Monday, March 30, 2009
Doctor visit this morning
Ok so my post last night was to prepare you all in how to deal with me if the doctor today told me the injections weren't working. Well....guess what! They ARE working! He did a sonogram and my left ovary does have a follicle that is ready to release an egg!!! I have to do what's called and HCG shot tomorrow evening which is the hormone that will tell my ovary to release the egg. He said if I don't have my period in two weeks to do a home pregnancy test and call him. Wow! That is going to be the longest two weeks ever!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Interesting post
I found this on another blog that I read. The girl has PCOS also. I thought I would share it because she says it and explains it way better than I can.
"How to be Good Friends with an Infertile
I have quite a few ‘normal’ friends (i.e. not infertile) who read this blog. (I am so far out the closet it is frightening, even my brother and ex flirts read this blog). Imagine how confusing most of the lingo must be for them. Anyhow. Back to the point of this post. One of those friends said to me “I wish you would write about how to be a good friend to an infertile person”. Which is really sweet of her and shows she has already passed one of the requirements. So I started thinking about writing a post on this and realized what a hard task this is. How do you become a Good Friend to an Infertile?Firstly, I have to say that this being a Good Friend to an Infertile is not an easy job at all. It is a job with fluid parameters, a thankless job sometimes and one where it might appear that no matter how hard you try, you never seem to get it right. There are times when you will be extremely busy and the job is very demanding. There are other times where you will benched, forced to sit on the outside looking in. There is not often any logic in this change of demand. Be aware of the volatility of work pressure when applying for this job. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.Secondly, there is not a universal job description, and worst of all, your job duties will change over time. There is not a universal job description because Infertiles come in different flavors. True, one can categorize these flavors to some extent, but variations will always exist. Your eternal optimist / newbie / completely uninvolved infertile doesn’t need too much in the way of special friendship; they believe the problem is temporary and will get resolved soon. They don’t feel broken, different or an outcast. Your longer term / highly involved infertile is a very tricky beast, and is one to be handled with great caution and protective gloves (for you, not her). This person feels alienated from society and carries great pain and angst in their souls. They might not show it all the time, but there is a very sensitive, raw spot in their souls that is easily bruised. Then you get the older timers, who’ve been doing this so long it just becomes part of who they are. These infertiles have gone through the great angst and intense pain of the ‘dark years’ and have come out realizing that while infertility is ****, it is not all consuming. And instead of crying, they laugh. Because infertility is actually a comedy of errors, sometimes.Infertiles tend to move through these stages at different pace. Which makes it very hard being a Good Friend to an Infertile, because the type of friendship involved is so different at each stage. It is very very hard being a Good Friend to someone stuck in the dark stage of infertility. It is a very painful place for an infertile to be. There is no hope, just a great deep dark sense of despair. You feel totally alienated from the rest of the world and you are consumed by your situation. Every thing hurts, and every thing has the power to hurt you. Your world shrinks to the world of infertility and you fight tooth and nail to protect the fragile hold you have on sanity. The best advice I can give to a Good Friend at this stage is to offer friendship and support, from a distance. Say things like “I am here for you if you want to talk, or not talk, or drink, or swear, or shop. But if you don’t want to that’s perfectly ok. I’ll be here waiting for you when YOU are ready to come out the cave”. If you can bare it, hang in there, your friendship should return to some semblance of its previous form once your Infertile has worked her way through her dark despair. It has nothing to do with you or you ability to friend, it has every thing to do with her coping with the horrible reality of her situation.Being a Good Friend to the eternal optimist or the good-humored veteran is a lot easier, with these few survival tips.
1. Good Friends never judge. Remember that unless you’ve walked in the person’s shoes, you can’t say “well I would never….do IVF/terminate a pg/spend so much money on ART etc” To be honest, who likes judgmental people any way.
2. Good Friends will educate themselves about what their Infertile is going through. HUGE proviso: see point 3 before putting any thing into action. Read up about infertility so that you get a high-level understanding of the intricacies involved. Know little things like eggs are retrieved, then fertilized and they become embryos. Then the embryos are put back. Just small things so that when your infertile does share some of her world with you, you will understand. I think this shows commitment to the friendship.
3. However. Do not willy nilly offer advice, or hot off the press latest research about a fantastic new procedure that is sure to work. Remember the stuff they write about in your local woman’s magazine is stuff that your Infertile did in Infertility 101. Been there, failed that. ICSI is not a new procedure, I promise. And yes, we have heard of taking cough syrup to increase cervical mucous. Oh, and for my Aunt, yes I have heard of lying with my legs in the air after having sex. Unfortunately, I have PCO and don’t ovulate so I could be lying with my legs in the air doing bicycle movements till the cows come home and all the sperm are going to do is mill around confused asking where the **** the egg is, bemoaning the fact that this has been a useless trip out and they might as well have had a wank. Which goes back to Point 2. Educate yourself about your friend’s diagnosis so that you can avoid offering pointless advice. And please, what ever you do, never, ever be so stupid as to say “just relax”. Would you say to a cancer patient “just relax”? Would you say to someone who can’t see “just relax”? Of course you wouldn’t. Plus you have to know that “just relaxing” will not change the medical diagnosis that is causing your friends infertility. Because of course you’ve done enough reading to carry on an intelligent conversation, if your Infertile decides to engage you in one.
4. Platitudes. Never ever offer platitudes. This is a totally selfish act any way because all platitudes do is make you feel better and the Infertile feel worse. Saying “maybe you are not meant to have children” is an incredibly stupid thing to say. You wouldn’t say to a diabetic “maybe you weren’t meant to have insulin etc”. Infertility is a medical condition. Not some factor in the universe’s bigger plan for the Infertile. Similar to “its God will”. How the **** do you know? You have a direct connection or what? How about “are you sure you want kids?” lovingly looking at your own screaming kids. No dear, I am spending thousands and enduring physical, emotional and mental anguish just because I am obscenely stupid. Or “you can have mine”. Now that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say. What kind of mother are you to give her kids away? Oh you were only joking? What was the funny part? That I don’t have my own kids? Sorry, but I am not getting the joke? Call me stupid. In addition, please don’t tell me about your friend/cousin/co-worker who got pg naturally after 8 years of trying. It doesn’t make me feel better, it depresses me. Good for her. It’s got nothing to do with my situation. ( This is my favorite part)
5. The tricky one. Announcing pregnancies / baby showers / births and other kid things. The best advice I can give here is trust the Infertile to know what she can or can’t handle. Don’t hide things from her, but respect it when she says to you “I don’t think I am going to be able to handle that”. Your Infertile knows when her good days and bad days are, and what she can or can’t handle. But do invite her, give her the choice of saying no. And then respect her to know that sometimes she needs to protect her own fragile soul more than she needs to fulfill social obligations.
6. The level of involvement. Infertiles differ in the level of involvement they engage their Good Friends in. Some, like me, are pretty open about the whole thing. Every Friend and their Mother knows when I am going in for ER, ET or whatever. Other people prefer to keep their infertility private. Find out what your Infertile prefers and operate at the level she feels comfortable with.
7. Which brings to me to my final point. If you don’t know how to act, ask. I love that my friends ask me how I want them to act around me. They also know that if they ask the question “how is it going with your treatment” I will either tell them or I will say “irritating, I don’t want to talk about it now”. They totally respect that and don’t push. I have great friends.There have been many articles written on the web about what to say and not to say to an Infertile, how the family should act etc. I wont go into those. If you are a Good Friend you will have done a little surfing and read those things anyway. Besides, this post is already way too long.To end off, if you decide to accept the job of Good Friend to an Infertile, I applaud you. Because it is not an easy job. It really isn’t. As I have said, it’s a pretty thankless job and one in which your job description is so fluid that what is required today is wrong tomorrow. "
"How to be Good Friends with an Infertile
I have quite a few ‘normal’ friends (i.e. not infertile) who read this blog. (I am so far out the closet it is frightening, even my brother and ex flirts read this blog). Imagine how confusing most of the lingo must be for them. Anyhow. Back to the point of this post. One of those friends said to me “I wish you would write about how to be a good friend to an infertile person”. Which is really sweet of her and shows she has already passed one of the requirements. So I started thinking about writing a post on this and realized what a hard task this is. How do you become a Good Friend to an Infertile?Firstly, I have to say that this being a Good Friend to an Infertile is not an easy job at all. It is a job with fluid parameters, a thankless job sometimes and one where it might appear that no matter how hard you try, you never seem to get it right. There are times when you will be extremely busy and the job is very demanding. There are other times where you will benched, forced to sit on the outside looking in. There is not often any logic in this change of demand. Be aware of the volatility of work pressure when applying for this job. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.Secondly, there is not a universal job description, and worst of all, your job duties will change over time. There is not a universal job description because Infertiles come in different flavors. True, one can categorize these flavors to some extent, but variations will always exist. Your eternal optimist / newbie / completely uninvolved infertile doesn’t need too much in the way of special friendship; they believe the problem is temporary and will get resolved soon. They don’t feel broken, different or an outcast. Your longer term / highly involved infertile is a very tricky beast, and is one to be handled with great caution and protective gloves (for you, not her). This person feels alienated from society and carries great pain and angst in their souls. They might not show it all the time, but there is a very sensitive, raw spot in their souls that is easily bruised. Then you get the older timers, who’ve been doing this so long it just becomes part of who they are. These infertiles have gone through the great angst and intense pain of the ‘dark years’ and have come out realizing that while infertility is ****, it is not all consuming. And instead of crying, they laugh. Because infertility is actually a comedy of errors, sometimes.Infertiles tend to move through these stages at different pace. Which makes it very hard being a Good Friend to an Infertile, because the type of friendship involved is so different at each stage. It is very very hard being a Good Friend to someone stuck in the dark stage of infertility. It is a very painful place for an infertile to be. There is no hope, just a great deep dark sense of despair. You feel totally alienated from the rest of the world and you are consumed by your situation. Every thing hurts, and every thing has the power to hurt you. Your world shrinks to the world of infertility and you fight tooth and nail to protect the fragile hold you have on sanity. The best advice I can give to a Good Friend at this stage is to offer friendship and support, from a distance. Say things like “I am here for you if you want to talk, or not talk, or drink, or swear, or shop. But if you don’t want to that’s perfectly ok. I’ll be here waiting for you when YOU are ready to come out the cave”. If you can bare it, hang in there, your friendship should return to some semblance of its previous form once your Infertile has worked her way through her dark despair. It has nothing to do with you or you ability to friend, it has every thing to do with her coping with the horrible reality of her situation.Being a Good Friend to the eternal optimist or the good-humored veteran is a lot easier, with these few survival tips.
1. Good Friends never judge. Remember that unless you’ve walked in the person’s shoes, you can’t say “well I would never….do IVF/terminate a pg/spend so much money on ART etc” To be honest, who likes judgmental people any way.
2. Good Friends will educate themselves about what their Infertile is going through. HUGE proviso: see point 3 before putting any thing into action. Read up about infertility so that you get a high-level understanding of the intricacies involved. Know little things like eggs are retrieved, then fertilized and they become embryos. Then the embryos are put back. Just small things so that when your infertile does share some of her world with you, you will understand. I think this shows commitment to the friendship.
3. However. Do not willy nilly offer advice, or hot off the press latest research about a fantastic new procedure that is sure to work. Remember the stuff they write about in your local woman’s magazine is stuff that your Infertile did in Infertility 101. Been there, failed that. ICSI is not a new procedure, I promise. And yes, we have heard of taking cough syrup to increase cervical mucous. Oh, and for my Aunt, yes I have heard of lying with my legs in the air after having sex. Unfortunately, I have PCO and don’t ovulate so I could be lying with my legs in the air doing bicycle movements till the cows come home and all the sperm are going to do is mill around confused asking where the **** the egg is, bemoaning the fact that this has been a useless trip out and they might as well have had a wank. Which goes back to Point 2. Educate yourself about your friend’s diagnosis so that you can avoid offering pointless advice. And please, what ever you do, never, ever be so stupid as to say “just relax”. Would you say to a cancer patient “just relax”? Would you say to someone who can’t see “just relax”? Of course you wouldn’t. Plus you have to know that “just relaxing” will not change the medical diagnosis that is causing your friends infertility. Because of course you’ve done enough reading to carry on an intelligent conversation, if your Infertile decides to engage you in one.
4. Platitudes. Never ever offer platitudes. This is a totally selfish act any way because all platitudes do is make you feel better and the Infertile feel worse. Saying “maybe you are not meant to have children” is an incredibly stupid thing to say. You wouldn’t say to a diabetic “maybe you weren’t meant to have insulin etc”. Infertility is a medical condition. Not some factor in the universe’s bigger plan for the Infertile. Similar to “its God will”. How the **** do you know? You have a direct connection or what? How about “are you sure you want kids?” lovingly looking at your own screaming kids. No dear, I am spending thousands and enduring physical, emotional and mental anguish just because I am obscenely stupid. Or “you can have mine”. Now that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say. What kind of mother are you to give her kids away? Oh you were only joking? What was the funny part? That I don’t have my own kids? Sorry, but I am not getting the joke? Call me stupid. In addition, please don’t tell me about your friend/cousin/co-worker who got pg naturally after 8 years of trying. It doesn’t make me feel better, it depresses me. Good for her. It’s got nothing to do with my situation. ( This is my favorite part)
5. The tricky one. Announcing pregnancies / baby showers / births and other kid things. The best advice I can give here is trust the Infertile to know what she can or can’t handle. Don’t hide things from her, but respect it when she says to you “I don’t think I am going to be able to handle that”. Your Infertile knows when her good days and bad days are, and what she can or can’t handle. But do invite her, give her the choice of saying no. And then respect her to know that sometimes she needs to protect her own fragile soul more than she needs to fulfill social obligations.
6. The level of involvement. Infertiles differ in the level of involvement they engage their Good Friends in. Some, like me, are pretty open about the whole thing. Every Friend and their Mother knows when I am going in for ER, ET or whatever. Other people prefer to keep their infertility private. Find out what your Infertile prefers and operate at the level she feels comfortable with.
7. Which brings to me to my final point. If you don’t know how to act, ask. I love that my friends ask me how I want them to act around me. They also know that if they ask the question “how is it going with your treatment” I will either tell them or I will say “irritating, I don’t want to talk about it now”. They totally respect that and don’t push. I have great friends.There have been many articles written on the web about what to say and not to say to an Infertile, how the family should act etc. I wont go into those. If you are a Good Friend you will have done a little surfing and read those things anyway. Besides, this post is already way too long.To end off, if you decide to accept the job of Good Friend to an Infertile, I applaud you. Because it is not an easy job. It really isn’t. As I have said, it’s a pretty thankless job and one in which your job description is so fluid that what is required today is wrong tomorrow. "
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Jason's job interview
As most of you know Jason's current job is really sucking it up right now. They send him home by about 11am everyday because there is not enough work to keep them busy. He has been looking for a new job and has had a couple of small interviews. I say small because it was one of those things where he goes in to fill out an application and they talk to him right then. Anyway, he had a job interview today at a company called Plumbing RX. They are interviewing for someone to come in there and help them get organized. He said they are a bunch of plumbers that have done a crappy job of running the office and they need someone to do that for them. They are offering him $4 more an hour than he is getting paid right now! Jason said he thinks it went well and he emphasized to the guy multiple times that he has done this before and he can help them. The guy told him he has two more interviews next week and that he should hear from him by Wednesday. Please pray, dance, stand on your head, whatever it is that works for you to help him get this job. I really think he would be good at it and it would be good for him. Also of course, we could use the extra money!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Hanging on to hope...
Well I have been using the Clearblue Easy fertility monitor. Every morning the first thing I do is pee on a stick...lol. Well for the last week it has been at low fertility, which it should have been, but then this morning it went to HIGH fertility!!! There is one more step up which is peak fertility which is supposed to be the actual day of ovulation so hopefully it will go up to that next but this is a step in the right direction!
I have had a rough day today. I found out two co-workers just found out they are pregnant and there are two others that are due to deliver in the next few weeks. Plus, my sister and another friend are due this summer! Whatever they are drinking or breathing or whatever I want some!
This little bit of extra good news is getting me through the day though. :-)
I have had a rough day today. I found out two co-workers just found out they are pregnant and there are two others that are due to deliver in the next few weeks. Plus, my sister and another friend are due this summer! Whatever they are drinking or breathing or whatever I want some!
This little bit of extra good news is getting me through the day though. :-)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Just jabbering...
When I first heard that I would be doing Clomid AND the Menopur injections I was afraid that I was going to have some crazy mood swings. So far, I haven't really, no more than normal anyway. I did notice that one of the side effects on the Menopur is dizziness, which I get on a normal basis anyway so that is nothing new to me. I have noticed if I am sitting down not moving everyone once in a while the room starting to spin a little but its nothing I can't handle.
The injections aren't bad at all. The hardest part is actually mixing the diluent with the powder and then getting it all in the syringe. The needle that you administer it with is maybe an inch long so its really not a big deal. The first one I did I was a little nervous about sticking myself but now its not hard. I only have to do them three times. Tonight will be my last one then I will go back to the doctor on the 30th and he said he will do another sonogram. I am not exactly sure what that will show but I guess I will find out.
When I first found out I would be doing all this I was really positive and hopeful that it was going to work and it's not that I'm not now it's just that I really want it to and I am nervous that I am not doing something right when it comes to the injections or I am not taking the Clomid pills at the right time. I don't know. I am very nervous about this and I REALLY want it to work! The time is going by really slowly right now and I am very impatient! I just know that it could get worse before it gets better money wise with all these treatments and I really don't want it to!
The injections aren't bad at all. The hardest part is actually mixing the diluent with the powder and then getting it all in the syringe. The needle that you administer it with is maybe an inch long so its really not a big deal. The first one I did I was a little nervous about sticking myself but now its not hard. I only have to do them three times. Tonight will be my last one then I will go back to the doctor on the 30th and he said he will do another sonogram. I am not exactly sure what that will show but I guess I will find out.
When I first found out I would be doing all this I was really positive and hopeful that it was going to work and it's not that I'm not now it's just that I really want it to and I am nervous that I am not doing something right when it comes to the injections or I am not taking the Clomid pills at the right time. I don't know. I am very nervous about this and I REALLY want it to work! The time is going by really slowly right now and I am very impatient! I just know that it could get worse before it gets better money wise with all these treatments and I really don't want it to!
Friday, March 20, 2009
YAY!!
I just got back from the doctor. It went really well. I am happy with the news. He said my ovaries look good. There are no cysts. He gave me the prescription for the Clomid and the injections which are called Menopur. The nurse showed me how to do the injections. They are just into my stomach and seem relatively easy. I am supposed to start them tonight. He sent me across the street from his office to Target's pharmacy because he said a lot of places don't carry the Menopur but he knew they did so I went over there and got my prescriptions and now I am back at work. I am in a great mood! Its beautiful outside, I heard what I wanted to hear from the doctor, I even got to talk to Addie Waddie on the phone and it seems to be slow here at work so its more of a relaxed setting instead of stressful and ITS FRIDAY!
Keep those fingers and toes crossed that these injections work! It seems to have worked so far!
Keep those fingers and toes crossed that these injections work! It seems to have worked so far!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Its getting better
I am finally starting to feel better. No fever today. I still have the weird hangy ball thing tickling my tonsils and causing me to cough and/or gag but everything else seems considerably better.
I called the doctor this morning (which was a very interesting phone call since I gag or cough after every 3 words) and made an appointment for my sonogram. I go in at 8:45 on Friday morning. I hope everyone still has all their fingers, toes, and whatever else crossed!
I called the doctor this morning (which was a very interesting phone call since I gag or cough after every 3 words) and made an appointment for my sonogram. I go in at 8:45 on Friday morning. I hope everyone still has all their fingers, toes, and whatever else crossed!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The past three days have SUCKED!
So Thursday night I was up most of the night with a bad cough. I thought since it was about to be the weekend I decided I would go to the doctor Friday to get some antibiotics or something so I wouldn't get worse over the weekend. He said I had an upper respiratory infection. Well that plan failed. Saturday was about like Friday just coughing and lots of congestion. Sunday I went to church and by the time I got home I was dying. I had fever and felt like I had been hit by a truck. I got home and went straight to bed. I slept on and off and just felt like complete crap. Monday I woke up and still felt horrible. I was running 101 fever. I called the doctor's office and they told me to come back in but they couldn't get me in until 3. I took Advil and it helped keep my fever down for a while. I went to the doctor and he determined that I now also had strep. he said my tonsils are so swollen that they are touching each other. So now he has given me more antibiotics and wants me to take them 4 times a day instead of 2 times. After I got home from the doctor my fever went back up to 101.5. I took some Advil and it would not go down. So because I was so miserable I took more Advil but it still didn't phase it, my fever was actually still slowly going up. I finally gave up and got into bed. With all the coughing and stuff I was still doing I took some Tylenol PM to help me sleep and I guess that along with the Advil finally broke my fever and I woke up in a pool of sweat. GROSS! Anyway, I woke up again this morning with 100.8 fever which was better than it was. I got it to go down with Advil and I don't think I have had any more since. Now I am experiencing the craziest thing. You know that little hangy ball thing in the back of your throat, its called your uvula, well my tonsils are so swollen that if I try to talk or a lean my head just right it touches my tonsils and makes me gag. Its the craziest thing. I told Jason I never knew I could choke on my own tonsils....lol. So anyway, today has been a little better and I can finally see some improvement so hopefully I am almost done with this crap.
On a different note, I also started today so I should be going in for my sonogram on Thursday or Friday. I will update after I am done there.
On a different note, I also started today so I should be going in for my sonogram on Thursday or Friday. I will update after I am done there.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
My sister is having a BOY!
Now wouldn't it be nice for him to have a cousin his age to play with? :-)
Monday, March 9, 2009
A few thoughts
For some reason I am more hopeful with this next process than I have been with the rest. Maybe its because we actually did surgery and made a real change and not just with drugs. Maybe its because this is something new and supposed to be more likely to work. I am not sure what it is. It quite possibly could just be that I am tired of feeling sorry for myself and it doesn't help matters any so I have decided to stop being negative and have a positive outlook. Who knows, but whatever makes me feel better right? :-)
I have 3 more pills to take and then I will be on my way to starting. I will probably start this weekend and go to the doctor Monday or Tuesday next week and get the show on the road. Everyone keep your fingers, toes, eyes, or whatever crossed!
I have 3 more pills to take and then I will be on my way to starting. I will probably start this weekend and go to the doctor Monday or Tuesday next week and get the show on the road. Everyone keep your fingers, toes, eyes, or whatever crossed!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Doctor's appt
So I just got back from the fertility doctor. Just as I expected he gave me Provera to make me have a period. I will go back to him on the third day of my period so he can do a sonogram and see what my ovaries are up to. He said if everything looks good and there appears to be a regular size follicle trying to release an egg he will then give me Clomid PLUS injections. He said the injections will boost the probability of the Clomid working. Once I do that I will go back on the 13th day of my cycle (I have never had to count so closely) for another sonogram. That's it for now. Keep your fingers crossed!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Going back!
I am going back to the fertility doctor on Wednesday at 11am. I have not had a period on my own so I assume they will just give me something to make me and then we will start down whatever road they recommend. I will update after the appointment to let everyone know what we decide.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)