Grrrwl, Hiss!

I just did something secretly catty, and I feel very good about it. The mother of a long-ago childhood playmate whom I fondly but barely remember contacted me out of the blue. Not sure how she found me, but I have a very unusual name, so Google's likely to blame.

She asked me for my mom's email and inquired as to what I'd been up to all this time: Wow, looks like you've traveled the world! And you're a musician, how wonderful! Very sweet. Whatever. And--you know what's coming--she let me know that both of her children had a few children of their own. That's fine, of course, people do that and I'm happy for them. Yet I was simultaneously annoyed: That was all she told me about them--their genealogy. What? Do I look like a librarian at Brigham Young University or something? Have they just been lounging around, reproducing all these years? I'm sure something else interesting has happened to your daughter outside the maternity ward.

Anyway, snark aside, I responded kindly, let her know how to find my parents, and told her a bit about myself, which of course, did not include a kid list. About an hour later, I get an email from her daughter, my vaguely recalled playmate of yore, saying something to the effect that she's rushing off to her child's first school play but in the meanwhile here's a link to some pictures, promise to write more later. Which I sincerely hope she does, and I hope her writings include more than a bunch of drivel drooled from Mommyland.

Now, here's where the catwoman in me sprung into action. I not only pressed delete without clicking through to a single damn image, but purged (that's how university webmail refers to it) my deleted messages. Like hell I'm going to look at your children, total strangers to me without any context.

Ah! What a relief. I feel tons better already.

So...Why All This?

Reading one of dear Io's recent posts, I realized that we seemed to have a similar subconscious urge that draws us to reading other women's blogs. We want to know how our own stories may unfold.

One of the myriad difficult things in infertility is the slow, slow pace of the journey. You have to wait two weeks. You wait the cycle out due to cysts. You wait to get results, tests, surgery. Especially at the beginning, when you have no clear diagnosis or you can't move on your diagnosis, you're stuck. You need information, you want to take action, but doctor after doctor is unsure what's wrong, and action is prohibitively expensive and/or repulsive.

I remember early on--damn, was it already a year and a half ago?--scanning close to all the blogs on Stirrup Queens in search of some woman with spotting like mine. Somewhere in my mind, I thought if I could find that woman or those women, I'd know something more about myself and could perhaps find a way to avoid standard treatment and escape IF. I wanted someone else's tales and experience to predict my future.

But that's not what happened. I realized, after months of reading stories happy and devastating, that none of them were mine. I needed to live and tell my own. I needed to act, even if it meant considering things that were outside my direct comfort zone. I also began to care about the women writing and to want to show them whatever support and friendship 0s and 1s could convey.

Now I know about all the terrible things that can go wrong, about many of the tragic and joyful trails that lead from this main path through the swamp. I never considered that I might be put on bedrest. That I could have preterm labor. That my children could be born early and have to fight for their lives in the NICU. That I could stop responding to drugs, that...that...that...

It's a very thin line between knowledge and its evil twin, paranoia. But would not knowing something protect us? Would ignorance change the fact that these thing happen? No. Nor does it predict the future. I wish it, or something, anything, would.

On a completely different note, I had a wonderful day of decadence yesterday. I got myself an amazing bottle of French wine and my guy some good ale, and made a nice supper. I even indulged in a fancy cookie and coffee. It felt good to let it all hang out, diet-wise. And I feel fine this morning, which means I didn't overdo it. I'm proud of myself--not overdoing it is not my forte.

Thanks, ladies, for all your advice. I'm a high-fiber kind of gal already, but now I know I need to prepare in advance and be vigilant! Unfortunately my surgery is scheduled for 1:30 pm. Ugh.

The First Cut

I've got my surgery scheduled for March 6. I'm so excited! Lapland and womb cam or bust!

Isn't that insane? Please, put me under! Root around in my abdomen and uterus! Give me drugs! Solve all my problems!

Okay, that last one is crazy, but sometimes it feels that way. Every treatment, you dream, will be the little nudge that causes the avalanche resulting in a baby. But I am oddly looking forward to my big minimally invasive day. Really, it's like looking forward to a big treat or something.

I don't even have to take bcp, which delights me. I hate the little suckers.

How did I get from the hippy edge to here? Then again, I've never had any problems with necessary but invasive procedures. And in the realms of infertility, I think there is a big difference for me personally between the weird "let's give you some Clomid and see what happens" approach, and the diagnosis and removal of something proven to impact fertility. And afterward, I'll know what the status of everything else we haven't tested is (with the exception of egg quality and other IVF-exposed issues). Knowledge, for me, is bliss, even when it's painful to cope with at first.

If anyone has any good tips for making the post-op recovery more pleasant, please let me know.

The Mysterious Mountain

It's impossible to call anything in our modestly hilled corner of the world a mountain, but the families who used to live in the valley we hiked in yesterday had big imaginations. This corner of the state is wild and thinly settled, thanks to a huge reservoir project that destroyed several local villages back in the 1960s and cut the area off from most main roads. And the hillsides are strikingly steep. So mountain it is, and there's a mystery attached to it.

At the top is a strange circle of large limestone blocks. Some claim that this particular type of limestone hails from a county dozens of miles to the south. They also believe that you can see beveled edges and the marks of primitive tools, and that the stones are all that remain of some Stonehenge-like sacred complex. I don't know about that, but the stones do stick out, even in the snow. They appear out of nowhere and are unlike anything that occurs naturally around them. They seem to attract our charming local elf-worshiping, mushroom-ingesting hippies: There was a varnished piece of cedar leaning against a tree with the inscription: "Here lies Artemis, killed by tree-dwelling land squids." (This appears to be a reference to the Earth's projected future masters, the squibbons.) To top it all off, there's talk that the mountain is haunted.

That wasn't my impression when we were up there. Sure, it was very, very quiet. Snow fell and barely a breeze stirred. But to me, it seemed like one of the most peaceful, nurturing places I've been to in a long time. If it had been sacred to people many, many centuries ago, I understood exactly why. Even in the winter, the place felt filled with life.

So it was good that we went there, because I noticed some significant spotting that afternoon when we got back home. I wasn't too surprised, but naturally (as I know you all can understand perfectly) disappointed. Suddenly, I wanted to drink. I wanted to pour myself a glass of wine. But instead I made lemon curd, one of my guy's favorite sweet spreads, to put on the bread he was baking. I had some good dark chocolate. I didn't fall too far.

Today, the Red Army is marching, but I'm hanging in there. I'm scheduling my hysteroscopy and lap with a surprising feeling of confidence. That mysterious mountain, I keep thinking, is still out there, right now. The snow that covered its flanks so beautifully yesterday is melting. But we'll return there. And something, someday, will change.

Eclipse

Tuesday night's lunar eclipse was beautiful in our corner of the world. The sky was crystal clear and before the shadow fell over the moon, it was casting that bright, eerie light on the snow. We live near town, but it's somehow dark enough not to mask celestial events too much, at least the big ones.

What struck me as the shadow gradually took bigger and bigger bites out of the moon was how peaceful it seemed. There was nothing grandiose or awe-inspiring about it. It was a calm unfolding of a natural rhythm.

The day afterward, I didn't think about it too much. But then I was walking through the deepening sleet back from my acupuncture appointment. I realized how grateful I am for my husband, for my parents, for the comfortable life we live. I also realized that this gratitude had eluded me on a regular basis until I met up with my guy, after years of post-divorce depression and despair that I would ever meet someone I could really love. The feeling of gratitude has only gotten stronger since I understood that getting pregnant may not be an easy thing for me.

It's like the eclipse. Sure, I always love a full-moon night that's clear and silvery. But you won't catch me running to the window every half hour. With the eclipse, the slow negation of the moon's light and the strange rusty red that followed made me love the moon more than ever. Watching it overshadowed by some greater force made me see it more clearly.

My life is a bit like that now. Infertility and its accompanying challenges to my self-image and my sense of hope have drifted across me. Though I can't always access this feeling, it has made me appreciate my life's depth and breadth because I know now that there are no meant-to-bes, no guarantees that things will go well.

And yet, some things have gone so well that I can't believe it. I've been given so many rich opportunities to engage my intellect. My life will never feel empty or dark because of that learning. I did wind up meeting someone, despite my fears, and he has proven a better partner than I could have ever imagined. Somehow, this gives me peace.

Seed Order

Ah, what could be more fun than a rapid-fire seed order to several great suppliers? As usual, we've bitten off more than we can chew, especially because we like to start all our own Solanums inside, on a funky light stand my dad whipped up out of PVC pipe (he's a small-scale flower farmer, so he's passed on his tricks). Last year, that was at least 200-300 plants. This year will be even more psycho, in part because I got what I wanted for Christmas: one of those nifty seed block makers. You pop in the moistened potting mix (consisting mostly of compost and peat) and presto! An ice-cube-shaped planting medium with no plastic waste involved.

This year, we're ordering a bunch of seed potato, actually about 8 pounds of organic fingerings of various odd types, way more than we planted last year. I have to say: Homegrown potatoes are amazing, especially fingerlings. I don't know if they lose moisture in transit, but they are so delicious right when you dig them that no butter or other oil is necessary. They simply melt in your mouth.

Plants, to me, are powerful companions. They have such silent integrity, such strength to flourish even in places where you'd expect them to languish. They'll appear where you least expect them and thrive. Last year, for instance, we noticed that some squash-like plant was sprouting all over our garden (we use compost made in part from all our kitchen scraps). By the end of the summer, we had huge vines covering large portions of the paths between our beds, all from a butternut squash we had thrown on the pile. They wanted to grow, so we let them.

I love this banal magic, the mild surprise when nature gently shows you that she will do as she pleases, and life will show up where it will. I love that I'm engaging in the same activities as my ancestors, tending plants and eating the fruits of this labor. Fortunately, if I mess up, I can still eat, unlike folks in the past, for which I am grateful. I have such respect for subsistence farmers, who often face hunger even when they are highly skilled.

It's funny to think that in a month, the now snow-covered ground will be yielding to our hoes and supporting little shoots of emerging claytonia, mache, and other cold-tolerant greens. Inside, tiny tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and collards will be cozy under their lights. And not long after that, we'll eat our first backyard salad.

In this, at least, I am a fountain of fertility.

Two Week Wack

I admire Mrs. X (and actually, all of you). Mrs. X did not speculate on her symptoms at all, really, during her most recent excruciating 2WW. At the risk of sounding like a creepy internet buddy, that's classy.

I am trying to resist the urge. I don't really think I'm pregnant, but I'm curious to keep a record and see if other gals had a similar experience with C. TMI, etc.

My nipples feel like electrified bullets. My midsection is all bloaty and I'm having the odd cramp here and there.

And I finally understand why women gain weight on fertility drugs. I've been eating like it's going out of style. Like the hippy co-op is giving away maple yogurt. Like I'm 6'7". None of this is what normally goes on after ovulation, but I'm so used to being thrown new and exciting sensations that I'm determined not to over-interpret.

The good news is... so far no spotting. I think I have massive amounts of progesterone circulating, giving me funky luteal feelings. How did you feel post-O on Clomid?

Evidence-Based Medicine

I've been thinking a bit about evidence-based medicine as a treatment paradigm, especially as espoused by bloggers like this guy. I hear where he's coming from: Using strange twists of logic to discourage children from getting vaccinations is terrible. Saying HIV is a hoax is a death sentence for millions. Funding reiki and homeopathy trials with federal dollars does seem a bit daft--there are, after all, a gazillion plants worth researching, some of which have been in human use for a long, long time, and to me seem more promising than copper disc therapy or whatever. (But I'm a plant lover. I digress...)

Yet evidence-based medicine does not accurately reflect what's happening in some areas of medicine. I wouldn't be surprised if every fertility patient had a passionate love-hate relationship with the notion that medical treatment should be based on the best current science vetted via well-constructed clinical trials. Unfortunately for us IF patients, this isn't really what treatment is about. It's about getting you pregnant, somehow, someway. Whatever your underlying medical condition is, is your problem.

Part of the problem is that the evidence just isn't there for most of us, and we get the same treatments as everyone else anyway. For instance, looking at, say, Clomid and ovulatory women, trials are teensy. They also often lump together couples with various diagnoses (mild male factor with unexplained infertility--how are these two conditions comparable, folks?). Also, is there a standard definition for "unexplained infertility"? Basically, it's next to impossible to find quality information about what would seem to be very straightforward questions. I mean, how hard would it be to design a multi-center study of Clomid in ovulatory women? Not fun, no, but hard? I don't think so.

Look at the crap that gets passed off as "evidence" and scientific breakthrough: the whole fertility diet hoopla of earlier this year. Newsflash: your diet and menstrual/reproductive health are somehow connected! I mean, can't we find some more pressing questions to investigate besides whether underweight women will start ovulating if they eat whole-fat dairy? Like, oh, I don't know, the efficacy of IUIs versus IVF? Which is where many of us who will not be helped by an extra serving of oatmeal will wind up.

Then there's the basic problem that for many of us, the doctor doesn't know what's behind the barrier to pregnancy. Meaning that while they might know you have PCOS, they don't know why or how or even quite what. Or the mysterious (and now out of favor) luteal phase defect. What is that, anyway, when you get down to brass tacks? Has there ever been an investigation of whether luteal phase length is indeed a major factor in infertility? I mean, for all we know, there are loads of fertiles out there with 9-day luteal phases, cheerfully conceiving and carrying to term, never charting a cycle in their lives. We just don't know.

Not knowing is torture for most of us. We are children not of faith, but of science. Even those among us who are religious. Our lives are surrounded by the products of scientific reasoning and they often help us. But here, there's no real help, just some hints and shrugs of the shoulder. And time is of the essence. We can't just twiddle our thumbs until researchers figure something out, so we take drugs, have surgeries necessary and unnecessary, and engage in various embodied forms of magical thinking.

When you're dealing with a world where evidence is scarce but time limited, you start to enter a psychological state where you'll try anything, and then swear that it worked. Yes, it was the special lube or the microelements or the double IUIs or the IVIG. It was the reiki or the primal scream therapy or the poetry workshop that did it. I think that the outside world, particularly the science-based medical world, doesn't understand how we get to this place, where we are willing to believe what most of us would find questionable in any other context. I would never have gone to our local supplements bazaar and stocked up on borage oil and royal jelly until I couldn't get pregnant and was desperate to see if something, anything might help. And no one would accept psychotherapy as a primary medical approach to thyroid cancer. Yet many infertile women are told that they are plagued a psychological barrier to conception, some secret, festering ambivalence that's a real embryo killer.

Thus, this isn't just about our psychological state, either. It's also about the mumbo-jumbo that society imposes on our medical conditions. Just as the treatment of HIV-related conditions or obesity is complicated by an incredible amount of cultural baggage, so too infertility, the twisted sister of the glowing Norman Rockwell-esque images of pure, natural femininity.

I'm not sure where any of my thoughts are going here, besides having myself a good ol' rant. But I guess I wish the medical establishment and society at large would admit, "Uh, yeah. We don't really know shit. We'd better work on that."

Eucatastrophe

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but JRR Tolkien is still on my mind. Isn't it funny how certain stories will take a hold of us at certain times in our lives? But more than his tales, I've been thinking a bit more about his view of hope. Tolkien proposed an opposite to catastrophe, an unexpected, complete turn for the worse: eucatastrophe, when events suddenly take a turn for the better.

Actually, you can see eucatastrophe at work throughout history, during the American Revolutionary War, say, when a ragtag, badly outnumbered army outmaneuvered the British. Or in the life of everyone's favorite Mongol Chinggis Khan (a.k.a. Genghis), who went from poor ragamuffin to ruler of a huge hunk of Eurasia. At some point in the chain of events, a turning point came and because one thing went right, a cascade of positive outcomes followed. Eucatastrophe is a node, where linear development breaks down and a revolution of sorts bursts forth.

Right now, I feel that I'm in a holding pattern, and no, it's not just because I'm a week post-ovulation. I'm slowly chipping away at the ginormous dissertation project. I'm waiting to see if I get surgery next month, and if it actually helps at all. I'm waiting for the next few weeks, when the gardening season opens. For the first time in my life, there are no major transitions waiting, no possible adventures right around the corner, no big trips to plan for.

I long for some kind of eucatastrophe, and I'm not even limiting myself to pregnancy here. It's just been a month or so of bad luck and minor mishaps (our car recently needed $1,200 of work, on top of all the other nonsense this year has brought), with little counterbalancing good news. Perhaps this will all resolve come spring, when the smell of the earth is in the air and the very first greens are sprouting. Perhaps I need a long hike in the woods--I've been away from the forest for two weeks, and that may be causing this restlessness. This Saturday, it's hit the trails or bust!

Until then, I'll watch the snow fall, listen to some great minimal techno, and eat some mighty fine mushroom soup my guy whipped up yesterday.

White Moon

Thank you, thank you, for your sympathetic words, and especially the literary reference connecting ovulation pain with the fabulous Ethel Merman. My ovaries are at peace now (relatively speaking), my stomach is settled, and now all I have to get rid of is this awful hacking cough. If anyone's looking for someone to play that consumptive maiden aunt in the back bedroom, I'm your gal. Wan and drawn are my middle names right now.

Today, besides attempting to free my lungs from their sickly chains, I'm going to help my friend from Mongolia work on a research paper for her English class. In return, she really wants to feed me, which means meat dumplings. Now, I'm a vegetarian and have been since high school, but for Mongols I have to make an exception. There's basically nothing else to eat there except milk, meat and flour products, and though Mongols have expanded their culinary repertoire over the years, they remain "meat-and-potatoes" folks. That's what their land and traditional lifestyle provides: fat animals.

This month following the lunar new year is called the "White Moon" or white month. Back in the day, people would travel from camp to camp, visiting, sharing news, eating, drinking, singing, and so on. Today, it's a time when, as far as I understand, unannounced visits are commonplace, and there are always batches of meat dumplings waiting to be popped into the dumpling-dedicated steamer.

What I enjoy about getting together with my Mongol friends, among other things, is the way children are treated. Of course, not everyone from Mongolia is the same, but the folks in our town are so laid back that it stands in sharp contrast to the (dare I say it) neurotic and rigid attitude I see among some Anglo-American parents I know. The kids' needs are seen to, and the adults lovingly make sure they have plenty of food and company, but then the adults talk about adult things and the kids do their kid things. Sometimes, the spheres overlap playfully, but basically the kids are left to their own devices, though they are never far from the adults. There is this faith, it seems, that the kids can act with a certain degree of independence without harming themselves. And for the most part, the pact works, and everyone has fun. This reminds me of my own very independent experience as a very loved child.

Perhaps I'm overthinking this, based on some parties I've been to where the kids are the obsessive focus of the interaction. A little of that is fine, of course, especially when it's, say, the child's birthday. But I've found that it gets impossible to have an adult conversation about anything, or at least not for more than five seconds. Maybe this is the bitter infertile talking, but I don't see why that's any fun for anyone involved: the kids don't get to do kid stuff, and the adults can't even get a word in edgewise.

In general, I am so resistant to all the structure children are subjected to nowadays. I mean, school for me was bad enough. Then you come home and it's all play dates this and activities that. It's like some kind of posh prison or something. And there's so much fear lurking everywhere, about everything.

Yet how will someone like me, who's struggled to have a child, let go enough to let them run a little wild? How will I let my hard-won child be? How will I combat the fear and the fear mongering?

I have no idea. Pass the dumplings.

The Mittelschmertz from Hell (a.k.a. the world's most boring post)

My body has been flipping out lately from a terrible combo of things: a pesky cold, a bout of food poisoning that gave me a brief fever, and the most incredible ovulation pain I've ever experienced. It was hard to separate one from another, and I'm still feeling pretty awful.

After sloshing around in the sleet and freezing rain for a good part of Tuesday, I suddenly felt very hot and weak. I got a cab home and curled up in front of the DVD player for the rest of the evening. With little energy to do more than watch stupid movies, I drifted in and out of sleep for most of Wednesday, too weak even to get upset about the brief bout of bleeding I discovered Tuesday night. I mean, it was (TMI) more than just a touch of spotting, though not enough to send thoughts of an ER run to my mind. I guess that's what can happen when three or four follicles burst, and that would explain the dull to not-so-dull pain I'd felt since Sunday. My poor, heroic ovaries! I'm so sorry to be putting you through this. At least it's over: No pain, no spotting, all is quiet on the southern front.

So today, I'm lying around the house again, thankfully with considerably more energy. My mind is back, whirring away about book proposals, conference papers, and my constant concern, the dis. I'm glad. It's nice to have a brain again.

Lap Dance

I'm not sure if I should do the lap at the same time as my hysteroscopy. I'm not the kind of gal that says, sure, just operate on me for no good reason. I know that endo is basically impossible to detect without a lap and that symptoms don't mean squat, but... I have an odd feeling that this isn't my problem. Call it women's intuition, for what it's worth (not much, it seems sometimes). I have no pain, nothing suggesting endo through all the years of ultrasounds and other tests, no history. While I do have something suggesting possible tubal problems (i.e. chlamydia antibodies, from a test taken in Eastern Europe. Never had a positive culture, though), my HSG was clear as a whistle. I know this doesn't tell you if your poor tubes are actually undulating away, but a lap wouldn't do them any good. It would just mean that we should proceed directly to IVF, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Dr. Spunk says he could go either way with a patient like me. It's 50-50 for him.

So, I'd love to hear what y'all think. Would you just go ahead and do the lap when the polyps are being removed? Kill two birds with one stone?

But what if the other bird doesn't need to be stoned? Part of me wants to leave my ovaries in peace to do what they need to do, not stir them up. What if the surgery leads to adhesions, for instance? And there's no evidence that clearing minor endo would give my fertility much of a boost at all.

The other part wonders if I might end up having to get a lap anyway, if a few more months go by and nothing happens.

Ah, the insane dance of the infertile mind.

The Princess and the Follicle, and Other Tales

So, why is it that we can feel our ovaries so well on fertility meds, when follicles are so small? I mean, I understand that if you've got 15 follicles forming thanks to FSH, those suckers are definitely going to make themselves felt. But I know I'm not alone when I write that even on C, if you lie on your side or arch your back, you feel your ovaries, though all they're doing is making three or so 20 mm blobs. Very much like the princess and the pea, with all those soft layers unable to mask the tiny irritant below. I guess we should take this as a sign of our great refinement and nobility as women, no?

Now, in addition to revealing my silly quirks, I'm also about to prove myself a hopeless nerd. A few days ago, I checked out the Fellowship of the Ring on DVD from our local library--yes, my international intrigue days are long behind me. I'd seen the film before, but it was fun to watch it with my guy, who hasn't read the books, or at least hasn't read them in a long time. I've read them several times, though I'm not obsessed like, say, the professor in my department who reportedly writes scholarly articles in Elvish. But yesterday, after a long afternoon slaving away over my conference paper and a bit of yoga, I decided to unwind a bit and watch the DVD extras, or what the producers snootily called "the appendices" for the film.

Though, as you'd expect, the whole production process was long, involved, and expensive, the part that I found the most interesting was a little introductory bit about Tolkien and his life. I've got to brag that I'm two degrees away from Tolkien (my mom studied Anglo-Saxon in grad school with his student), but I'd never known much about his life. His life was very sad: orphaned, fought in WWI, and so on. Yet the most interesting part came when several Tolkien experts began to discuss the book and his philosophy. One theme that came up was despair and hope. As one of the specialists put it, Tolkien believed in "hope without guarantees," a guarded state of pragmatic optimism. But he thought despair was an error, a mistake. Not because hope is so overwhelmingly powerful, or because good will prevail. It doesn't always. But despair implies that you know what will happen. And you don't. You don't know how things will unfold.

For those of you who know the book, despair is one of the potent emotions that drives evil. If you think it's pointless to resist, then you're far more likely to do someone else's bidding (Sauroman) or do something desperate and rash (Boromir). But no one, not even the wisest and most powerful, know the future and if the ring will destroy the world, or be destroyed.

Taking this down a notch from the mythical, we all face the same choice. We do not know what will happen, nor do we know how we will feel when we get there. My IF experience seems like a constant, frenzied weighing of scenarios, with usually the most dramatic (and silly) predominating: I'll never have a child, my husband will leave me because of it, I'll join some Buddhist nunnery in Nepal, as just one example. But the reality will be very different, perhaps more heart wrenching, perhaps just plain banal (i.e. I get knocked up with twins somehow and we buy a minivan and start watching television).

So I want to think about this "hope without guarantees" and see how it works. This hope may be a cruel mistress, but the note of grimness makes her easier to bear than that bitch Pollyanna with her bag of stupid baby dust.

I'm it! Ha ha!

Well, I have the wonderful Mrs. X to thank for a whole morning's worth of procrastination from a stupid conference paper about some dumb play and its connections to historical sources. I've been tagged! And what's more, I've been challenged to out quirk Mrs. X.

The rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Make sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

Okay, here goes:
1) I have been (wrongly) suspected of being a spy in a paranoid foreign country and treated accordingly (though nothing truly bad happened, just creepy, icky innuendo and harassment);
2) I used to be obsessed with the Finnish language and studied it for several years because I loved the way the vowels sounded when sung;
3) I am very double jointed;
4) I don't drive and walk about 5-7 miles a day. I love taking odd shortcuts that are only open to pedestrians in the know;
5) I have a bad habit of ordering hundreds upon hundreds of bulbs every fall, forcing me to dig up increasingly large portions of our lawn to house my beloved plants. I am in general obsessed with gardening;
6) I detest the sound of hot liquid being slurped.

I'd like to tag Ahuva Batya, my friend IRL Dunia, and Madame Babychaser.

Aye, Here Be Polyps!

Ah, IF! It so turns your world on its head that when a doctor finds something's not right, you're thrilled. At least I am: I have polyps! The saline sonogram actually helped us know more! The pesky womb stalactites likely explain what Dr. Spunk (my RE) tastefully termed "the nuisance bleeding," meaning the years of bizarre luteal phase spotting. And according to the embarrassment of study riches yielded by dear Dr. Google, polypectomies do an infertile body a lot of good. Something like 50% of unexplained infertile women conceive with minimal intervention.

No, Hope! I still don't want any of your tempting wares! Go away!

So the plan is: go ahead with this cycle (trigger on Sunday) and if I'm not pregnant--what a card the guy is!--give them a call and they'll set me up with a hysteroscopy, along with a handy dandy lap for good measure, while I'm under. My only misgiving about the process is that they recommended I take bcp for a cycle, just to make the lining less confusing and, well, less everything. Just what I need: more insanely screwy hormones.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not convinced that this is the answer. Even if it isn't, even if it just banished the dread Pirate Spot, it would still be worth it. And it's most likely covered by insurance. Oh joy! Oh joy! How lovely to have a nice clean womb and a happy, happy thyroid if we need to go to IVF in the end. What blast could resist nestling into a cozy place like that?

On another note, I finally got something right in the gyn department. When they wanded me after the SIS, the doc exclaimed, "I love those ovaries!" Gee whiz, Doc, me too. Apparently I have three large follies (for day 10) and respond well to the Clomid. Will wonders never cease?

As always, any experienced gals out there who've wrassled polyps are welcome to leave their two cents. Or as they say in German, to give up your mustard.

A Tale of Two Professors

I love the synchronicity that comes from checking DVDs out from the library. In the past two days or so, we've accidentally watched two films revolving around childless couples: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Akira Kurosowa's wonderful last film, "Madadayo." The main male characters are both professors. Yet the lives of these couples couldn't be more different.

One lives in a gut-wrenching, codependent boozy hell in a beautiful, calm little town where you'd think they could find some way to be happy(WAVW), and the other lives through WWII in Tokyo, spending months living in a tiny garden shed, with a quiet love of life and concern for each other. One makes their extremely manipulative way, utterly alone and isolated by incredible amounts of hard liquor--seriously, if you took a drink for every drink on screen, you'd be down after the first 30 minutes--while the other is surrounded by a gang of devoted former students who so enjoy their professor's company, they start an organization to honor him. That he and his wife don't have biological children seems irrelevant.

I say this because even in the case of what many of us in treatment consider the worst possible outcome, we have choices. We can relish life and learning, drawing spiritual children (for lack of a better word) to ourselves with our joy. We can care for each other and tend to our gardens. Or we can sink slowly into a pool of delusion and isolation. Maybe a bit of both has to happen, but the option to love life is still open and always waiting.

So if you're cycling, watch the Kurosawa. Leave "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" alone for now.

Side Effect Watch: I'm done with my stupid pills and didn't have any more hot flashes. We'll find out Thursday of the crap actually had a positive effect on my ovaries.

Flash Dance! and More Discussions

What a feeling.

As Mrs. X noted, C is an exercise in sympathy for our mothers who have gone through menopause. While I wish I weren't privy to that experience yet, I'll take any knowledge that gives me more insight into the lives of those dear to me. My hot flashes seem to be getting worse, but with only one more pill to go, I'm hoping they'll soon subside. It does feel bizarre, right? Like a little space heater just switched on in your belly, and pow! You're really, really warm.

Yesterday, my guy and I went on our longest hike to date, out in a remote area. Part of our regional national forest, the area was once home to all these backwoods farms, and their foundations and related debris are still visible. There were even the carcasses of several classic cars, grown through with vines and trees. While there, we had a really good talk about IF, among many other things. He really gets my point of view--that I don't want to piddle around for another year. We've been wrestling with this for more than 2 and a half years, and I need to get this done and move on. I guess, with nothing obviously wrong, it made sense to wait and see. In the meanwhile, as I oft repeat, I got very, very healthy.

But we know that we're clearly not all that fertile on our own, and that something in my poor body is seriously off even if it can't be identified by doctors at this time. Though my husband, bless him, thinks we are just inconsistently fertile, that some months, when my cycle is going well, we could easily conceive but just haven't. Now, there haven't been all that many good cycles, so this is within the realms of possibility. But it's also irrelevant. Whether we could ever do it on our own doesn't really change the arguments in favor of aggressive treatment.

We decided that when we go in for the saline sonogram/follicle check on Thursday, we're going to ask for a cost rundown on IVF. It's not going to get any cheaper, I'm not getting any younger, and our work situations may get way more complicated in two or three years, as I look for and hopefully find an academic job. And I'd rather live through three cycles of difficulty than 9+ cycles of this bullshit. After three cycles, we decided we'd call it quits and move on to other important life projects. Then, at the very least, we'd know that we did everything we could to get to where we wanted to be.

We also resolved to keep the bulk of our IF discussions in the woods.

A Flash in the Pan

Hot flash, that is! Yes, I've joined the secret C sisterhood--though Google reveals some brothers out there who take C, too, for bodybuilding reasons or something. I definitely had a hot flash last night, as Deathstar so aptly put it, the oily, sticky sweats that come from hormonal madness.

The interesting thing was that I woke up in the middle of the night not because of the actual flash itself, but because of the slightly damp comforter. I promptly fell back asleep.

I've been thinking a lot, thanks in part to all the wonderful comments you've left, about how I'd like to proceed with this process. Though this is not really my style, I almost want to make some sort of cost-projected benefit matrix in chart form, just so we could visually see what the possible time and money commitments would be. It feels like solving one of those silly logic puzzles I loved as a child, where you set up a grid and fill in the boxes. The logic in this exercise gives me a false sense of security, that this problem can be solved by intellect. I know that's silly, but this process has taught me that you take the illusory satisfaction when you can.

So, looking back on my line in the sand, I see it's not really about the treatment method, it's about time, about brain real estate. I only have so much time to devote to this effort before I lose my will. I only have so much space for lease in my mind. My guy gets it now...

Side Effect Watch: Day 2

Thanks for sharing your fun C experiences! I'm amazed at the wide range of funky stuff that one chemical can do. I bow before the might and delicacy of the female hormones.

Actually, despite the alarmist headline, there's nothing really to report. The reading glasses are still going on and off the nose occasionally, and I feel somewhat tired and fuzzy, but I think I'm coming down with something. God, this is about as interesting as listening to dear ol' Grandma go on about her peripheral neuropathy. I think I had a hot flash last night, but again, might just be this bug I'm fighting. I've followed the advice I read somewhere on Stirrup Queens that taking C at night helps reduce the impact of the side effects. It does seem to be helping me avoid the worst (i.e. emotional insanity) so far. Fingers crossed, wood knocked, etc.

I'm glad I'm taking it well, because I was terrified I would be a mess. Why? Well, in the past, I tried the Pill a couple times, once when I was 16 or so, and once when I was already in college. Both times, the Pill was incredibly effective because I had no desire for sex. At all. In fact, I hated the men around me, as they didn't seem to like me crawling into dark closets and weeping profusely. They were also extremely irritating, making noises, saying things, you know. Basically, I was an irrational, depressed, libido-less shrew. So I used all sorts of other protection instead and (I know, shocking) never got pregnant. Are you laughing as hard as I am?

Based on these experiences when medicine attempted to fool with my hormones, I was scared that these months on C would be a complete wash. But no, thankfully. At least, so far so good.

With this quasi-clarity, I'm attempting to put together a book proposal for something I translated, a collection of personal accounts by members of a certain ethnic group deported by the Soviets during WWII. Stalin and his buddies declared entire nations enemies of the state, believing they had collaborated with the Nazis, who occupied areas of the Caucasus and southwestern Russia in 1942-43 or so. Based on this conclusion, the secret police rounded up and deported every man, woman, and child, and even brought soldiers and nurses back from the front. Most veterans ended up in Urals labor camps, while families were "resettled" in remote areas of Siberia and the Russian Far North, with only the clothes on their backs to get them through the winter and logging or fishing production quotas to fill. I know, fun reading. Basically, I cried as I translated. Heartbreaking stuff. But with amazing sparks of humor, joy, and insight, and lots of interesting information about this particular ethnic group's history. The guy who put it all together in the original, himself a deportation survivor, is on board and excited. Now I just have to find an academic publisher interested in this kind of stuff. It would also be nice to get the original author some money, any money. Life where he is is very, very hard.

Isn't it odd how terrifying doing something new can be? And this isn't even my stupid dissertation. And I've got an old guy in East Jesus, Russia hoping I'll come through for him. I'm always getting myself into these predicaments. What new challenge have y'all been confronting lately?

Side Effect Watch!

Sorry to all my veteran sisters out there, who are likely rolling their eyes or longing to pat my rookie head at this pablum. But while having c-related symptoms is really annoying, it's really interesting, too. So why not write them down, right? Meet Shinejil, your friendly blogging guinea pig.

I've got this odd headache that keeps coming and going, though it's a bit better now that I decided to put on my reading glasses. I have very weak glasses that I got this summer when I kept getting eye strain-related mega-headaches. Strangely, starting about a month after I shelled out lots of money for them, the eye strain stopped and I never wore them. Now, all of a sudden I need them again. The computer monitor has suddenly become blurry. Yesterday, I was reading the screen just fine, but now, no.

I'm also oddly dizzy. It's almost pleasant, like the effects of a couple glasses of wine. Except I can't concentrate, but that is likely related to the untimely cat demise. I feel really relaxed and dopey.

But that's probably just me.

The Odd Thing About Love

First, thank you, my friends, for your kind words of sympathy. It's so nice to know that there are wonderful women out there who can understand not only IF shit, but also the other sorrows that life sometimes throws our way, and how the intersection of those two things makes it just that much harder. What a tortured sentence! Note to self: Stop reading Dostoevsky...

I feel much better today. We buried our cat in the morning, at the edge of a forested hill at my MIL's place in the country. It was so peaceful and beautiful, and my dear man took over the grimmer aspects of the process (i.e. the actual burying). This somehow helped. My husband took me to work with him and we spent the whole day together.

By the evening, I was already feeling not the great sadness, but the love I'd had for this goofy little being. I remember holding her, her endearing quirks, her beautiful black ruff and deep yellow eyes, and I know that we gave her a good home after a rough life (the poor cat had been found as a stray and then later RETURNED to the shelter by some complete and total idiots). So the love continues and is still as sustaining as it ever was, even when its object is no longer alive. That's the odd thing about love: It nourishes the heart, despite loss.

On a different note, I took my first Cl0mid last night. So far, I feel fine, or let's say I don't feel so bizarrely off that I can blame it on the Evil C. I'm supposed to schedule a saline sonogram--yet another request for clarification, y'all: any real point in getting an SIS if an HSG was all clear? I know the SIS is more sensitive to things like polyps (suspected because of my spotting, but I'm skeptical as always). But wouldn't big old polyps causing me spotting and implanting problems show up on an HSG?

I've also been unable so far to acquire an HCG shot or to have one ordered. The joys of small town living. I'm now eager to hear what online pharmacies folks use. I hate going in and picking up my Rx for some reason, especially when most of the pharmacies around here don't have even the IF basics.