Random walks in Crazy Town

Some random updates because rational thought processes have been hard to come by lately.

Noah hasn't been kicked out of camp yet. I did have to go pick him up early on Monday because he was complaining his stomach hurt. I am fully convinced he did not have a stomach ache, but wanted to come home and play computer games. Man was he PISSED when I told him if he was so sick I had to leave work to come get him that he needed to lay on the couch or in his bed. Boy was not happy. Boy made a miraculous recovery about 30 minutes later. Boy still did not get to play on the computer.

Last week Noah earned his orange belt, and I earned my blue belt in karate. Pictures to come. Right now we are both doing high intensity training (HIT) for the summer. I'm doing it because I'm going to miss about six weeks of training after my surgery in October, so this will keep me from losing a rotation and falling behind a belt. Noah is just working on more advanced moves, like spin kicks. Next week he will learn with nunchucks.

Kiel is convinced there is an alligator living in our bedroom. He points him out to me every night. So we have a routine we go through now, saying hi to the alligator, asking him if he misses his family, asking him if he's lost, and then telling him it is time to go home and go to bed.  Kiel indicates we have had various success with the alligator actually leaving. Since I have yet to see this creature I have to rely on Kiel.

We are in the middle of a thunderstorm. As a child I was terrified of storms. I was sure that a tornado was imminent and was going to blow us all away like Dorothy. Flying monkeys and witches scared me too.

Even now, as an adult (ha) they make me twitchy, especially when the wind starts whistling through the windows. I try very hard not to let the boys know I don't like storms. I really do try my damnedest not to teach them my crazy. At least they don't get it genetically so there is hope for them.

I'm about to finish reading The Necromancer, the fourth book in the series of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott. It's a fast, enjoyable read. But when it is done i have nothing lined up to read next. That also makes me a bit twitchy.

Any book recommendations my friends? I prefer to be entertained, not necessarily enlightened. Or scared to the point that my insomnia is the least of my non-sleeping worries.

I went on a bit of a shopping splurge last weekend because I was in desperate need of new summer work clothes.  I have now decided I don't like anything I bought.

And another big question: Is there an age limit in women where they should not wear leggings with cute summer dresses? Or a size limit?

Hmmmm, what else.

Well, I'm not going to BlogHer10 this year. It just wasn't in the budget with all the extra medical expenses we have had for Noah. Saving for college for him isn't exactly in the budget anymore either. We had to decide a while ago that it was more important to use that money now to get help, then not use it and find he never makes it to college. So with those expenses, and not saving into something I always thought was non-negotable, we aren't exactly doing anything this summer other than a day and night at Knoebels amusement park.

I guess that's it for now. Nothing else is coming out of my snot-filled head in a legible formet.

Giant blob of nothing? Or just the most depressing day of the year?

Imagine my surprise to find out today is the most depressing day of the year. So it's really not that I'm just a giant blob of nothingness?

Just a crappy day - first day back after hand surgery, my incision isn't healing well and the stitches dissolved before they should have, The Boy was more than a handful yesterday, and apparently the hormones are making me a little crazy this time.

I just wrote a big blurb about working and feeling under appreciated, blah, blah, blah, but I deleted it since there is always the chance someone from work could read this. Let me just say Congrat's NG, you deserve it, I'm just sorry that the balance I've been waiting to get back for the last four months isn't going to happen after all. So yeah, being the lowest paid and having the cube by the bathroom is kind of bothering me.

I came home crying tonight and Amazing Daddy thinks I've really lost my mind. Poor guy.

I don't think staying home last week and doing nothing but read, sleep, eat and watch TV was all that great for my mental health.

Overshadowing all of this wallowing we found out last Friday that one of our cats has cancer. He had a lump removed from his butt last week and the pathology came back indicating its an adenocarcenoma. Apparently the prognosis is poor. He's ten, and one of the sweetest, easy going cats I've ever known. More like a dog sometimes. He's incredibly needy and would be in our laps all the time if possible. Almost too needy, especially at 4 in the morning. So now he's walking around with one of those goofy collars on his neck so he can't lick his hiney. We could take him to a specialist and give him chemo, but that just doesn't seem right. Plus, to be quite frank, we just don't have the cash for that right now. This lump removal has already cost us close to a grand.

And talk about money. We have to go to a Bat Mitzvah in South Carolina for AD's best friends daughter in March. So two plane tickets, two or three nights at a hotel, a rental car, at least two new outfits (cause not only is there the service and a luncheon, but also a dinner reception that evening (cocktail attire, doncha know)) and despite what AD says I can't wear the same outfit to both events. And don't forget the gift for the bat mitzvah girl. And since they are rich I guess the check has to be even more than usual (apparently the going rate is between $150 and $300 these days). This is one Jewish custom I just don't get. I do not understand treating a bar or bat mitzvah like a freaking wedding.

And to add insult to injury, AD told this friend of his last fall that I'd lost 50 pounds (which was way more than I had really lost) despite my asking him not to. So you can imagine how excited I am to see them considering I gained it all back with this damn fertility shit. Of course it's all my insecurities coming out, but damn it, I've never felt very comfortable with them.

The only thing that will save me now is if I get pregnant, because AD has said in the past he doesn't want me to travel during the first trimester. But you know, that won't happen because I'm fertily cursed.

As expected

Well, no surprise here. The pregnancy test was negative.

I had a few spurts of hope earlier in the week when I did a couple HPT's and had some very faint lines. Of course I did an HCG booster last week, so the rational part of me knew that it was a false positive.

I'm frustrated, but resigned I guess. Dr. C wants us to come in for a consult, so we will see him November 3rd.

I want to move on to donor eggs or embryo's, but as usual, it comes down to the money. As of now we have spent over $80K between The Boy's adoption and all the fertility treatments. I don't regret a penny of the adoption, but it's hard to see another 40 grand flushed down the toilet. That's money that should be for our retirement, or to help buy a house, so TB has an actual yard and we don't have to hear the neighbors through the walls, or for TB's college fund. Or a safe car for me, instead of the rust bucket I'm currently driving.

It all comes down to money. The emotional part of this sucks, but I'd do it over and over again if I had to. If we could afford to. Until we have a baby.

How do you give up a dream of being a mother just because you can't afford it?

It's not looking great...

I admit I haven't gone in to this cycle with much optimism. I've basically had the "if I don't think it will work, I won't be devastated when it doesn't" attitude. I wish it was that simple.

The ultrasound on Saturday showed some awesome follicles, certainly not a predictor of what I'm hearing today.

Egg report today:
13 eggs retrieved
8 were mature
rare, nonmotile sperm in sample
frozen sperm sample used
4 eggs fertilized

Well, you know 4 eggs today is unlikely to mean 4 embryos at transfer.

Last cycle:
14 eggs retrieved
10 mature
8 fertilized
7 became 4 cells day 2
4 were 8 cells or better at transfer
0 took

Apparently one of my ovaries was tucked behind my uterus yesterday, and they couldn't really get to it. I assume they got some from it or I wouldn't have had the 13.

I'm the kind of person that needs answers. And statistics. I need to know what the odds are that my 4 fertilized eggs will be 4 tomorrow, and what the chances are that they will be any on Thursday. I need to know why they couldn't get to the one ovary and how hard they tried. I need to know if using the frozen sample is why only 50% fertilized, when 80% fertilized last time. I need to know if our chance of getting pregnant would be better if we used the donor sperm we have frozen on backup. I need to know why Sparklyhusband has sperm one day and not another. I need to know that this result isn't because yesterday was a holiday (Yom Kippur) and everyone was in a hurry to get out of there, and it wasn't the "second string" embryologist doing the work.

What I don't need to hear is "all you need is one."

It's a number game, and the less there are, the lower the chances.

We have spent over 80K between our fertility treatments and the adoption of The Boy. I don't think I can justify the expense of another cycle. But at the same time I'm not sure I can give up all my dreams of being pregnant and having another child.

I'm back in to the "it's not fair" funk.

Waiting for the phone call

Here I am, waiting with a very large knot in my stomach, for the phone call that will officially end our first IVF cycle. Even though I KNOW it will be negative because I truly can't believe that the HPT could be wrong, part of me apparently still hopes.

I cried so much yesterday I'm not sure I really need to cry today when I get the news. But, I imagine I will. I'm still going to blame it on all the progesterone surging through my body, but I imagine I'd cry anyway. Although, I have to admit, there have been times in my life when I should have cried, that I just couldn't. And of course, many many times when I shouldn't have cried, that I did. And most of those in public.

And have I mentioned I don't cry pretty? My face gets all red and blotchy and puffy, really puffy. And then I can't see out of my contacts because they start to feel all cloudy and goopy. And then I'm exhausted and all I want to do is sleep. Of course sleeping is the best way to escape from it.

When the call comes, and after the "I'm so sorry, it was negative" bit, I'm going to take a Xanax, maybe even two. Then I think I might crawl in to bed with Old Faithful, because I deserve a good buzz, and since I've been so damn horny from the progesterone but couldn't do anything about it, it's about time I get off.

And then maybe a couple margaritas this weekend are in order.

So how long does it take for the hormones to get back to normal? When will the crazies go away? And do I really have to wait a full cycle before I can start again? That means I can't start Lupron for at least another 7 weeks. Which means our next cycle would be September/October I think. Right smack in the middle of our annual vacation to visit my family.

So now I'm going through the it's not fair crap. I guess part of me really did think that I had gone through enough with all the fertility treatments we did a few years ago. Then the years in between believing it might work on it's own. I wonder just how many periods I've had that I've cursed over. Adding the adoption of TB, and the stress of it all as we discovered his special needs and faught for help for him. Then this cycle all the ups and downs with AD's sperm/no sperm issue. I thought maybe we had been through enough, and that the cosmos would agree and finally grant it to us.

I'll have to add everything up, but I think we have spent about 15K for this cycle with all the extra stuff we had to do (multiple SA's, the ICSI, assisted hatching, banking the sperm we did get, having donor sperm on back up, my choice to do acupuncture). And of course all the regular costs involved.

We took out a home equity loan with the thought it would pay for 3 cycles (assuming one would be a frozen), and give us enough to pay off a bit of debt we had. Well, this cycle cost a little more than I thought, and our air conditioner broke the end of may, so we had to spend 9K replacing the heat and cooling system in our house. We had hoped to have enough left that when I got pregnant we could replace the rust bucket that I drive, and get a safe, family car, like a minivan. This isn't going to happen though. Because I looked at our account, and what we have left is only going to cover another cycle, with maybe a little left over. Maybe enough to do a third cycle if we had embryos left that made it to cryo. Which afer this cycle seems unlikely.

I'm rambling now, I realize that. Blah, blah, blah.

Yet, here I am, still waiting for the call, still hoping. Am I fucking insane?