My love affair with needles continues

Monday I bit the bullet and made an appointment with the acupuncturist my RE's clinic works with. I figured it couldn't hurt. Yesterday was my first appointment. The acu-Dr.'s office is new, bright and modern. He is the entire staff though so he's running around a lot. He's a very nice Chinese man, a little hard to understand but I mostly got everything he said. He took my pulse and looked at my tongue and told me my qi is very low and I think he said I have problems with my spleen, kidneys and liver. He also asked very um, 'detailed' questions about my cycle - questions no one, including my OB/GYN or RE have ever asked - but I assume it's important information for him. Anyway, I had thought I'd just have a consultation at first and then go back for the needles but after the pulse/tongue exam he told me to take my clothes off and lay face down. (not while he was in the room mind you) I was totally cool with that except I had not anticipated being in my underwear so soon, otherwise I would shaved my legs beforehand! I really should know better, practically every doctor I see these days required me to remove my clothes. 

I laid down on the table in my skives and he wiped certain areas off with alcohol and then did the needle thing, which was super quick and not painful at all. He put a few at the base of my neck, some on my arms, my back, my legs, one on each wrist and one on each ankle. Then he pulled this heat lamp over on me and left me there for around 15 minutes. It was relaxing but I had a hard time getting my face/head in a comfortable position. He came back, removed the needles and then I turned over and he put more needles in, one in between my eyes, one on each arm, a lot in my abdominal region (I guess that's my trouble area), a couple in my legs and another set on my ankles. I got the heat lamp treatment for another 15 minutes and then he came and took out the needles and I got to get dressed. 

He gave me a plastic bag full of small white paper bags filled with a mixture I'm supposed to brew for tea. He told me it was going to taste bad but I should just hold my nose and drink it. I can only describe the 'tea' in these bags as sticks and berries with other miscellaneous flora and fauna. I steeped my first batch last night and y'all it is the nastiest tasting liquid I have ever put in my mouth. It smells like rancid mushrooms and dirt. It's the color of the Mississippi River and I was barely able to get a cup down. I'm supposed to drink it three times a day! This morning I tried to drink a cup and I got most of it down and then...(Kenan if you're reading this divert your eyes!)

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the last few tablespoons came right back up, ewww. My gag reflex for this stuff is not strong enough. It's soooo disgusting. I tried it with a straw and I don't know if it made it better or worse. Blech. I go back for more needle poking on Saturday morning. The acu-Dr. said treatment would be a long-term thing and once I get pregnant I'd see him for three more months or until he felt comfortable. In comparison to the other IF-related expenses the acu sessions are pretty reasonable and relaxing so I think I'll try it.  Although at the this point if someone told me to wear a chicken suit and dance down the interstate and I'd get pregnant I would probably do it.

Round and round and back again

I'm emotionally exhausted and we aren't even cycling this month. Last Tuesday my grandmother, who I'm very close to, ended up in the ICU with a ruptured, abscessed appendix and blood clots in her lungs, very serious. I spent most of last week teetering on the edge of an emotional breakdown because I was so worried about her. On Friday they moved her into a regular room but she's not out of the woods yet, they can't take out her appendix until the blood clots are gone so she'll be the hospital until that happens. 

The reality of losing her before she sees me as mother made my heart hurt. That possibility resulted in me wanting to skip anymore IUI's and go straight to the end-of-the-road IVF cycle. This also resulted in several long, emotional conversations with my dear husband, who despite my manic episodes, has managed not to runaway yet. Eventually, after a few days we comprised and came back to the same plan we made before, with a few small changes. It's very important for him for us to use the sperm he has stored, even though it was stored post-radiation and the success rates are very low. I understand that and am on board with this. Miracles can happen right? So for our next IUI cycle we'll use two of stored vials (the counts are so low they have to use two vials for one IUI). After that we'll have three vials left, the worst we'll save for IVF/ICSI - when we plan to fertilize half the eggs with donor and the half with what we have stored. The tentative plan going forward is to use up what we have stored with IUI's and then consider another donor IUI before IVF. I did make him swear to me we'd do another IVF cycle before the end of the year - even if we have to sell our kidneys to fund it (not really). 

Also a big thank you to Krissi over at Stress Free Infertility for featuring me last week, I really needed a virtual hug and that made my day!

On a musical note, I bought the Ok Go album from last year recently and the song "This Too Shall Pass" grabbed my attention. I remember this video was super popular but I never paid attention to the lyrics until now.

Anger/gratitude

I'm angry a lot. Angry at my body for not producing good quality eggs despite the fact that I've been trying to get knocked up since I was 24. Angry at the urologist/oncologist who never told Doug he should bank sperm before radiation. Angry at people who can get pregnant at the drop of a hat but don't fully appreciate it. Angry at people who have children but abuse them or don't take care of them. Angry at the insurance company for not covering any of these treatments. Angry at people who say "why don't you just adopt?" Angry that in order to adopt we'll have to jump through a thousand hoops and have someone else decide if we're good enough to be parents or not. Angry at God. Angry at myself for being angry. That's a lot of anger to carry around.

When I find myself feeling especially angry and get the urge to have an ugly cry, I do (provided I'm not out in public). Sometimes you just have to have an ugly cry, you need to get it all out - it's therapeutic.  But after the ugly cry I pick myself back up and repeat the mantra "I do not know how or when our child will arrive but I know that one day we will be parents." Because in this world of infertility, of cycle days, of shots and follicles and big, fat negatives, this is the only truth I know. Thinking about it gives me a teensy bit of solace. I also remember how much love and support I have from my friends and family. It's really hard to stay angry when you know how many people care about you. People who care about you so much that they learn IF terminology and cry with you and wish so hard for you. Even people I don't know are hoping and praying extra hard for us. How can you stay angry when you have that? Eventually the anger turns into gratitude for what we have and how much people care about us. So yes, there's still flashes of anger and sadness but I'm trying so, so, so hard to be grateful and hopeful.

Son of ....

Argh. I started spotting Thursday night and then full-fledged bleeding/cramping Friday morning. This was a full eight days before AF normally starts and only ten days post-IUI. I called the clinic and let them know we'd be sitting this next cycle out. Nurse called me back and said that the early AF could be attributed to the fact that my lining was so thick, which is good for implantation, but if nothing implanted the lining probably just shed sooner. Hmmph. I really thought this might be it because of the symptoms/feelings I was having. Stupid uterus. Stupid old eggs.

We'll sit next cycle out to try to recover financially from the $3,000 we just dropped on this cycle. Hopefully, provided nothing ridiculous happens, we'll cycle again at the end of February.

F*cking infertility.

Hello IComLeaveWe folks!

I've been scanning blogs from the Stirrup Queens blogroll for at least a year so I'm glad I finally gave myself a kick in the pants and joined the blogroll and decided to participate in ICLW this month.So if you found your way here from the ICLW list, welcome! 

Here's the abridged version of why I'm an IF blogger:

My husband had testicular cancer in the mid '90's, no one told him about banking sperm until after radiation when the cancer returned. So by the time he banked sperm it was radiated. Not good. Fast forward to 2005, we're married, we start seeing the RE. Husband is confirmed sterile so we only have the radiated, banked sperm to use. First IUI with Clomid is a fail, we save our pennies for an IVF cycle. March/April 2006 we do our first IVF cycle with ICSI and AH and we also find out my FSH is crazy high for a 24 year old. Great. IVF is a fail so we take a break. August 2007 we do IUI with Follistim, another big fat fail and my FSH is 12.3. WTF. We take another really long break and travel, buy a house and do fun things. Now it's May 2010, RE says "where have you been??!!?" and "I think you have a good shot at IVF success if you want to try again." So we do. FSH is slightly lower, AMH is good and AFC is also good. By fall 2010 we have the funds for IVF again, start BCP in September, get call from RE and embryologist that maybe we should consider donor sperm, as they can't find evidence of a pregnancy from radiated sperm. Okay we can do that, not our first option but we knew it was a possibility. Pick a donor, start drugs, yadda, yadda. Much better response than first IVF cycle, 10 mature eggs retrieved, 9 fertilized, 3 great looking embryos are transferred. BFP, um kinda. Beta is 22, pregnancy doomed. Beta rises to 123 and then one week later I start bleeding, miscarriage confirmed. Wallow and cry a lot for about six weeks . RE suggests we could have success with IUI with donor or IVF again but also talks to us about embryo adoption. We decide on an IUI with injectables/trigger and donor sperm, which was done on 01/11/11 (lucky day?) and now we're coming in on the end of the 2WW. Our next plan, which is subject to constant change, is another IUI with injectables/donor before a third and final IVF cycle. After that we're discussing embryo adoption/domestic adoption. We want to parents one day - regardless of how that happens.

Beyond IF, I have an awesome group of friends I love to hang out with, I bake like a crazy person, I have a knitting obsession, I work as an Executive Assistant, I'm desperately trying to find a way for us to move to the Pacific Northwest and if that wasn't enough I'm going to school part-time to finish my degree in Non-Profit Development and Administration. My non-IF blog about every day life and baking/knitting is here.

So that's that.

It could mean something or more likely, nothing

- Face has decided it hates me. Breakout 'clusters' on face, neck and chest. 

- Crampy 

- Odd nausea feelings, not full-on but enough for me to stay near a trashcan. (possibly a side effect of the ham & turkey croissant I ate at the UC on campus last night because I was desperate)

- A few other bodily things I dare not mention because even though this is a blog about infertility and infertility procedures, there are some things that are just TMI. However, these same kinds of things occurred during IVF 2WW. But that doesn't exactly instill confidence in me.

These are most likely symptoms caused by leftover HCG from the trigger shot. 

Back to waiting, waiting, waiting...

A little inspiration

Purchased today on Etsy from The Spotted Fox