If you look at my about page or my various social media bios it sure looks like we’ve been actively trying for a long time with no baby, or even a fetus or embryo to show for it.  But we haven’t really been trying.

Confused yet?

We got married in November 2007 and spent at least the first year actively trying to not get me pregnant.  Which, incidentally is how I’ve conducted my entire sexual life.  I’ve never been in a situation with a previous partner where we thought it would be good for me to get knocked up, so we made sure it didn’t happen.  Which is why I’m always astounded that when I proudly respond “No” to the “Have you ever had an accidental pregnancy?” question I get a frown and a note in my chart instead of a high-five.  Pardon me for using birth control consistently and effectively.

When Jerrad and I decided we were ready to start a family, I scheduled an ob/gyn appointment that I had been putting off for years after being surgically treated for cervical cancer.

Because after being treated for cancer, putting off yearly check-ups is a really intelligent choice.  I got lucky in that I had the aggressive fast strain that almost always goes away entirely after one surgery, and every pap smear since has been normal.  I repeat… I got lucky.  Not following up with a doctor was so irresponsible of me.  I can’t say it enough.

Anyway.  At that appointment in the fall of 2008 my ob/gyn found lots of gunk in my uterus that started off a thoroughly blogged year of tests, D&C’s, and waiting to get into see a surgeon who could remove the fibroid garden in my uterus.  Throughout this time we were having plenty of unprotected sex, including several months of me taking my bbt, charting, peeing on ovulation predictor kits, and seducing my husband with announcements of my impending ovulation.

It was all for naught, because when we finally got to surgery time and could see the inside of my uterus (well, not me, I was asleep), it was obvious a pregnancy would never have happened.  The fibroids were taking up more than the available space in my uterus.  Seriously, once I figure out the scanner, I’m totally going to show you guys.

Since I do happen to be slightly over the age of 35, at my initial surgery consult, Dr. Specialist talked with us about the subject of fertility in general and where we would stood with treatment.  While I’m certainly not grateful to have had the fibroids, I am extremely grateful that it has given us a sort-of back door access to the knowledge and services of a specialist without the “trying for a year” most couples have to go through to even get a referral.

Like I said earlier, no one has said “infertile” to me, but I do know I have some challenges.  Almost a quarter of my cervix was removed during my previous surgery.  My mom and both of her sisters have lost pregnancies.  More than one.  Fibroids and polyps almost always grow back, so now the clock is ticking too.

But even so… another reason I think we’re luckier than some couples?  Infertility is never going to just come up out of the blue and bite us in the ass.  We’re prepared for it.  We’ve been talking about the possibility that I can’t produce an heir to the throne since before we got married.  He still chose to marry me knowing that my parts might not work.  That has to give us some sort of coping advantage.

During these discussions we talked about what we would do if I wasn’t getting pregnant.   I know some couples are fine with never having children or actively choose not to.  But, that’s not us.  We can’t think of anything more important than being parents.

We also talked about how we each felt about fertility treatment and adoption.  Fortunately, as in most things, we found we were much closer to agreement then disagreement on where our “lines” were.

This is where I hesitate to be specific, because I would never want anyone to feel like I was passing judgment on their choices.  I’m not… by any means.  I can only talk about what feels like the right thing for us, and what doesn’t feel like the right thing for us.

None of this has anything to do with the rules or dogma of my religion, but it does have to do with my spiritual beliefs about family and love and the birth of the soul and all this other deep shit I haven’t decided if I want to talk about here.

So, where we stand is this: if I can’t get pregnant from making love with my husband, we’re going to adopt.  We’re willing to do lots of things to help that along – surgeries, tests, maybe even some drugs to encourage ovulation.

That’s one reason why we’re going to go ahead and do a sperm analysis.  If there’s a problem, then we’ll know and it will help us make decisions about adoption more quickly.

It’s not just for the blog material.

Well, I suppose again isn’t exactly the right word, since all of our previous trying efforts were destined from the start to be futile on account of how there were a bunch of fibroids already taking up all of the room in there.

And no doubt confusing any sperm that dared enter. What the hell is this? The directions said to go straight up and to the left or right. Are we in a forest? A hedge maze?

On account of my advanced age, if I haven’t conceived within six months, we’ll look at some next steps, like checking my tubes for blockages.

So… remember when I said I was going to do this detailed post about my appointments with Dr. Specialist and the hysteroscopic myomectomy, and scan the surgery pictures and make it all fancy like?

Yeah, I’m not.  Knowing me, if I haven’t it written it by now, chances are I’ll never get around to it.  I’ll give you the short version so we can all move on.

The short version is that he’s a fantastic doctor who obviously knows his stuff and is good at what he does.  I also happen to really like him and think he’s funny.  If you’re going to talk about your sex life and your husband’s sperm count with someone who has an ultrasound thingie up your hooha, it’s a real bonus if you happen to get along with them, too.

Oh yeah,  the other thing we’re just going to go ahead and take care of soon is Jerrad’s sperm analysis.  And yes, I have obtained permission to write about certain aspects of it.

What I learned at yesterday’s appointment was that the surgery was successful, and the wall of my uterus looks good.  A slight bit of bad news is that I still have two somewhat sizable fibroids in there, but they aren’t in a position likely to interfere with conception or pregnancy.

He was also able to tell that I had successfully ovulated from my right ovary recently (yesterday was day 20 of my cycle).  It looked all cute and kidney bean shaped and there was a super pretty corpus luteum.

Then we looked at my left ovary.  It looked like a kidney bean being eaten by a tiny football.  As he looked more closely at the cyst, he pointed out some layers and swirly things that led him to believe it was a dermoid cyst.

Yes, that’s a cyst made up of hair, teeth, eyes, bone, cartilage, etc.  Attached to my left ovary.  Awesome.

At this point he’s recommending we leave it alone.  My ovary could still be working, and there’s a risk of causing damage if we remove the cyst now.  These types of cysts are almost always benign, and the chance of it bursting is fairly small.

Although I was initially pretty irritated that my follow-up appointment got pushed back so far, the timing turned out to be perfect.  Now we know for sure I’ve got a good working ovary, and we know which month the good one is up to bat.  We’ll still try just as hard on the “off” months, but my expectations will be adjusted a bit.

I think it’s safe to assume we missed the boat this month, but next month, it’s ON.

Who knew constipation and iron liked each other so much?

For the record, I’ve been taking the iron for almost two weeks now and things are moving along quite nicely.

When my surgery was scheduled I had all these plans of getting my posts about the doctor’s visits and my surgery up quickly and in chronological order.

I even have some super gross totally awesome before, during and after pictures of the inside of my uterus for your enjoyment.

But then, I actually had the surgery, and getting well thought out posts up quickly wasn’t so high on the agenda anymore.  While I was recovering, the anemia won the battle for my attention.

My initial consultation with the surgeon was on February 1, and I told him about some of my symptoms – night sweats, nausea, extreme fatigue – because I figured they might be hormonal or at the very least related to the fibroids.

He pointed out that I was really pale, and that my skin seemed sort of… yellow.  Awesome.

All signs of anemia, he said, which made sense seeing as how I was bleeding like a stuck pig every month, and had been for quite some time. He ordered some bloodwork to check my iron levels and some other thyroid-y thing.

At my next appointment, a few days before the surgery, he told me I was definitely anemic, and that my iron stores were 3 (or maybe it was 4?).  I didn’t give it much thought then, seeing as how the other part of our discussion was about how he would be cutting fibroids out of my uterus with some sort of lightening rod and then burning the skin that was left with a hot poker.  Or something like that.  I was a little nervous, so I might have gotten some of the particulars wrong.

Anyway, Jerrad had been googling things about my various conditions, and he was the one that found that symptom list I included in the last post. That is when everything clicked. Realizing that some of the symptoms I was the most worried about (mental confusion, nausea and vomiting, listlessness) were on that, or other, list(s) made me feel so much better. An answer! With a solution!

It doesn’t mean anemia is my only problem now.  I still have IBS, my uterus still lacks a significant amount of awesomeness,  and I’m still a neurotic nut job.

But. I learned that one of the things anemia does is take the problems, issues, and tendencies your body already has and make them worse.  Add to that the fact that no part of your body is ever functioning with the appropriate amount of oxygen, and it’s easy to see how you can start feeling like shit.  Quickly.

I can’t even describe the exhaustion.  It feels like you haven’t slept for days.  Like there are weights on your arms and legs.  Like you’re moving through water instead of air.

Four years ago, I woke up every day at 4:45 am to exercise for an hour and a half, then I went to work for 8-10 hours as an intake worker for child welfare.  A job that uses quite a bit of emotional and mental energy, not to mention requires multitasking skills.  I had hobbies, I read at least a book a week, I maintained friendships, and started a relationship with my husband.

Now? I don’t even know that bitch anymore.

I fall apart if I have more than two or three things I have to do in a day.

I’m like a toddler – you can’t give me a task to do that has more than two parts or I see something shiny and forget what I was doing.

Despite having all the time in the world, I can’t seem to accomplish anything of significance in a day.

I have bouts of nausea that last two or three days at a time.  Where I throw up literally every single thing I eat and drink.  Then it just… goes away.  As randomly as it showed up.  I’ve been calling these IBS flare-ups because I don’t know what else to call them.  Even though they’re nothing like flare-ups I’ve had in the past.

Although I make jokes about being lazy, the feelings of listlessness I’ve been having were pretty scary, too.  I didn’t understand where they were coming from.  I didn’t understand where my personality went.  I knew that I felt content and happy and not depressed, but at the same time things were just… blah.   It’s hard to find the right words to explain it.

But when you think about it, I got a pretty good anemia deal compared to some.  Others have more dangerous symptoms, or have consequences and reactions to things because they don’t even know they have anemia.

Others get more disturbing interesting pica symptoms like craving dirt or paint chips.

I haven’t gotten any of that, but I do notice that I crave foods with iron, like beef and spinach.

And? This one time I was cooking a burger and when the blood started oozing up through the patty I had the strangest urge to lick it.  Then I started literally drooling.  Like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

And no, I didn’t actually lick the burger. Gross! Although it did make me think about how it was a good thing I wasn’t a vampire.

Which is a shame because vampires are sort of awesome and they probably hardly ever get anemia.  Not pale, scrawny, sparkly virgin vampires that need to take a shower and wash their hair, but sexy vampires.   Like Mitchell from Being Human.

Yummy.

Do you watch Being Human? You should start now, because SyFy is going to do some crappy American remake.  That I’ll piss and moan about like a snobby purist and end up watching anyway.

Once again, the answer should be no surprise.  I’ve been unpacking and organizing, all while dealing with a moderate IBS flare-up. Which is kind of why I haven’t written – I’ve had things to say but not the time or energy or good humor to organize my thoughts properly.

I’m not saying I have time, energy or good humor right now, but I do have a great desire to procrastinate on doing something I don’t want to do.

So, what I don’t feel like doing is filling out the 80 billion page questionnaire that I need to mail back to the doctor so I can have my fibroid/polyp removal surgery consult scheduled.  I think I’m just having one of those moments where I’m simply SO tired of not feeling well.  I don’t want to think about this stuff, let alone answer detailed questions about it.

No.  You know what? It’s much more than that.  And I think I started to realize it yesterday when I started working on the form.

The first few pages were easy – name, address, insurance info.  Then it gets into reason for referral, current symptoms, and medical history.  Besides the fact that emotionally I didn’t want to think about it, logistically it was kind of tricky, because I’ve had lots of tests and procedures and minor surgeries over the last few years and my files are umm, around here somewhere.

It’s important that this form is accurate because the doctor reviews it before we meet so we can make the best use of our time at the appointment, so I was trying to at least get some sort of  timeline on another piece of paper so I didn’t leave out anything.  (OCD, much?)

Since I was going mostly from memory, I was kind of marking time in my head based on what job I was doing at the time.  I started the timeline back at my first abnormal pap in early 2000 when I was still living in Arizona and working for child welfare, through those first years when they were just doing a pap every six months, through when it decided it wanted to be cervical cancer after all and I had my first real get-put-to-sleep surgery in 2004, through when I was finally diagnosed with IBS in 2005, up to where we are today.

Seeing it all down on paper was insightful to say the least.

So, have I built it up enough? Are you ready to hear the exciting emotional breakthrough that I’ve had?

I have chronic medical conditions that affect my functioning and my ability to work.

Anticlimactic, no? Are you all sitting there saying, umm, how are you just now figuring this out, dumbass?  Especially since I wrote that fairly detailed post right after I quit about how hard it was to accept that I couldn’t do the detention job anymore because of my symptoms being so bad?

But see, that was just one example.  As I compared my work timeline to my medical history timeline, I realized that every job I ever quit was directly related to my medical problems.   Every one.

In 2000 was the first time my stomach problems got bad enough for me to seek treatment.  I was introduced by a mutual friend to a wonderful, wonderful woman who was a homeopath and a spiritual healer.   One of the many things she was amazing at was getting me to realize that it was ok to take care of myself first instead of last or not at all, so that I’m even capable of being there for other people. A lesson I periodically forget.

It didn’t take much to get me to realize that what I needed to do to not only manage my symptoms but maybe even heal a little was to not work a job that took so much time (50 hour work weeks anyone?) and emotional energy.  I quit child welfare and actually started working with her and studying homeopathy.

Also? She’s the first person who told me I was a writer.  Very matter of factly, like I would just realize it some day.

I haven’t yet, but it would be swell if she was right.  Or is it “were right”? See? No idea what I’m doing here.

I moved here and we eventually lost touch.  All my fault, by the way.

Anyway, despite having told myself I was done with social work I ended up getting a job as a mental health specialist in 2001.  I frakking loved that job.  Loved it. It had the perfect balance of being able to help and make a difference and do what I was good at and all that other good stuff, without being too emotionally draining.

Sure, I still had symptoms but I was managing them.  Then my paps got all scary and I had to have surgery.

The bad thing, it was the only bad thing, but it was a very big bad thing for me was that we were contracted through the state.  How to say this nicely? States have budget issues, and when they do guess what’s the first to go? Mental health services.

So I had a big expensive surgery after my hours had been cut and changes had been made to my insurance.  When all was said and done I had a $2000 medical bill and less money coming in to pay it.  It became impossible for me to live on what I was making, and although I didn’t want to, I had to find something else.

I applied and was hired with child welfare here.  Not only had I not learned my lesson, I decided to take the stress up several notches by doing intake instead of ongoing.  I’ve written about my emotional reasons for quitting this job before, but it was during this time that I was finally, after lots of testing, diagnosed with IBS.  One suggestion made by my PCP was finding a less stressful, time-consuming, and emotionally draining job.

Did I listen to him right away? Or course not! That’s how I roll.  I waited until I was basically completing falling apart physically and emotionally, then I quit.

By this time Jerrad and I had been dating about 6 months or so and let’s just say he was more than happy that I was no longer going to be doing a stressful, time-consuming, and let’s not sugarcoat it, sometimes dangerous job.

I went to work as secretary at my parish, completely convinced I was done with social work. Done!

My readers that have been around since the myspace days might remember the Parish Place blogs.  I won’t repost them here (yet) because I don’t have the privacy controls I had with myspace, but suffice it to say that shit was way more stressful than it needed to be.

While I was dealing with all that craziness, I was also trying to do all the things I needed to do to manage my IBS symptoms, on top of wondering why my periods were so heavy and I was in so much pain.

By this time, Jerrad and I were married.  We knew we preferred for me to be a stay at home mom, so at that point I was just trying to just suck it up and handle that job until I got knocked up.  Sadly, those stupid fibroids and polyps were already taking up all the available space in my uterus, unbeknownst to me.

Then the most awesome thing ever happened.  That mental health specialist job I loved so much? Was open again.  And it was still part-time.  And it was at my old branch with all my old peeps.  And the insurance didn’t matter anymore because I had an employed husband.

This was perfect, this was right, and I’d never been more sure that I was absolutely doing the right thing by going back to that job.

I settled into my old cubicle, renewed friendships, started new ones and was flooded with emotional support when I was diagnosed with the polyps and fibroids and had my first hysterosonogram and D & C.

Remember what I said about the state and budget cuts and mental health? Umm, yeah, I got laid off less than 6 weeks after I started.

By the way, God? I do not appreciate your sense of humor.

Then what followed was 7 months of looking for work while not-so-secretly hoping I would conceive before I found something.  Which didn’t happen because, again, those damn polyps just grew back, and oh by the way I have a bunch of new fibroids too.  I think the nice lady who sticks the giant camera in my hooha counted 7 or 8 at my last hysterosonogram.

I know I wrote a post when I got hired at detention about my reservations about accepting the job, but I’m too lazy to go look for the link.

I knew going into that job that it would be a struggle doing shift work given that I need to do certain things to manage my IBS symptoms, not the least of which is to be allowed to at least drink water during my shift, eat foods that I don’t have an intolerance for, and go to the bathroom when I please, not just during my 15 minute break.

There were also lots of scheduling issues with this job that I won’t even get into because it doesn’t matter anymore.  But it just seemed like whenever I could manage to get more than one shift in a row, it was always during my period.  I only worked there 3 months! What are the odds of that?

My periods are intensely painful.  And by painful, I mean cramps, excessive bleeding, and just.. pain.  I can’t explain it well, but everything hurts when I have my period.  Every single inch of all my ladyparts hurts, my cervix throbs because all that garbage is flowing over scar tissue and has less of an opening to get through.  Did I mention I lost about 1/5 to 1/4 of my cervix to the cervical cancer surgery?

Since I apparently can’t learn things without being slapped in the face with something obvious like a medical crisis, I got one of those.  And it was so bad and so painful that I had to quit that same day.  Fortunately it was a training day, but still.  It’s not the way I wanted to go out.

And like I mentioned before, my departure clearly wasn’t taken well – or possibly some didn’t believe my reasons, but I need to let go of that – since no one that I worked with (or for) responded in any way to my leaving.

It’s this last job quit that’s been the hardest.  It’s the incident that has, in fact, after all these years, gotten me to realize that I’m sick.

I’m sick.

I’m sick in such a way that sometimes, even when I eat everything right, and work out and manage my stress, I’m going to be knocked completely on my ass with a painful IBS flare-up.  For no particular reason at all.  Because that’s how IBS rolls.

And after my surgery? The fibroids and polyps are going to grow back.  That’s already been established.  Twice.

The acceptance part is tricky.  Very tricky.

I don’t like feeling weak.

I don’t like that most of this is out of my control.

I don’t like that most people don’t get how bad I really feel most of the time because I look healthy.

And I’m very, very good at pretending things are ok when they’re not.

There I was on Tuesday, minding my own business, all caught up in babymaking, temperature taking, fertility charting excitement, when my ob/gyn called to tell me the results of the pathology report from my polyps.

She left a message because I didn’t answer the phone on account of how I was using the potty. This happens to me all the time. I only get important calls when I’m otherwise engaged. Or when my phone has been in my purse on silent for three days.

After assuring me everything was benign, she said that she is “pretty sure” she still didn’t get all of my polyps out this time. I’m assuming she was “pretty sure” because the tiny dime size amount of polyp in the little specimen cup eventually got compared to the picture and estimated size/weight of the giant polyp(s) in my uterus.

Which led her to think it might be a fibroid after all. Bringing the potential fibroid population of my uterus to 6. Which led her to give me an immediate referral to a fertility specialist, instead of waiting 6 months like we had talked about just a few short days before. She ended with a cheery upbeat instruction to keep taking my prenatals and continue to “attempt pregnancy”.

This news would probably make most women sad. Nobody likes to hear the word fertility specialist. But I got pissed.the.fuck.off. I actually looked down at my uterus and said, “I can’t even talk to you right now, you traitorous bitch.”

I remained pissed off the rest of the night, but I woke up sad Wednesday morning. I listened to my doctor’s message again and cried for awhile. I emailed Jerrad, who can always put things in perspective and make me feel better. His response was,

“What’s the worst that can happen? That your uterus is completely broken? Then we adopt and you get to avoid the months of pain and nausea, and the hooha-stretching/ belly-cutting.”

All very good points. Incidentally, the topic of my possible infertility came up way back when we were talking about getting married. Before he proposed I wanted him to know that on account of my history of cervical cancer, incredibly painful periods, and the high rate of miscarriages in my family, there was a better than average chance he might not be getting any heirs to the throne from me. Infertility is hard enough on a couple when it’s completely unexpected and I wanted him to know what he might be signing up for.

This led to a discussion about how we would handle infertility if it did come up. For reasons I’ll discuss in a future blog, we’re not really considering things like IVF or surrogacy. We’re both fine with adoption.

Not to say that it would be easy to let go of the idea of having children together. I’ve wanted children with this man pretty much from the moment I met him. A few months ago, I saw a video his mom had of him doing a magic show when he was 11 or 12. It was the cutest thing I had ever seen. It made me want to tear his clothes off and do it right there on the floor of the semi-clean spare room.

I’m going to assume that was biology making me want a cute little baby with my husband’s looks, mannerisms, sense of humor, and sweet disposition, and not that I’m some sort of weird lady pedophile.

Anyway, Jerrad’s comment did, as usual, put everything in perspective for me. Plus, it’s actually working out better this way. I no longer feel the pressure to get pregnant in 6 months – which can be a tall order for women that happen to be blessed with a cooperative uterus. We can meet with the fertility specialist right away to discuss removing the fibroids. How many couples are lucky enough to get a referral to a specialist before they’ve even started trying? And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be cancelling that appointment because I’ll be pregnant after all.

So, now that I’m sure that we’re going to be parents one way or another, and my blog revenue is now in the double digits, I’m ready to start picking out baby stuff.

Which, incidentally, means I have not done so well with all those healthy changes I was ready to make. I’ve been “stress eating” and not working out, to say the least.

Yesterday’s ob/gyn appointment was a follow-up to this one. The link I included in my last blog to describe the procedure I was having was from an infertility site. I hope that didn’t give anyone the wrong impression – that site just had the best description of the procedure.

My test was to find out if those dastardly polyps had grown back. This was slightly more pleasant than last time because I didn’t have to do the full bladder thing, just the giant wand, catheter, bunch of cramp inducing fluid in my uterus thing.

Which was made even more awesome by the presence of my doctor’s medical student. Male medical student.

“I only have med students like 3 times a year… it just always happens to be when you are here.”

Uh. Huh.

So while they were all debating the advantages of side-opening speculums versus balloons for inserting catheters in uteruses (uteri?), she found two polyps. The good news is she thinks they aren’t new, because they are in the exact same place she couldn’t get to during my last D&C.

Meaning, they haven’t grown back, which is good, but I needed to have another D&C. Of course.

And lucky me, once again they were able to do the surgery the same day. Although a hysterosonogram is more than enough for one day, and I briefly considered chickening out and going home, I just wanted to get the second D&C over with so we could for sure start trying to conceive after my upcoming visit from Aunt Flo.

So while the med student learned which part of the cervix is best to poke the long anesthetic needles into, and how her nurses hate cleaning up after her because she just lets the blood splash everywhere, Jerrad held my hand and when it was over helped me climb down so I didn’t get blood all over my totally cute knee socks.

They have you sit there for a little while afterwards to make sure you won’t be too lightheaded from the anesthesia. And that’s when she gave us the go-ahead to start trying along with some instructions.

Instructions? I was sort of hoping to just have a lot of sex, but apparently it’s not as simple as all that. Especially when you are old like me. Due to my ripe old age of 35, she wants me to do all sorts of temperature taking and cervical mucous testing and charting right from the beginning.

So, the funny thing about this is that I’m Catholic, and we’ve been using natural family planning (umm, most of the time), so I’m already aware of how that all works. But she gave me a pamphlet from Planned Parenthood on charting your fertility pattern as a method of birth control, with instructions for us to “do it a lot” during the times they tell you not to.

Since I was, in fact, lightheaded from the anesthesia, I wasn’t really capable of a discussion about how I’m Catholic and I don’t want no inaccurate literature from no damn baby killing Planned Parenthood*. Plus I really like my doctor and that would just give me a reputation of Elaine-like proportions. I’d rather be the one with the interesting uterus who lets her doctor invite med students to all sorts of hooha exposing procedures.

Anyway, if I’m not pregnant after 6 months of trying, she will refer me to a fertility specialist. The next step could be a fibroid removing procedure, since I have some of those too. My uterus apparently has poor boundaries and will just invite any old thing to live there.

PS. I need a cute name for this series of pregnancy/conception blogs. Leave me a comment if you have a good idea.

*seriously, don’t even get me started on how inaccurate it was. The entire pamphlet basically said this method doesn’t work, with lots of scary, fake statistics to back up their “research”. Umm, yeah, it won’t work if you don’t even tell people the right way to use that method. I feel another blog coming on…