Here we go again

Period's started in earnest now. In for another torrent, with cramps so bad already it hurts to sit down. To sit down! God, what's wrong with me, and why doesn't my doctor do something?

The plan

My tits have hurt since Day 22. (It's day 27, huzzah.) There is no way I can be pregnant. Wonder what's up now.

Still waiting on my files from the doc's. It's only been two weeks, I keep forgetting. Before October (which is when we can switch insurances) I want to take our files to this other health care provider in town. They're a little more expensive, even for regular copays and monthly premiums, but they at least admit to knowing something about infertility. Unlike my current provider, which specializes in rehabilitative physical therapy, sports medicine, and geriatrics.

E's folks' visit

The good:

• A trip to a park for picnic and hiking.
• Free grub.
• Good talks & practical advice (and an offer of a big loan for whatever, perhaps our car? Or maybe fertility treatments. Though we might still tell them it's for the car.)
  

The bad, the ugly:

• when FIL offered me a stack of parenting books. He doesn't get how bad it is.
  
• when MIL excoriated FIL for "almost running out of gas" on said trip when we had at least 40 miles in the tank.
• Enduring temper and incessant rehashing of board games when FIL lost.
  

Introvert burnout

E's gone, as I said before. Two precious weeks alone, free use of the car, TV, computer, eat whatever I want, whenever, go to bed when I want, none of his schedules or needy needy needs for 16 precious days. Except.

Except no one will leave me alone. It was fun to see people at first, but it's very old now.

I had ten blessed minutes alone yesterday between returning from work and E's parents getting back from their dinner (15 minutes early!!!) in which I got my bag ready for work and started the dishwasher. Then back to the entertaining. Argh.

The house is a mess, we're out of toilet paper, I have one pair of clean underwear left - what happened to my alone time? Goddamit! Next year I am telling people I'm going to the Caribbean while E's gone. Then maybe they will leave me alone.

And I won't have to call the grouchy trip leader when E neglects to call me for ten days and yet I have to start the band kids' parents' fucking phone tree, or I'll have their anxious asses calling me.

I love E but wish he could take another two weeks off soon. And finish his chores before he goes this time, instead of leaving me with a filthy house and an overgrown yard.

Times like this I wish I could/would stop fooling myself that having a kid with this prize is a good idea. Watch, he'll be into it for about a week, then the next 935 will be all my problem.

Nothing going on

With E gone, one would think I have a chance to be all introspective. Not really. I'm watching DVDs and staying up too late.

Oh! The doctor's appointment of the 14th was again inconclusive. They can't tell if I have endo without a $2k operation, and even then, treatment is blah blah blah whatever. The doc poked around and where it hurt most was a common place for endo to develop. Lucky me.

The painful-ass periods could be due to my not ovulating. Given that I only ever get a whisper-thin line on OPKs, I'd be willing to believe that's the case.

It was embarassing to go to the doctor again. They don't know why I'm there. I don't know why I'm there. Except that E seems to think someday they'll say, "Oh, we just discovered this miracle we can do for you, free, because God loves you! Here, take this pill. Viola!"

I requested my medical records on the 14th too (not here yet) and E and I will take our shit to another doctor eventually to see how we feel with them. Actually, I found out our health care provider has no reproductive specialists at all. Why the fuck have we stayed there this long? I really want to switch. Even if it means starting over with the basic tests.

They say

if you want to feel better, tie up all those loose ends. Finish what you've left undone.

So I killed off the bottle of Fleischmann's in the freezer with some Dr Pepper (heinous at first, but it got better and better) and fuck yeah they were right!

E's out

for two weeks with his annual band trip. Left just before Sex Week, but I haven't yet got a positive ovulation test.

I visited his parents and gave them a more detailed update. If anybody should know more, it's them.

3:30 "clicked" awake.
5:30 got up to go to the bathroom. Debated doing an OPK test. Opted not to.
6:00 Yes (successfully)
...work...
10:00 Took OPK test. Negative.
1:30 To doctor's.

Miscarriage story

Here's the story that compelled me to start this blog. Not for you, dear reader, but for me. I know I am not a unique snowflake but even so have to get it out somehow.

---

I got pregnant in early January, 2004. I miscarried on Monday, March 8, 2004.

We hadn't told anyone we were even trying. I'd given up the pill a year before I was due to finish grad school, ever careful nothing happened before we were ready.

We were planning to visit E's parents in a week or two and tell them the good news.

The night before, E and I went to dinner at Boston Market, purveyor of guilt-inducing, fast comfort food. I ordered a huge turkey sandwich that I couldn't finish. I read Wired magazine and learned all about Google. We came home, watched a video, and I flipped through a pregnancy book for the very first time.

Up until that very day I'd been too superstitious to allow myself to feel pregnant. I'd been to the doctor for my first prenatal exam and met the ob/gyn in charge. She'd said everything was going fine.

Before bed that Sunday night, I felt wrong. My belly was tight and cramped. The nurse on call put us through to the doctor on duty. It wasn't my doctor, but another on the "team." He told me to put my feet up and relax. We went to bed as usual.

I woke up at 2am. E was fast asleep.

I'd been spotting over the last few weeks (perfectly normal, according to the doctor) but it had gotten heavier in the night. I got up and tried to go to the bathroom. Frankly, it felt as if I needed to fart. I strained and forced some stuff out of my bowels, but it didn't help. I sat there breathing hard and suddenly felt something slide down my vagina. I looked into the toilet and saw a golf-ball sized clot with a pinkish-white stripe floating above the bed of shit I'd just left.

I knew what it was, but I got a flashlight and looked at it more closely. I wondered if I should pick it up and save it. The prospect of presenting the 10-week-old "products of conception" to my doctor in an old salsa jar full of toilet water and feces was just not a path I was going to take.

So I flushed it. I washed my face and woke up E. We again called the doctor, who told us to go to urgent care in the morning. E sat on the edge of the tub and held my hands as I bled some more. When it slowed, we went back to bed. He fell asleep almost immediately, as if he'd just shut down. I envied him.

In the morning we called in sick and went to urgent care. When I told them I was pregnant but had been bleeding and cramping all night, their faces blanched and they rushed me to an exam room.

"The doctor sent you here?" everyone asked. The consensus seemed to be that I should have gone to the emergency room. Even the free magnetic "when to call urgent care" reference card said so.

We waited for them to prep the ultrasound room, which wasn't intended to handle women in my situation. The tech looked around my uterus with the wand for a while, silently.

We waited for the results. And waited. For nearly two hours. Got all caught up on news of Martha Stewart's prison sentence from the waiting room TVs.

E finally asked reception what was going on.

They had forgotten us.

A doctor soon appeared and sat us down in an exam room. She told us nothing was left of my pregnancy, that I'd had a clean miscarriage in the night. E, hearing what we already knew, started to cry. The doctor asked with kind and furrowed brow if we had anyone we could talk to. I told her we hadn't told anyone we were trying, that we were about to tell E's parents we were pregnant. Then I started to cry. She asked if we wanted to be alone for a bit. When we said yes, she fairly flew from the room.

When we regained our composure, we went back out and got the doctor. She advised us to take the rest of the day off and monitor my temperature for fever.

We went home and lay on top of the covers of our bed in the bright, cold spring sunlight and cried and cried. I wanted to fall back to sleep, but couldn't. So I stationed myself on the couch and E went to buy a thermometer (we didn't have one at all) and some mint tea. We spent the day quietly, watching some movies, reading a little.

It was back to work for us both on Tuesday. On Thursday I gave a group presentation about search engines to one of my classes. One of my group members was home sick with a really bad cold, guys, and was really really sorry she couldn't do her part of the presentation, and wondered if I could cover for her. I did. Things were back to normal but would not be quite the same.

Proverb of the day

Seven years is not too long for the pumpkin vine to start bearing fruit.

July 14

I'm going in to talk to the doc about endo.

2 of 3 ain't bad

E's visit to the urologist confirmed that there is no magic pill to improve motility, duh. As for the two of three:

1. varicocele: not likely, and if so, a grade 1 (of 3, where 3 is worst). Recommended an ultrasound if we want to be sure. E will do that if it's covered by insurance, since surgery to repair it is not (according to the urologist) proven to help much.
   
2. fructose levels: He didn't ask. I still want to know: would lack of fructose in his ej4cul4te hurt motility? Starve the little guys? Guess we'll never know.
   
3. details of his last 2 sp3rm tests: WHO rather than Kruger, I am guessing. Motility pathetic. 25% and 9% sluggish. In that light, it's a miracle I did get pregnant twice in 23 months.
   

So. Good news is, there are ways to bypass the motility issue. Bad news is, I still know next to nothing about what's up with me.

E's reaction was less than heartening, though. His attitude borders on cavalier: "I'm OK, it must be you," kind of thing. He is not OK. Half the minimum quality his end is not OK. Getting pregnant once a year is not OK if our m/c risk is as high as it has been. Sigh.

It just feels like he's all too ready to ... not blame, per se, but he'd obviously rather pat my hand through countless HSGs, D&Cs, bimonthly IUIs and/or whatever else this throws at us, than to eat a little more goddamn broccoli and exercise once in a while.

Which, I guess, has little to do with motility. But can it hurt? Enough, apparently.

Would it be gauche at this point to admit that E wants this far, far more than I do? His desire for kids is at least four times stronger than mine. More than half my desire for kids is love of him. How far backwards can one bend get?

I am having hard enough time

Today E goes to the urologist my ob/gyn referred us to. I think E will say we've done the low-tech stuff (improved diet and exercise, no boxers, no hot water, no laptops, no alcohol/drugs, extra vitamins) and that he wants a pill to improve motility. He doesn't share my suspicion that there is no such magic pill. I hope he asks about varicocele, fructose levels, and the details of his last 2 sperm tests. I fear he'll come home with nothing.

Meanwhile, I just had the worst period I have ever had. Came on fast on the first of the month, which found me sitting on the toilet long into the night, wracked with cramps and - to add insult to injury - diarrhea. Severe cramps that did not go away with painkillers. Huge, rubbery chunks of uterine lining and gobs of dark red blood. The next three days I bled fast and it hurt to go to the bathroom or put any pressure on my abdomen, even just to sit down. Out of the question was sex (which, incidentally, has been getting more painful these last few months).

Let's review:

• Pain before and during periods, especially developing after years of pain-free periods: check


• Pain with sex: check


• Infertility: check


• Fatigue: not so much
  


• Painful urination during periods: check


• Painful bowel movements during periods: check


• Other Gastrointestinal upsets such as diarrhea (check), constipation, nausea (sometimes).

5.5 of 7? Sounds fishy. The dioxin link freaks me the fuck right out.

So I called the doc again. I saw her about a month ago (visit #4) about the pain and the second m/c, but she just told me to relax and gave me that precious "I've seen people adopt and then get pregnant!" line. And grudgingly said they could do a HSG to look for polyps, or even start IUI.

Look, I'm not hysterical, I want to tell the doc. I am no whiner (this blog to the contrary - here's where it all ends up, so it looks more all-consuming than it is). Things are getting worse and I want you to find out what's wrong.
I want to know what was in that post-m/c ultrasound last March.
I want to know what, if anything, you learned from my blood at our initial workup.
I want to know if there's anything physically blocking my uterus or tubes.
I want to do any and all diagnostics you can do until either a) we find the problem or b) you can say with confidence that we belong in the 40% of couples with mystery infertility. I'm ready to hear "it's a mystery," but only if you give us reason to trust that you've really looked.
She seems reluctant to do anything for us, perhaps because we're only 28.
But I am asking now precisely because right now time is on my side, about the only thing that is right now. I'm trying to make the docs' job easier by coming to them before my window gets smaller.

So I want them to do something. Or refer me to someone who will. Please.

...

Helps to rehearse. I'm very timid in person.