Onward and upward

Week...hmmm...two? Three?

I'm done with the birth control pill, yeah! I really didn't like taking that one, for some reason. I think it's the idea that they have to block my brain's natural function to control part of my body (and a very important part at that) that I don't like. I am generally pretty independent, so having to relinquish control so fully might be what didn't sit well with me. But ok, that's done. I'll have to get used to that control thing, at least for the moment. Now I just don't think about it and I stick myself with three different needles to get all the drugs I seem to need to take over my egg production machinery. But it's not too bad. I made it into a kind of experiment, seeing which needle and drug gives me the smallest bruise, and actually trying to not get bruised at all. Hey, as long as I'm entertained! 

We went for a checkup today, and it all looked good, follicles on both sides are coming along. This time he actually could find my left ovary, last time it took him a little poking around. Special K was with me, and that made it all a lot better, although she was half asleep at 7:15AM , poor thing!!


This is the easy part, I actually like being able to feel like I'm doing something instead of just waiting for something to happen, so I'm trying to find books and entertainment for phase 2, post procedures. I'll need to find something to read, possibly light and funny but not so stupid I'll get bored. I have a couple of titles I'm thinking about, and the library is at walking distance.


This is the one thing that I dislike about being gay: the pain and suffering we have to go through to do what so many do easily. And I'm not even saying that it is easy to have a baby, I'm just saying that we don't even get to try the pleasant way, it's catheters and syringes and soon enough needles and doctors while if we had, say, a sperm tap, we could at least try as many times as everyone else. Sigh. But then I stop and think that it's all so relative: I'm here, I play in a gay soccer team, the city has a gayborhood and I cannot be arrested, detained or harassed because of who I love. I have the best life partner I couldn't even ever dream of (meaning, were I granted the wish to draw a life partner for myself, picking all I thought I wanted, I'd have done a much worse job!), and in the end, if this doesn't work we still have options and we could adopt. Steve Job was adopted and he turned out just fine. I heard a piece of an interview that struck me on NPR the other day: a writer, his name escapes me, was diagnosed cancer and told he needed to have a shoulder amputation, neck to armpit. This obviously sucked, and he didn't hide the fact that he spent a while thinking "why me?". But then he realized that besides the cancer, he was healthy, free and alive. We fight many battles, and we win many battles, but we tend to forget the ones we win and only focus on the ones we seem to lose until they become us.  I'm not going to let this one become me. It's just one part that belongs to this moment in time. 


David Rakoff, this is who the writer was, ended up embracing his future as an amputee, and started living like a man with one arm. He learned to buy moccasins, move chairs, button his pants, live life. He even learned to cut avocados and take the pit out. In the end, the diagnosis changed and he got to keep his arm. Whatever our diagnosis will be, we'll always make guacamole.

My pile of meds

So last week I went to get my meds. Oh dear, there was more stuff there than when I go to Whole Foods for groceries!! Three bagfuls of syringes, needles, assorted vials and pills. I know what they all are, and I can guess a rough timeline: the Lupron goes first, then the follistim and menopure (those in an unknown order), the antibiotics, the steroids, the pregnyl, the scary progesterone in oil (I'll have to give myself an intramuscular injection!! Special K will faint only thinking about the concept of a needle piercing some skin, so she will be no help there--but I love her anyway), the Crinone, a distant desire: if I get there it will mean I'm pregnant!

I went and dumped everything in the bathroom by the sink (we have a very old house and it came with a gigantic bathroom). The sum total of them all was this:

Then I thought about this and thought about this and came to the conclusion that I wanted to make it more fun than it currently feels like. I wanted to find colorful pots, bags or something happier, and remembered I have a whole lot of tiny chinese takeout boxes, so I moved the fridge items to the fridge and I redecorated, to get to this:

Better huh?! 

I am now through the first week. Nothing has really changed in the photo as what I'm using is in the fridge: I completed the month birth control treatment and I started the Lupron. I am on Day 1 of period today, so next week the monitoring will start. I'm excited about that.

During the past couple of weeks we have also been doing a fair amount of thinking about fertility clinics, genetic screening, adoption and all that type of stuff, but I will write more about that later. I just wanted to introduce The Meds this time!

It's sunny out, a beautiful Fall weekend day, special K at almost arm's reach. What else could I want?

Intro

I have never had a blog. I have never really felt like broadcasting my feelings, thoughts, ideas. I don't really think anyone should be particularly interested in them. Why do I think any different now? I don't, really, but I need an outlet.

A lot is going on in my/our life right now, but the main activity of recent has been trying to have a baby. Fun! you might think.  Not really. I'm a girl, and my wife, well, is a wife, so her sperm count is kind of low. That means no Fun! for us, mostly vials and procedures. We have tried the frozen stuff at home, then after some insurance issues that forced us to wait, the frozen stuff at the doctors'. Then more at the doctors' with injectable drugs this time. I started hopeful, then still hopeful, then a little less hopeful. After try #9 overall (5 ICI at home and 4 IUI at the doctors', of which 2 injectable cycles), we have decided to try IVF, a whole different beast.

It's a mix of many feelings. Shall I be positive, and risk being really disappointed if this fails as well? Shall I be realistic, and look at the statistics, get depressed now and jeopardize it all due to too much stress? Shall I be strong and tough it out and not complain? What is there to complain after all? So many have done it, they survived, had their baby, it was all done, now they're oh so happy. Well, so many have done IUI successfully, and that didn't work for me 4 times. So what? Am I infertile? Am I not? Did we mess up the timing? Was the sperm no good? (well, at least one of the times it was good, since the guy has had other pregnancies). Did I exercise too much? Did I exercise too little? Am I now all stressed out due to lack of exercise? So many questions, but all can be answered with me having made a mistake or another. 

So why the blog? I need a place to vent, to let it all out, to see it, write it and let it go, without driving everyone around me (i.e., wife and cats) crazy. I don't want to necessarily talk to people I see every day, I don't want pity, compassion, strange looks of people that don't really know what to say (I wouldn't know what to say, so why should they?). I might or might not give this blog's link to anyone I know. Or I might do it. I haven't decided yet. I just need a release valve, and this is going to be mine.

I'll post about the process, I'm planning on posting photos. I'm hoping to make it light and as funny as I can. I need for this to be lightened up somehow. I just don't quite know how. A pin cushion making contest? A whale drawing contest? A "who has the most pregnant sisters in law" award? Not sure. Whatever helps.

Let the journey begin.