BrooklynGirl

And So It Goes

My beta level is under 5 so I am no longer even chemically pregnant. I still feel anesthetized, and while I'm disappointed that my levels didn't have a miraculous exponential increase, I never really believed they could so am also enormously relieved that this is all over, and I can have that stiff drink I've needed since the middle of last week.

Lessons Learned-Medical

• You can be a little bit pregnant (props to Julie who had already figured this out).
  
• Answer brand early response HPTs kick ass. I got a positive when my hCG level registered only 5.7 at the lab.

Lessons Learned-Philosophical

• Even when you feel like someone has been jumping up and down on your heart, life does go on. You can get up and go to work and realize that no one around you has even the vaguest idea what you're going through.
  
• Virtually the entire U2 oeuvre can be interepreted as an infertility homage. Seriously. Dig out The Joshua Tree. The same music you listened to as an angsty adolescent applies to the angsty infertile.
  
• There is a worse message to get on your answering machine than "the test was negative."

So now what? I don't know. It seems even more certain that my husband will take this new job, the benefits of which include insurance that covers some IF treatment but not, alas, IVF.

Part of me still wants to see this near miss as a positive sign. Maybe IUI could work for us. By the same token, however, maybe IVF has something to offer diagnostically: are we having problems with fertilization, implanation, or both? Should I be pressing on immunity testing? I'm going to call my doctor and see if he has thoughts on this, but I welcome input from anyone who feels like telling me what to do.

I wish the road ahead was clearly marked. I'm tired of the detours, road blocks, and crashes at every turn.

It's Chemical

The results are in, and they're...excruciating. My hCG is 5.7. According to the PA who called positive is anything over 5, but for this to be viable, they'd like to see a number around 60. And I'm no math expert, but 5 seems pretty far away from 60.

I'm just numb with this news. So close and yet so very far.

Beta Day

This morning I dutifully reported for my beta. I have no cause for optimism, but Hope and I are hanging on with our fingernails until we get the call this afternoon. After that, we plan to drink margaritas by the bucket.

I used my fancy new iPod to compose a little playlist for beta day. It goes a little something like this:

• Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want-The Smiths
• A Little Less Conversation-Elvis vs. JXL
• Running to Stand Still-U2
• Cracking-Suzanne Vega
• Fighting for it All-Mindy Smith
• Here Comes the Flood-Peter Gabriel
• The Hard Way-Mary Chapin Carpenter
• Angel from Montgomery-John Prine/Bonnie Raitt
• Stuck in a Moment-U2
• You and Me of the 10,000 Wars-Indigo Girls
• Hallelujah-Rufus Wainwright
• Steady On-Shawn Colvin
• Walk On-U2
• Don't Let Us Get Sick-Warren Zevon

Got any suggestions to round out this list?

How To Like It

Today is 10 DPO, and I woke up this morning with cramps. I think they're the cramps that tell me my period is on the way--after all these years, I should know, right?--but the progesterone will extend things and surely induce full-on psychosis before my beta on Monday. I can't imagine what I'm supposed to do with myself until then.

One thing I can do, though, is post this poem recently sent to me by a friend. It's for all of us looking for answers to what comes next.

How To Like It

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

-Stephen Dobyns

And Now for the Fun Part

Well, it feels somewhat anticlimactic, but IUI #3 is in the can. Phew. So now it comes down to two weeks of progesterone-fueled psychosis. What could be better?

I wish I had something profound to say, but I really don't. I did manage to totally gross out my husband when he asked if I wanted him to come into the exam room with me and I said no that it was too early in the morning for group sex. And judging by the women in tracksuits who spun around in their chairs to look at me, I horrified them too. So, at least I accomplished something this morning.

Still being me, I needed something to obsess about and here it is: in the past, the physician's assistants have done my actual IUIs, but they don't seem to work on weekends so I was mildly curious about who exactly was going to do it this morning. Another woman waiting to be turkey basted was making a big fuss about the fact that she wanted her doctor--who is also my doctor--to do the deed and she was assured that he would. So, as I was sitting there waiting. And waiting. And WAITING. I just sort of assumed that my doctor would perform the procedure. Especially after I heard him chattering away in the hallway.

Imagine my surprise when a fellow (a medical fellow, that is, not just a random guy off the street) enterred my room without knocking, introduced himself, inquired as to how many children I had (is this not somewhere on my chart?), and then awkwardly inserted a very cold speculum as though for the very first time. After he left, I lay there for my designated rest period and wondered where the hell my doctor was in all this and why he had chosen to do Ms. X's IUI instead of mine. And I felt like I had lost some kind of infertility popularity contest.

This makes me officially neurotic, doesn't it?

TGIF

Surviving this week has felt like an accomplishment, what with finals, IUIing, and have I mentioned that never ending project at work?

Somehow when I wasn't obsessing about reproductive matters I managed to scrape together a paper about classroom management in inner city classrooms that I turned into my professor last night only to have her announce that she's pregnant and won't be back in the fall. How lovely for her.

When I got home, I didn't have the energy to do anything except watch the Friends finale, and if you were one of the 51 million who joined me in that endeavor, riddle me this: does NBC not believe in prenatal ultrasounds or what? On that note, I practiced conjugating some stem changing verbs and called it a night.

The good news from this morning, however, is that I managed to squeeze in both the bloodwork and the ultrasound before my Spanish exam so I didn't have to worry about that. Also, as my doc predicted, my E2 levels did go up (yesterday it was 579--not sure what it was today), which earned him some serious stirrup cred.

So, it boils down to this: we're triggering tonight with the IUI scheduled for Sunday. Yes, for those not keeping track, that's Mother's Day. Hmmmm. Julie--any chance you're going to be in 340 bright and early Sunday morning?

It Comes to Pass

Things looked good at the ultrasound this morning: it looks like there are 4ish follicles, but they're in the 16 mm range so trigger will likely be tomorrow. Which means my scheduling nightmare is coming true. I'm trying to be very zen about it: it's completely out of my hands.

My own personal doctor was the one doing the monitoring this morning, which was a treat. I asked him about my stagnating E2 level, and he sort of chuckled--not unkindly--and said not to read too much into that and that he was pretty confident my level would rise today. So, I'm choosing to believe him...at least until the bloodwork comes in this afternoon.

What must these doctors think of us and our Infoholic Witches?

Progress or Lack Thereof

At the ultrasound this morning, my follicles still seemed to be hovering in the 14 mm range and my E2 is at 381, which is barely 50 points up from yesterday. So things are feeling a little stalled. And since I've had a pounding headache--that I'm blaming on the Gonal--for the last two days and my whole body is feeling bloated, I'm frustrated.

I'll go back in again tomorrow morning and hope that there's been some miracle growth overnight because if not, then I'm going to have to go in on Friday and I have that little exam scheduling problem. Feh.

Procrastination

If I haven't mentioned it, this is my last week of school for the semester. All (!) I have left is a 15-page paper due on Thursday and a final exam on Friday. I've stayed home from work specifically to work on these two things, but you know, I haven't been wildly productive. You understand: Adoption Stories was on and my Infoholic Witch had some Web surfing to do....

Mostly I was just killing time until the clinic called. And call they did: E2 is 330. So, this coupled with the ultrasound this morning in which the doc said he thought he saw 3-4 follicles, all in the 14 mm range, means we're getting close. Woo hoo.

I'm hoping upon hope to trigger on Thursday because my Spanish final has been rescheduled for 8:00 am on Friday morning. School is a good 1/2 hour from the clinic so it would be almost impossible for me to go in for monitoring that morning and make it to the exam on time. So much for avoiding stress.

Curses

So this weekend I was at my nephew’s bar mitvah (precisely, my step-nephew-in-law), and despite having to get up ungodly early to make it to the clinic this morning—and I swear, it’s the last time I’ll whine about that—it was actually a lovely weekend.

I’m not Jewish so forgive me if I get the exact details of the service wrong, but I’m going to try to explain what touched me. It was a reconstructist temple, which the rabbi later explained meant that they had hard core services (almost all of the prayers were in Hebrew), but they questioned the passages of the Torah being read with a fairly liberal agenda. J., my nephew, had the misfortune of having his bar mitzvah scheduled for the day they would be reading from Leviticus, Chapter 20, which deals mostly with sexual immorality—not a favorite topic for a 13 year old boy, to be sure. Especially not a 13 year old boy whose mother is a lesbian.

As part of the ceremony, J. read the following "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them" (Leviticus 20:13). The rabbi, who was wearing a yarmulke embroidered with the pride rainbow, made a point of drawing attention to his vehement disagreement with this passage and its exploitation by conservatives as an argument against gay marriage and more, but ultimately he concluded that out of respect for the Torah, J. would have to read it.

I was feeling badly for J., his mother, and her partner that this was happening, and thinking how unfair it was that on this day that should have been nothing but joy, there was this dark current, an awareness that others thought they might have a reason to call him and his family an abomination. I was following along in the English translation, until we got to Leviticus 20:20-21 in which the price for sexual impurity (specifically sleeping with either your uncle’s wife or your brother’s wife) is childlessness. The gloss in the prayer book helpfully provided that childlessness was thought to be a curse worse than death. Yes. Worse than death. I pointed this out to my husband who took the prayer book away from me and held my hand.

Upon returning home, I read Tertia’s lovely, contemplative post about what we choose to tell the people around us about our infertility, and I thought again about that passage from Leviticus. I think it’s that feeling of having been cursed—of having done some that somehow warrants childlessness—that makes it hard for me to share. I mean, I know that I haven’t slept with my uncle’s wife, but I worry that admitting the curse of infertility means that automatically people will think that somehow I deserve this. And even though on my good days I know that I don’t, there are plenty of days that aren’t good when I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason for this curse--a crime I don't remember. And so, like the other "abominations," I remain closeted.

*********

Anyway, after all that, the clinic just called. At the ultrasound this morning the doc saw 6 follicles, 3 on each ovary, with 2 larger than the rest (I’m not sure by how much). My E2 is 149. So, I’m decreasing the dosage to 225 iu and going back on Tuesday morning. With any luck, some veins will decide to come in with me.