finally started looking through the file because I've been in to see my primary physician about some odd menstrual issues, and am being referred to a real gyno (I had to leave my last one due to an insurance switch) and a barrage of ultrasounds and blood tests. I don't think this is anything serious and it has nothing whatever to do with thinking about or preparing to cycle or try to conceive or anything. Just want to keep the old girl in good enough working order to have a nice healthy life. Plus my hair has been falling out more than normal and want to be sure there are no underlying problems.

So otherwise life has been ok I got a promotion, still haven't finished that damn book but still hoping to, possibly dealing with some low grade depression or dysthymia but mostly feeling alright, doing better at the regular exercise. We are not going to be adopting. And it's coming up on two years since our last failed cycle, and it looks like we're not going to be miraculously conceiving naturally. And most likely not going for a fourth and final cycle of IVF, donor or no. How do I feel about this? I STILL DON'T FUCKING KNOW. So the final component of the get-healthy plan is to finally get self to a freaking therapist, because oh my God how out of touch with yourself can you possibly be?

-Mary Scarlet

Still here, still nothing happening

I can't tell you how many times I've logged in in the last six months, and opened a new post, and stared at it, typing nothing, then closed it and went away. Which is exactly what's been happening in the treatment/conception realm. Zippo. And not sure that's horrible, but not closing the door exactly.

Tales of drivebys and cowardice

I thought I was pretty much beyond it, honestly, and then this happened today.

The scene: a hallway outside my office. I am talking to a (female) colleague ... when will we be having the holiday "security meeting" ... how much scotch is left in that bottle from last time... the usual Wednesday afternoon stuff.

Another colleague (also female) I know only very slightly walks by and says, "When are you gonna have a baby?"

Me: [stunned silence] "... Uh, I don't know, is that how we're greeting each other these days? [recovering slightly] When are YOU having a baby?"

Her: "No, my kids are grown, I'm done!"

Me: [laughing uncomfortably, backing away]

Later, as I was relaying this story to a good friend, who also happens to work with me and is the only person who actually knew about the pregnancy, and, I must admit, sort of congratulating myself that I didn't lose it totally, and isn't it great that I don't really get upset by these drivebys, though she's lucky she didn't get her head ripped off ... and what ever happened to the rule that you DON'T ASK SOMEONE IF THEY ARE PREGNANT UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY SEE A BABY COMING FROM THEIR VAGINA ... blah blah blah ... and my friend gets this uncomfortable look on his face [yes, he is a man, and yes, he is one of my best friends, and yes, he actually listens to me when I talk about this stuff].

So as it turns out, this same woman came up to him out of the blue in the week that I was pregnant that he knew I was pregnant before the miscarriage, and asked him almost the same question: "I've been watching Mary and, well, is she pregnant?"

You know where this is going, right? That instead of taking this to mean that a) she's a total bitchface, and b) I need to lose some weight because even random strangers are beginning to infer things, I've decided that it means that she is psychic and she has mysterious powers of seeing, and even though every medical test we've taken says the chances of it happening are beyond miniscule, somehow we have miraculously succeeded in conceiving naturally and SHE COULD SENSE IT with her evil powers, and it will all be kittens and lollipops from here on out.

La la la ... I'm not listening to you.

...well, it was a nice thought anyway...

Moving on to the cowardice portion of our program:

I received a copy of my chart. It has been sitting in my bedroom for five days. I took it to work over the weekend and made a photocopy, eyes clamped firmly shut so that I wouldn't accidentally read anything upsetting. I am afraid to look at it.

Help me.

-Mary Scarlet
Listning to "Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy" (see, esp, track 6, "...but listen to THIS ..." God I love Steve Martin)

p.s. Cute baby Christmas Card Count: 1

Fart sandwiches

Dangit, I wanted to be good about posting regularly again but time is flying by. I'm going to finish this post even though it sort of feels like I don't want to say any of the things I really should be saying.

I did talk to the nurse at my old RE's, who called when they got the letter asking for a copy of our records. She is lovely and she lives in my neighborhood and said she keeps expecting to run into me somewhere. Then I had to talk to the billing person and she was sweet too. Sigh.

So in case you didn't see that, we are now waiting for a copy of our records. I thought getting out the file to fight the last fight with the insurance company was painful. I can't decide if I want to look through the chart or not. There it will be in all its glory: every blood test, every semen analysis, every embryologist report. Hopefully something about the hydrosalpinx. Presumably something about the pregnancy and miscarriage.

So the question is, have you or would you read yours if you could? Or would you keep it in its envelope until you go to your new doctor? I obviously thought we should have our own copy or I would have let them do it doctor-to-doctor handover style. But now I'm not so sure.

btw, fight with sibling patched, apparently.

Thanksgiving sucked

Hope everyone else had a nice one ... mine was pretty depressing. Nothing major happened, but my husband and I had competing sibling groups in town so we saw little of each other. While I saw a lot of mine, I also got into a really nasty fight with one that's had me in tears all day and ended with me sending an email that I'm almost certain to regret tomorrow.

My grandmother is 95 this year and for the first time she seemed really old on Thanksgiving. We haven't ever been close and I have a lot of issues with that side of my family but she was always pretty with it and she's clearly sliding fast -- almost blind, very deaf, and with several frightening coughing fits.

I guess I'm thankful that this year is nearly over. And also for these very amusing creatures that I can't imagine not having in my life. As requested.

Better days.