Worrier/Warrior

My new blog is at...

2006-09-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

worrierwarrior.wordpress.com

Ciao bella

2006-09-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

No one knows how long they have on this earth or the kind of life they will have. Will it be long but miserable? Short but sweet? A rollercoaster of bad happenstances interspersed with unspeakable joys? In our most challenging moments, will we rise to the occasion or languish in our fears?

Most of us will live and die without much of the world knowing we had lived. We will do nothing deemed worthy of a TV movie of the week or scandalous enough to be written up in the gossip column. Yet in our lives, we often have people we only get to know from chatting in the hallway or getting coffee in the break room, but feel connected to nevertheless. You know the people I’m talking about. They always have a quirky story to relate or an infectious smile when you pass by.

Norma Taddei was 64 years old when she died. At the time, she worked for Marsh and McLennan, an insurance and consulting company. She and about 1700 employees of the company worked in offices from floors 93 to 100 in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the same floors that took a direct hit by the first plane to hit the Twin towers five years ago. Norma was one of almost 300 employees who died that day.

Norma was a grandmother who always had a smile for her granddaughter and a kitchen filled with food. She never missed remembering any of her goddaughter’s birthdays and treated her coworkers with kindness and a loving spirit. Her smiles were often accompanied by cheerful exclamations of “Ciao bello!” or “Ciao signorina!” at the office. Norma was the nurturing type. She considered herself the office mom--encouraging one just-out-of-college coworker not to be intimidated by senior members of the company, helping her develop a level of comfort working in the corporate world. Norma brought an affectionate aura to those around her. One ex-coworker wrote, "[i]n an environment that, at times, was pretentious, I truly appreciated her warmth and graciousness."

I wish I knew more about Norma to share, but internet searches only provide these few snapshots of her life. It seemed she carried a warm smile wherever she went. I hope, wherever she is, she is still smiling.

****************

This tribute was culled from messages and articles from various 9/11 memorial sites. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are solely mine.Click here to read about the 2996 project and links to additional 9/11 tributes.

Packing

2006-08-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve moved!

If you’d like to see my new place, go here.

The 100 things list every blogger eventually posts

2006-08-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

I started this list during my 2ww as a way to do something to make the time pass quicker. Now, it’s done and since I didn’t want to have another depressing, poor me post, here it is (try not to laugh too hard):

1. My birthday is September 22, which is also Frodo’s birthday.

2. The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I didn’t really like it and the only reason why I went on to read The Two Towers and Return of the King was only because I had this obsessive need to know what happened to the ring.

3. Plus, I have this obsessive need to read the original source of anything that has been turned into a movie before seeing the movie.

4. Since then, I have re-read LOTR 2 times and I love it more and more each time though I skip over all the songs/poems.

5. I have all the special extended editions of the LOTR trilogy on DVD.

6. I wanted to have a birthday party on my 33 and 1/3 birthday with a LOTR theme, have everyone dress up (I would be dressed as Frodo, of course), we would watch the whole extended version throughout the day and I would find creative ways to recreate food that had some relation to the movie/books. But, I was too tired from my wedding to plan and have another big party.

7. I often imagine or think about things I want to do without actually doing them.

8. A lot of this planning and thinking occurs when I can’t fall asleep and I just let my mind wander.

9. Mr. Worrier also thinks about more things than he actually does.

10. It is one of many things we have in common.

11. It is strange how alike Mr. Worrier and I are even though there is a huge age gap between us.

12. The age gap between us is 24 years.

13. We have been together since I was 19.

14. Mr. Worrier was the first and is only man I have had sex with.

15. Mr. Worrier is the only man I have ever kissed.

16. If there was anything I might lie to my kids about it’s 15 and 16, because it’s so…1950s.

17. But, I wouldn’t change a thing.

18. Still, after my miscarriage, I wondered if I lost the baby because I hadn’t had my share of heartbreak and I was due.

19. I am not much of a girly girl.

20. I like dressing up occasionally, but I hate figuring out what to wear every day, plus I have no fashion sense.

21. I also hate doing my hair.

22. Or wearing shoes that look great but hurt my feet.

23. When I wear uncomfortable shoes, I just spend the day thinking about how uncomfortable I am and asking myself if all this discomfort was worth it (it’s usually not).

24. I don’t like anyone touching my bare feet, not even Mr. Worrier.

25. When people touch my bare feet I feel like I am being tickled, but in a painful way.

26. I can touch my own feet just fine.

27. When I get the munchies or want to snack, it’s usually for salty foods like chips or sausages.

28. What? You don’t think sausages are a snack food?

29. I very rarely have a craving for chocolate and usually only have dessert when I’m out with other people just to be polite.

30. Every 6 or 7 years I have a craving for chocolate and then I eat huge bars of chocolate in one sitting.

31. I love tiramisu, though, and can eat it anytime.

32. I eat about 5 times a day—breakfast (7AM), lunch (12PM), second lunch (3PM), dinner (7PM), second dinner (10PM).

33. Guess, it’s the hobbit in me.

34. I’m taller than a hobbit, though, at 5 feet 2 inches (or ~158 cm).

35. When I change the toilet paper roll, I must have it so that the next sheet(s) to dispense hangs over the roll instead of coming from under the roll.

36. If the toilet paper doesn’t hang this way, I get the heebie jeebies because it’s like the toilet paper is unsanitary or something.

37. Luckily, Mr. Warrior feels the same way about how the toilet paper must go (though I don’t think it’s because of the heebie jeebies, he just thinks there is the right way and there is the wrong way).

38. I didn’t use to be able to sleep if my closet door was open, even just a crack because if I left the door even slightly open, then there was the possibility that someone or something was in there. If the door was shut, then that negates any possibility of anything scary hanging out in the closet.

39. I also used to be incredibly scared of snakes. I couldn’t even think about them let alone see a picture or *gasp* view a live one without giving myself the creeps.

40. Now I can think about snakes and maybe even see a picture of them or see snakes on TV, but I still don’t want to get close to a live one.

41. There is no way I will ever watch this movie.

42. Sometimes I kill spiders that get in the house, sometimes I catch them and release them outside.

43. If I have to kill insects and other bugs, I prefer to squish them to death first before flushing them down the toilet. I think it’s because I read drowning was the worst way to die.

44. I started knitting about a year and a half ago.

45. But I first learned how to knit when I was about 10 years old.

46. My grandmother taught me one summer when I spent 6 weeks with her.

47. I learned on a pair of large wooden chopsticks because she thought it would be easier for my hands to handle.

48. After that summer, I didn’t knit again until after my miscarriage.

49. I was looking for a hobby that I would enjoy and would get my mind off of things like the fact that I wasn’t pregnant and was trying to get pregnant.

50. Seems counter-productive, especially since I mostly like to knit baby things like blankets, booties, hats and toys.

51. Most of the baby things I knit, I have given away and that feels good to me. Like I’m generating good karma or something.

52. I am a slow knitter, but the more I do it the more I love it.

53. I think it has something to do with the fact that there are a lot of patterns and rhythms to knitting and I like repetitive patterns and rhythms.

54. I have taken the Meyers-Briggs test twice, ten years apart.

55. When I was 21, I was I N T J/P

56. When I was 31, I was I N T/F J

57. I was in therapy for 3 years in my early twenties.

58. I was deeply depressed and without therapy, I never would have overcome it.

59. I still get depressed easily, but for the most part, I cope.

60. I thought I would need a therapist again after my miscarriage and I did see one briefly, but the internet IF community proved to be better support.

61. I was born in

Taiwan

, but I have lived in California since I was seven.

62. I remember the day I became a

citizen. I was 11 years old and my family and I were sworn in in a courthouse with about 20 other people.

63. I love going to the polls and voting.

64. I miss the voting machines that use the levers and hearing the click as it punches a hole in your ballot.

65. I like to decide who and what I’m voting for before going to the polls and MUST fill out my sample ballot before I go.

66. I usually spend anywhere from a few days to a week researching on the web and reading the booklets before I vote.

67. In this day and age, if you’re a candidate for public office and you don’t have a website, I refuse to vote for you no matter how much you and I agree on the issues.

68. I also refuse to vote for you if don’t make time to submit information here or here.

69. I’d like to feel my vote makes a difference, but according to these guys most of the time it doesn’t.

70. Freakonomics is one of my favorite books and a great reminder that just because something makes sense doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true.

71. I have always liked reading and read a lot when I was younger.

72. Nowadays, I don’t have as much time to read books and mostly I just read blogs.

73. I used to be a huge Stephen King fan.

74. But I never liked Carrie or Christine.

75. I think the last best Stephen King book was Insomnia.

76. My favorite Stephen King book will always be his collection of novellas, Different Seasons which I read when I was 12 or 13.

77. My favorite novella from that book is “Breathing Lessons,” the only story which hasn’t been made into a movie yet and I hope it never becomes a movie.

78. I haven’t read any of the Dark Towers books because I wanted to wait for the whole series to be written so I wouldn’t have to wait to learn the ending.

79. Some of my favorite TV series that are no longer on TV are Homicide: Life on the Street, Firefly, Picket Fences (why aren’t these episodes out on DVD?!?!), Buffy, most all of the Star Trek series (I never watched Enterprise) and Millenium.

80. I am sure there are more TV series to list, but I can’t think of them right now.

81. I get easily attached to inanimate objects and I have a hard time getting rid of things because of it.

82. I think it’s because I like to anthropomorphize things.

83. Sometimes I go so far as naming the things I am attached to.

84. Most of the items I name are named Charlie.

85. It started with this plant we got about 8 years ago that was called a Red Creeping Charlie.

86. Then we got a wooden rocking horse and I thought it would be funny to call him Charlie (as in Charlie Horse).

87. Now, we call most things we really like Charlie, including our car even though the car’s real name is “Junior.”

88. Junior is my car’s real name because that is the “name” (JR) the state “gave” it when we received our license plate.

89. We keep a notebook labeled “Junior’s Log” in our car in which we record our gas mileage and, in the last year, the price of gas.

90. Last year at this time, we paid $2.69 a gallon for gas.

91. Last week, we paid $3.15 a gallon.

92. We get our gas each week as part of our Friday night “date.”

93. Our date consists of going to Costco and doing our weekly shopping and stocking up of necessary and unnecessary items.

94. We think Friday after 6pm is the best time to go to Costco—there are relatively few people and they have already stocked up for the weekend rush.

95. Before we started eating more healthy foods, our Costco date would also include getting the $1.50 hot dog and soda combo for dinner.

96. Now, we often grab the $4.99 whole rotisserie chicken for dinner.

97. Our Saturday night “date” is to watch our netflix movie while we eat dinner.

98. I’ve always been a cheap date.

99. If we got a dog, we would get a mastiff. I told Mr. W that if we did get one, we would have to name it Chewie.

100. I just found out my brother and SIL just got a a pug (which is a miniaturized bullmastiff, which is a cross between a mastiff and bulldog) and they named him Yoda.

The silent T

2006-08-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your comments and words. I haven’t felt this defeated in a long time and to hear your care and concern is invaluable and gives me strength. I imagine I will have a lot of rambling in my posts as I figure my way out, so I hope you bear with me.

Mr. Warrior has been trying to get me out of the house and he finally convinced me to go out to dinner. I haven’t felt like eating much, but the fresh air and different scenery was good and I was able to finish half my dinner. He is such a wonderful man, I don’t know what I would do without him.

I’m trying to make sense of why I feel so lost. Knowing now that my highest chance of success for a live baby is donor eggs, the road ahead is clear, right? I want more than anything to have a successful pregnancy and a screaming baby that will keep me up at night. I know I will love my babies no matter if they have any genetic link to me or Mr. Warrior, so why the lost feeling?

Maybe it’s not that I feel lost, but I feel loss? I suppose that make sense. Though I had worked through some of the loss before, when I first tested with high FSH, I see now that I was still harboring hope of having a baby using my eggs. And Dr. No Face’s optimism fed that hope, gave me more confidence in it. I was still not completely trusting of his optimism, but I wanted to. I was scared because I was basically the one diagnosed myself DOR (diminished ovarian reserve). I had to fight for getting an FSH test done because they felt I was too young to worry about these things. But, I’m no doctor. This is not my training. Yes, I work in science and know how to read a research paper, know the limitations of the studies, but I don’t have the experience these doctors are trained in. So, why should I trust my book learning more than the doctors’ first hand experience? Why not trust the Dr. No Face’s opinion?

Last cycle, when I went in for my baseline u/s I was cautious. I wasn’t convinced they would see any antral follicles. But, they did. They saw a “good number.” I think because I so wanted to trust the doctors and because the news seemed to be good, I put aside my skepticism and doubts and I trusted Dr. No Face’s assessment of what a “good number” was. I had been so tired and scared after reading study after study about DOR and POF (premature ovarian failure) and the low chances of pregnancy and high chances of miscarriage. I needed to put my trust and faith in someone else. I wanted and needed to feel less alone in this struggle to understand why my body is the way it is. So, when the good news started pouring in, I trusted and shushed my doubts. I told my doubts they have every right to express themselves, but NOT too loudly. Afterall, Dr. No Face’s opinion was that I had a good chance of getting pregnant. That it was just bad luck this time that I didn’t.

When I asked the doctor this cycle if there was any note of how many antral follicles they saw last cycle, there was no record. Dr. SIL who was there both times remembered 3 or 4. How could that be a “good” number? Then I asked about the 3 mature follicles and that was when I heard about the 28 mm follicle. At that u/s they saw a 17mm and 20mm in one ovary and one they didn’t tell me the measurement of, but which Mr. Warrior saw it was larger than the 20mm. This must have been the 28 mm. If I had known then how large that follicle was, I would have known it was not a good sign. Why did Dr. No Face make no mention of how big it was? Why didn’t I ask? Because I wanted to believe in the good news. I wanted to believe that the high FSH was a horrible mistake and lab mix up. And in light of Dr. No Face’s optimism, it was easy to do that. And I felt relieved not to have to carry the weight of my infertility for awhile. I wanted to trust, to believe and to be unburdened just for a little bit.

I don’t blame Dr. No Face for his optimism. I truly believe he wanted the best possible scenario for me. But as we all know in Infertility Land, hoping is no guarantee for a good outcome. So maybe this feeling of loss is not just of the little hope I still had to carry a pregnancy to term using my eggs. Maybe I am also feeling the loss of trusting the professionals for the care of my infertility. You always hear about how you need to be proactive in your own care, to always question, to stand up for yourself and what you believe, to push for tests and whatnot even when the doctors are doubtful. I did that before in my initial diagnosis and I suppose I will be able to do that again. So, I know that place and how to be in that place.

But, I also know that being a warrior can be lonely and scary.

This time around

2006-08-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

…the news was hard to hear, but I kept it together enough to ask questions and get more information about what we have learned by doing the first IUI cycle and trying to do another. It turns out one of my “mature” follicles last cycle measured 28mm. Way too over-developed to be normal. What we thought was a good response of 3 mature follicles was not.

…at my baseline u/s I had a cyst that measured 25mm and no antral follicles in either ovary. The doctor we met this time training Dr. SIL (Dr. No Face is no longer with the clinic) was one we met with last summer when we went in for our fertility evaluation. She was the one who gave us our IVF and possibly donor egg talk. Her take is that this month’s finding that I have no antral follicles confirms that my high FSH reading of 31 was likely real. And, given that I had a 28 mm follicle last month by day 14, it says to her that my body had already tried to recruit follicles before I started the Clomid which is earlier than typical and consistent with diminished ovarian reserve. She also agreed that given that I had a miscarriage before, this suggests there may be issues with egg quality.

...I could only hold it together until we walked out of the office. We took the stair well and before I got to the first landing, I knew I would lose it. Very surreal hearing your sobs echo in an empty stairwell.

…Mr. Warrior took it harder than I did. He was angry he placed trust in the hope Dr. No Face had given us just days before. He is feeling distrustful of how much to trust doctors next time.

…I am feeling sad but having no antral follicles at my baseline u/s confirms my belief that my infertility problems started long before I ever got pregnant and miscarried. That I may have had a chance to have healthy babies in my early 20’s, but my periods really changed when I was 27, the year I started grad school. I had chalked it up to stress, but now I think that is when my eggs started to decline. Strangely, it makes me feel more grateful for my pregnancy and miscarriage. A proof that the infertility I am experiencing is not something I could have avoided. I couldn’t have eaten better or taken care of myself better or taken more care to not let the stress of grad school get to me in order to avoid this.

…I still feel lost even though we have a plan (IVF with donor eggs). I guess it’s a little like knowing my grandfather was going to die when he first got sick. There is grief and sadness in this realization, but he wasn’t dead yet and so there was time to process some of the feelings. When he did die, it was painful and heartbreaking, but having had some time to prepare for it, I didn’t need to try to both grieve and make sense of it all. I could just grieve.

…I tried reaching out more to the people around me. But, it’s hard when you know they don’t understand the depth of your pain and don’t know how to help you. I end up trying to console them instead or reassuring them that I recognize they are trying to be helpful. Maybe that’s why I feel lost. I feel like I am being lost when I come into contact with other people. Being overshadowed by their discomfort and need to help.

…I know I will get through this. Afterall, I have before. I’m just not sure how I’m going to get through it.

Bad news again

2006-08-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

We had decided to go on with more IUIs. I went in for my baseline u/s today.

No antral follicles. We’re back to the diagnosis of DOR. We got the IVF and donor eggs talk.

This is the second time we’ve gotten this news and it’s not any easier to take. I feel so tired. I feel drained. I don’t know what I'm supposed to do anymore.

Please join the 2996 project (Updated)

2006-08-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Next month will be the 5th anniversary of 9/11. 5 years ago on that day, I was driving to work at about 8:30 or 9am (west coast time) and turned on my radio. Immediately I was confused. Why was the station replaying an old news broadcast of the bombing of the World Trade Center from 8 years ago? And why were they playing an erroneous report about the World Trade Center collapsing? I remember having a hard time comprehending what the phrases, “…both towers completely gone…” and “…reports of just rubble where the Towers once stood…” meant.

Before I could figure it out, I had found a parking space and begun making the trek through campus to my lab. I was still confused, trying to make sense of the snippet of news I just heard and at the same time realizing how eerily quiet campus was. The quarter had not started yet, but the undergrads had begun to move in and normally at this time of day there are a lot more people out and about.

As I made my way up the stairs and down the hallway, I realized every lab and office had their radios on. Everyone was sitting at their desk or next to the radios, listening intently. Everyone seemed to have a stunned expression on their face.

When I got to my lab, the same thing. Radio on, but everyone else just silent. It was only then that it sunk in, that I realized something else, something different than the 1993 bombing had happened to the World Trade Center. But “completely gone?” The meaning of that phrase was still incomprehensible.

I went into the common office where we kept our computers. Someone was there and had the page of the local newspaper up on the screen. That was when I saw my first image of 9/11. It was a picture of one of the towers on fire after one of the planes hit. So, much like a picture from the latest summer blockbluster I thought. So, unreal. What is happening?

The rest of the day was hazy. We learned only a little bit more as the day went on. I still couldn’t fathom how two tall buildings could be completely gone. And the people, oh, the numbers of people who were killed. I think the first reports were that the possibility was 4-5,000. Then the reports of the Pentagon. Then of a plane crash in Pennsylvania. It seemed like the deaths would never end.

When I finally got home, I saw the videos of the plane actually hitting one of the towers. That was the only time I ever saw that video. I had to look away anytime it was replayed. To this day, I still cry when I think about what happened on that day or of the hijacked planes.

About a month later, I had to get on a plane to Chicago. I remember seeing the National Guard with their rifles in their hands patrolling the airport and realizing the rules were changed now. We would never go back to the way it was. I would tell my grandchildren about how it used to be that we could hug and kiss people at the gate right as they got off the plane. And how we were able, once, to spend time with our loved ones up until the very moment they had to board the plane.

The effects of 9/11 are wider than that, of course, and I can only hope that whatever our world becomes because of the events of that day, it is for the better. Unfortunately, it is too soon to tell.

Please consider getting involved in the 2996 project. It is a 9/11 memorial project, blogger-style. If you sign up, you are assigned a name of someone who perished on 9/11, you gather as much information about them as you can and then post a memorial to them on 9/11 of this year, the five year anniversary.

The traffic to my blog is small compared to many of yours who are readers here, so even if you don’t wish to participate, please consider putting the word out on your blog. It would be a shame if we are short the 2996 bloggers needed to pay tribute to each person on the list.

Update: If you are having a hard time finding information for the person you are writing a tribute for, try clicking on the "Research" link under Categories on the 2996 project page for resources. Unfortunately, some people will have very limited information, but relatives, friends and coworkers have submitted their thoughts and feelings to some of the sites listed on the Research page.

Of plans and pigs, part 2

2006-08-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

So, we were good with our decision to hold things off for a couple of months. Then, yesterday morning Dr. No Face calls to see if the IUI had worked or not. He had mentioned he would be calling Monday, but I guess I really didn’t believe it. I told him about the negative pregnancy test and the fact that I had started spotting that morning and he sounded genuinely disappointed and proceeded to tell me to come back in once my period starts and we’ll try again. I told him Mr. Warrior and I had talked about it and decided to do the sperm analysis before going on with anymore treatments. But, Dr. No Face felt that sperm was probably not why we didn’t get pregnant this time and he felt it was just bad luck.

Aside: I don’t know why doctors like saying things are “bad luck.” It actually bothers me quite a bit because it’s almost like being superstitious or something. I know medicine doesn’t understand everything and can’t control everything and I can be as superstitious as the next person, but I really don’t want my Dr operating on superstition. I’m not saying Dr. No Face is doing that, because I think he was just trying to convince me to try the Clomid/IUI again because he really believes it can work for us. But, still, I think I would have rather had him tell me the odds were low and we were just on the wrong side this time and next time we may be on the right side, instead calling it bad luck.

Dr. No Face’s feeling is that since Mr. Warrior has gotten two women pregnant (his first wife and me) and the sperm prepared for my IUI had a good count and motility, the only thing that may be wrong with Mr. Warrior’s sperm is morphology. But people get pregnant with bad morphology. He thought we might as well keep trying at least a few more times because the chances of the IUI working for us is pretty good. I discussed with him the possibility of going to IVF since my eggs responded well to the Clomid. He basically said that we should definitely go ahead with that if that is what we feel comfortable with since the differences between IUIs and IVFs is that IVF has the better success rate but it also costs more. And, since it would take time to get through the initial consultation before actually starting an IVF cycle, why not think about doing another IUI cycle while we started on the IVF process?

Everything Dr. No Face said made sense. I became very weepy in the process of talking to him. It has been a long time since doctors have been optimistic about our fertility situation. And, Dr. No Face really has no obligation to us anymore since he no longer works for the clinic and was just following up on the patients he had worked with through the end of their cycle.

So, now we are rethinking our plan and thinking about doing at least one or two more IUI cycles. We’re not sure if we’ll pursue IVF now or wait until I graduate and we get settled in our new place (we’ll most likely move after I graduate).

And we’re thinking about how touched we were that Dr. No Face seemed to genuinely care about us. At one point, Dr. No Face said to me, “You know, I really want to see you pregnant.”

Me, too Dr. No Face. And after that, I really want to see me holding a live baby.

Of plans and pigs, part 1

2006-08-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

After Saturday’s negative, Mr. Warrior and I talked about what we would do next. We decided that he would look into doing a sperm analysis. Chances are there are no major issues with his sperm in terms of his number and motility or else they wouldn’t have let us go ahead with the IUI, but we might as well do all the testing since we may decide to do IVF next and we’ll need SA results before trying that. In the meantime, I can focus on my finishing up my experiments. When I was trying to get pregnant before and during this Clomid cycle last month, I know I made decisions to do certain experiments and not others because of the exposure to chemicals, etc. I actually don’t work with anything lethal or even extremely toxic, but for my piece of mind I just put off certain experiments. I want to know that I did everything possible to give my body the best chance of success. Unfortunately, one effect of doing work that way is that it is likely delaying my graduation. So, if we take a break for a couple of months, then at least I can really put in a huge effort to finish my experiments. It felt good to have a plan (doesn’t it always?) even though it meant waiting. But, at least it wasn’t the open kind of waiting the 2ww tend to be and I would know whatever signals my body was giving me, they are not of the pregnancy kind.

Later that day, we went to the zoo. It was great to be outside and I love, love the zoo. We always have an annual pass and we hadn’t been using it very often the last couple of years. Even all the families with their babies and toddlers of all sizes and the pregnant women were bearable. There were quite a few baby animals around the zoo and it seems each time I go to the zoo, I see something different. The best time we had on this trip was watching the warty pigs. It was just after dusk so the light was starting to go pretty fast. As we were walking past the warty pig exhibit, a piglet darted across the enclosure. The rest of the piglets (there were 4 total) were busy eating their dinner. It caught our attention because it was scooting so fast and yet so soundlessly. So, we stopped to watch. Piglet 1 started wrestling with piglet 2. They were bumping heads and just looked like they were goofing off and having a good ole time. Meanwhile, Mama pig was trying to eat her dinner and ignored them. Piglet 2 (or maybe it was 1, who could tell anymore?) decided the best thing to do was to hide under mom. But, Mama just kept moving away from them in an annoyed kind of way. All this playing around underneath mom seemed to remind the piglets of nursing and so they attempted to nurse. Now, Mama was really annoyed! She would have none of it and tried to shake them off. Now, these piglets were about half the size of mom so it seemed like Mama was ready for them to be weaned and may have even already started. All this commotion, though, caught the attention of piglet 3 and soon there were 3 piglets trying to nurse and one frustrated Mama pig. The last (and perhaps not the brightest?) piglet soon realized what the other 3 were up to and soon all the piglets were trying to nurse with Mama becoming increasingly aggravated.

Now, all these shenanigans were happening in relative silence up to this point and I guess just like all mothers who become exasperated with their kids, Mama started yelling (squealing) at her kids. Still, they would not give up and the ganging up on mom seemed to start to wear her down. But, Mama had one more trick up her sleeve. She started heading toward the front of the enclosure, close to where we were standing. There is a curved drop right before the wall, so they weren’t visible once they got to the wall. Every once in awhile, we would hear a squeal and one of the piglets would fly back up to the main enclosure. Soon, everything got a quiet, again. I started looking around and noticed all four piglets to the right side of the wall. On the bottom of the enclosure there was a long pool of water, kind of like the water that collects near the curb on the street near the gutter. They were all happily drinking from this water. Mama, it seems, finally got through to them that if they were thirsty, there were other, more acceptable sources of refreshment for them to have.

As we were leaving, Mr. Warrior noticed a large figure in the back of the enclosure. As we peered closer, we realized this large pig was sitting there all along. Papa pig, apparently, didn’t feel any need to interfere or help and kept quiet during the weaning lesson.

As we left the warty pigs, we couldn’t help but wonder how many times the piglets and Mama pig have gone through the shenanigans we saw and how many more Mama would have to endure before the piglets get the idea that Mama’s shop is closed for business.

The zoo was sure a fun excursion and distraction. I’ll have to remember that the next time I need a pick me up.

IUI#1 complete

2006-08-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

I got one line.

I’m sad, but not surprised.

Don’t know what I’ll do today, but at least I have the whole day to try to make it end better than it started, right?

11dpiui

2006-08-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

Well, the boob soreness has waned. I’m still planning to test tomorrow but I’m not holding out much hope that it will be positive. Mr. Warrior is trying to get me to look on the bright side—that we know, now, I have eggs which will respond to stimulation. And that gives us the chance of doing IVF with my eggs. What he says is true. Whether my ovaries would respond or not was our most pressing question during this cycle, not if I would get pregnant or not. Even though I would have done almost anything to be in this position just a few months ago, right now, it’s hard to see what I do have when I’m focused on what I don’t have.

So, test tomorrow, then a little take-care-of-me-time. By then, hopefully, I will have gathered the strength to re-enter the battle.

9dpiui

2006-08-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I had a bad day. I woke up feeling blah and just knew, knew, I was not pregnant and would not be getting pregnant this cycle. Fought the sadness all day and was very unproductive at work. It reminded me of those bad, bad days after my miscarriage when I just could not get myself to do anything. Before this cycle I decided I wasn’t going to test unless my period was late, but, after Monday I changed my mind. I decided I am going to test on Saturday when I am 12dpiui (and I believe 12dpo). This way whatever results I get, I’ll have the weekend to deal with it. I felt much better after making that decision.

At the same time I am having my thoughts of this-cycle-is-a-failure, my maybe-I-am-pregnant thoughts also seem to grow exponentially by the day, sometimes by the hour (aren’t I clever and talented to be able to have two completely opposing thoughts at the same time?). The degree to which I think I may be pregnant is also dependent on how sore my boobs are at the moment. For the last few days, the soreness was nothing more than what I usually feel right before my period. But, last night for about 4 hours I could not sleep because there was no position I could find that did not make my boobs want to scream out in pain. Then, without warning, my boobs went back to the usual low level soreness and I slept through to morning and that’s how they’ve felt all day.

This is the part in the 2WW where I really wish I could push the fast forward button.

How long will the good stuff last?

2006-07-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

This question is something I’ve been asking myself over the last few weeks, but don’t quite have an answer for. Before May and my appointment with Dr. TAD, I was struggling in my work and in my life as an infertile. I was still trying to come to terms with the idea that I would unlikely have biological children and trying to shift my focus of trying to get pregnant with my eggs to trying to build a family by whatever means would provide a good chance of success. I was struggling with the fact my work was not going well and had been stagnant for over two years and questioning the choice I had made to get a PhD after having worked a “real” job for 6 years. Infertile and hating my career choice was not where I had imagined myself in year 2006. The faith I had that most things in life would work themselves out was almost nonexistent. I wasn’t sure if I could ever be truly happy again and even if I could, how I would get myself there.

Then, came the surprising new test results and the possibility that I may have a better chance at conceiving than we thought. Still, I was cautious. I had lost my trust in doctors and my own research into high FSH and DOR told me to be cautious of fluctuating numbers. Then, came breakthroughs in my work and I could feel my general self-confidence starting to grow again. There were setbacks and scares in starting the cycle and decisions not to try to do too much at one time (do Clomid/IUI and have a committee meeting). Decisions made based in part because I was afraid it was all going to turn out to be bad news and I didn’t think I could handle the crush of emotions that would follow. But, slowly, slowly, things seemed to be falling together. All my tests kept coming back negative and in preparing for my pre-defense meeting it dawned on me that some of the work I had put into my research these last few years were not for nothing, that I may have made some contribution to basic scientific knowledge after all.

Part of me knows that just because things are going well (and sometimes better than I expect) doesn’t mean it will continue to go that way. Life has ups and downs, period. I’ve had the downs, now I’m just having some ups. But, I know another part of me, a part of me I’m afraid to feed but not too afraid to invite out to play, has other ideas. That other part of me secretly hopes that the wave of things-going-well will last and imagines life six months from now as I am defending my thesis, on the edge of impending motherhood. And that scares me a bit. It scares me that I can have these thoughts again so easily. At the same time, I don’t want them to go away because they are such nice thoughts. Like the feeling you get when you are gently waking from a beautiful dream. I’m even able to talk for short lengths of time with my co-worker who is in the middle of her second trimester. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t even look at her in passing.

And it doesn’t help that Mr. Worrier is excited, too. I feel like we’re both being too optimistic and forgetting the months and months of disappointment we have gone through. I have this sense that things are too good right now and it just can’t last. I must have used up all my good karma points with the biopsy and culture. No? Well, then, I can’t be lucky with the Clomid and not have any side effects. A pimple? That’s it? Surely, that’s the end of the good news. No response from Clomid for me, right? Oh, three mature follicles. Well, this has got to be the end of the road for the good ship lollipop, right? Things can’t keep going well for me. Bad news must be imminent for the earth to remain balanced and not spin off it’s axis, right?

Worrier gone bad

2006-07-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

Things Mr. Worrier has been doing differently lately:

Asking me every morning before work and every night after work how I’m feeling. If I tell him I feel normal, he gets all quiet. If I tell him I was cramping or feeling bloated (yesterday), he gets all quiet but with an excited look in his eye.
Asking me where my fertility/infertility books are so he can read up on what may be happening at this point. He was reading this morning about implantation and suddenly called to me, “Do you realize that they do? They burrow into you!” (Pause) “We’re about 5 days after ovulation, right?”
Offering me pineapple in all sorts of different forms after I mentioned to him some people believe eating pineapple will help in implantation.
Poking my boobs. His logic is that if I shrink away in pain, then I could be pregnant. If I just give him a dirty look (my usual response so far), then I’m not. I guess it’s cheaper than a pee stick. Though I think this test runs an unusually high risk of false positive since my boobs normally get sore before my period anyway. Somehow explaining this to him has not stopped him from poking.

Maybe I should have more faith

2006-07-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Had my appointment to see Dr. No Face and Dr. SIL this morning. They started with the u/s and saw 2 mature follicles on the right and 1 on the left. The two on the right were about 17mm and 20mm, they didn’t say how large the left one was, but Mr. Warrior said it looked as big as the 20mm if not bigger. So, let’s just say it was at least 17mm. So, there’s our answers. I responded well to the FSH, no ovulation yet and the IUI will not be too late. Dr. SIL performed the IUI and had some trouble getting the catheter in. Almost had to have Dr. No Face do it, but she was able to in the end. I can tell she is gaining more confidence in what she is doing, because she was much more aggressive with the wanding this time.

I can’t believe I made it this far. I can’t believe there were three mature follicles. I was so doubtful there would even be one. So, now I just keep myself distracted for the next 16 days (the Drs said 14 of course, but I typically have a 16 day LP). Should be easy, right?

The best laid plans

2006-07-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

My OPK turned positive early this morning. Called twice to have Dr. No Face paged. No response. Thought maybe he was busy with patients since that is usually the case when he doesn’t get back to me within half an hour. We were getting ready to go out for brunch with my in laws, then to an IMAX film to get out of the afternoon heat, so I figured he would call me back after lunch. By 2:30pm, still no call, so I called in to have him paged again. It turns out there was no record of my first two pages! I couldn’t believe it. All that time, he was never paged! Dr. No Face got back to me almost immediately the third time I called in (and when he was ACTUALLY paged) and said we would do the IUI tomorrow morning and probably do an ultrasound beforehand. I know the cycles before when I check for my LH surge, my temperature always gets higher the next day which tells me I usually ovulate the day of my LH surge. Does this mean the IUI will come too late? Should we even go ahead with the IUI? I almost feel like we’d be wasting the frozen samples we have.

I don’t know what to feel, but I know I don’t feel happy. I had told Dr. No Face repeatedly that I ovulate early. I really wanted to get some idea of whether my follicles were responding to the Clomid and get some idea if my eggs were maturing enough before ovulation. I guess we could still know the answers to some of these questions, but I’m feeling doubtful about everything right now.

Quick update

2006-07-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

Last day of taking Clomid today and my first scan (unless my OPK turns positive) is Monday. I still don’t have any side effects and am still very grateful for that.

My committee meeting went great! This was my pre-defense meeting, which in some ways is the most important one in your grad school career because this is the meeting they decide if you are worthy of a PhD and you set a timeline for graduation. The actual defense is really just for show (and to present your completed work) because really, your committee has already decided to pass you at the pre-defense meeting. I still have a couple of experiments to tackle, but whenever I am done with those and done writing my thesis, I will be able to graduate (probably by December). I was on cloud nine, of course, after the meeting. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time. After living with uncertainty for so long in regards to IF and in my research, it is a wonderful feeling to have some certainty in my life.

The in-laws are coming in Thursday and will be staying through Monday or Tuesday, so we’ll be busy entertaining them. I’m going to try to spend some time this weekend to post something more extensive.

We interrupt our regular programming

2006-07-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

Growing up bicultural, I often felt like I didn’t belong. Not completely American because I didn’t have the blond hair and blue eyes. Not completely Chinese because I was so Americanized. There were very few minorities in the town I grew up in and this added to the isolation. There were times (years?) I would feel compelled to reject most things Chinese, in hopes that would make me belong.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve started to embrace my bicultural identity instead of choosing one or the other. These last ten years or so I have come across more and more personal experiences, especially in mainstream media, about the bicultural experience, some from Asian-Americans, some from immigrants from other parts of the world, some from international adoptees. I slowly started to learn that my experience was actually part of a larger collective. This morning I came across this article about a woman’s journey to find her roots in China. The author’s story, in the details, is nothing like my own. But she captures many of the nuances to Chinese culture, especially when it comes to family, and the balancing act in trying to deal with Chinese manners and traditions while trying to be true to your own.

If you’d like to see some of the things described in the article, see also the pictures associated with the story. She also has a blog where she writes more about her Shanghai experience.

Clomid Watch, Day 1

2006-07-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

Hours since taking first dose of Clomid: 14

Mood: Good; I got confirmation from my professor that my upcoming committee meeting (in 3 days!) will likely be my pre-defense. Which means that once my committee members all sign my evaluation form, countdown to graduation will begin.

Energy: Average; It’s miserable hot so I don’t want to move around much and, frankly, don’t want to move at all away from the fan.

Emotional State: Happy; I can’t believe the end of grad school is near and putting together my presentation for this meeting has made me realize that the last six years has not all been for nothing. It also made me realize that I was probably more depressed than I knew these last two years dealing with infertility and the lack of progress in my research. I’m grateful to be feeling the way I am now.

Hormones: Nothing topsy turvy or too weird. A zit appeared on my chin a few hours ago and I don’t usually get them this early in my cycle. I don’t usually get them at all these last few years. So, I can’t be sure if it’s due to Clomid or not, but if it is and that’s the extent of the side effects, I’m just going to count myself lucky, for once, and leave it at that.

For all the angst I had about whether or not to do Clomid this cycle along with trying to deal with the stress of preparing and giving a talk on my work, so far, it is working out pretty well. In fact, one is acting as a distraction for the other and I’m feeling less stressed than usual before a committee meeting and less obsessive than usual when dealing with the steps involved in this cycle. I hope day 2 will be more of the same.

Cleared for Clomid

2006-07-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was CD1 and I called for a baseline u/s for Thursday. Turns out they were having a slow day and asked if I could come in that morning. I had the time so I went in. Dr. No Face was indeed training the doctor who will be taking over all the IUI cases from him. She reminds me of my SIL, so I will call her Dr. SIL. I’m so glad we made the decision to go ahead with this cycle. Dr. SIL seems competent but as suspected, needed practice. I’m glad Dr. No Face will be around to guide her.

They saw what they thought was a cyst and measure it. It was 11.5 (mm?) and Dr. No Face mentioned that if it was under 15 it was fine. Later when they were giving me instructions (Clomid day 5 to 9, next u/s scheduled for the 24^th, monitor with OPK’s in case I ovulate early, as I tend to do), they decided that since the “cyst” was not there last month, it probably was not a cyst. I didn’t really understand that reasoning and was more worried about the timing of the Clomid (day 9 will be the day of my committee meeting), that I didn’t ask any more. I was counting on starting Clomid on day 3 so I can be off the drugs by next Tuesday in case I get awful side effects, but I guess that isn't going to happen. I asked it they saw a typical number of antral follicles and they thought I had a good number, so that is possibly good news.

Saturday will be the first Clomid day. Ok, say it with me, now…no bad side effects, no bad side effects…

All Clear

2006-07-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

My culture came back negative, so no infection.

Wow.

I’m starting to think that maybe every visit to the doctor’s office or call about a test result may NOT always entail bad news.

We are 85% sure we will go ahead with the Clomid/IUI this cycle instead of waiting for my next cycle. Last weekend we were 85% sure we would wait because I decided I didn’t want the extra stress of preparing for my committee meeting and worrying about coping with a cycle at the same time. I’ve never been on Clomid and I hear some women get horrendous side effects from it. But when I went in for the culture Monday, Dr. No Face was training the new RE fellow who would replace him in a month. Which means I would be one of the first patients the new doctor would practice on. Now, I’m sure she is competent, but I would rather have the experience of a doctor who has been doing IUI cycles for the past three years than be the experience for a new doctor still learning the trade. (Most of the fertility doctors I usually see at my clinic are fellows overseen by RE’s. Dr. No Face has been the only fellow who does IUI’s and his fellowship is ending. If I want to do IVF, I would go to their affiliated IVF clinic where the IF RE mainly spends his time. Dr. TAD is the other RE and head of the department on campus.) Plus, the main issue I am interested in for this cycle is whether or not my ovaries will respond. I think I would benefit more from someone who has seen a lot of ovarian responses (or non responses) if my ovaries do something weird and unusual, which seems to be my track record so far.

My period should start Monday and then maybe Clomid on Wednesday. My committee meeting is the week after that, so I’m working on my annual write-up and preparing my slides for my presentation. I want to get the bulk of it done in the next few days so if it’s a no go on the cycle or the Clomid treats me harshly, then I can have time to deal with whatever is in store for me without stressing too much on what I still have to do.

I don’t know how much I’ll be posting the next couple of weeks. I will post updates, but they will likely be short and sweet.

Test results back

2006-06-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

The biopsy and pap smear came back negative for pre-cancerous cells, thank goodness. But, because things are never what they seem in the nether regions of Worrierland, it turns out my pap suggested I may have some inflammation. I’m going to go in bright and early Monday morning to get a culture done and then it’s antibiotics if I’ve got an infection.

I am relieved to hear the test results and the possible infection has me re-thinking the symptoms I’ve associated with pending POF. I want to give it some more thought before blogging about it.

And now, more waiting

2006-06-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today was the sonohistogram and biopsy. And just for fun, a pap smear was thrown in because, you know, when you have an audience of four (RE, RE fellow aka Dr. No Face, med student, Nurse Smiley) for cooter show you might as well make it extra interesting. The RE was the Dr. we met with last August for our infertility consult. At that appointment, I found him to be dismissive, patronizing and arrogant so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again. Today, he seemed warmer and gentler. Don’t know which is the real him, so he will be Dr. Schizo for now.

The sonohistogram showed no abnormalities in the uterus as expected since my HSG in October showed the uterus looked ok but Dr. Schizo thought he saw some debris in there. Eh, sorry, but you know Doc, I hate to litter, so when there’s no trash can around… He said this was probably due to the saline being injected in there and stirring things up. He said that it would get cleared out by my next period. The ultrasound still showed the weird spot on my cervix. Dr. Schizo thought it could be glandular in nature, like some extra glandular (innocuous) mass I was born with. But they took a biopsy of it anyway just to be sure it wasn’t precancerous. Why they never saw the cervical weirdness the multiple times they’ve wanded me before, I don’t know. And Dr. Schizo also said he’d never seen anything like it before. Umm, how can you be sure it’s innocuous then?! But, again, I have nothing tangible to consult Dr. Google with and therefore nothing to seed my fears with.

So I will just wait to hear about the biopsy results and go on like I’m not the walking I-have-never-heard/seen-something-like-that-before* freak that I am.

If every thing comes back ok, then the plan will probably be to try the Clomid/IUI once my next period starts. The only problem is that I am expecting my next period to be about a week before my annual meeting with my committee members. The timing will be such that we could be doing or leading up to the IUI around the time of my committee meeting if I am again lucky enough not to have any day 3 cysts. I’m not sure I want all that pressure, especially since I really want this to be my pre-defense meeting (i.e. my committee members tell me I should wrap up my graduate work in the next few months and graduate). My head tells me the smart thing to do is to postpone the cycle until after my committee meeting. My heart says you’ve waited long enough and you still have no answers as to if your eggs are going to respond at all so just go for the gold. I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s going to be a difficult decision.

*This is a comment I have heard a lot of the last two years. When my miscarriage consisted of being bone dry for the whole day, then gushing blood starting at 9pm and ending at 10pm for two days (really, I could have synchronized the watches of everyone on the West Coast by when the blood gushing started and when it stopped). When my hcg levels took almost two months to drop to below 100, then plateaued at around 70 for two weeks. And when I tell doctors about my early ovulation.

Boys in the freezer

2006-06-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

Mr. Warrior was successful again this morning producing a sample and the Andrologist didn’t hunt him down with any bad news as he was leaving, so if we ever get to a point where we have eggs (either mine or a donor’s) to try to fertilize, we have some sperm to do it with (assuming all the boys are ok).

I’m still processing Friday’s Dr.’s visit. Still feeling weepy, scared about the possibilities and frustrated at my body.

Today, a co-worker commented that I didn’t seem to be all there and asked if I was ok. It felt nice that she reached out to me and I was able to talk about the latest development without bursting into tears.

A good friend of mine came to visit over the weekend and that was a nice distraction. She’s a knitter, too and it was fun showing her the blanket I’m finishing for my cousin’s baby due in August.

Now, I just have to find a few more distractions to get me through to next Tuesday. I don’t know how long it will take for biopsy results to come back, but maybe the sonohistogram can shed some light on things.

2996

2006-06-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Sarah for getting the word out:

Which step am I on now? (Updated)

2006-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

It should be no surprise to me anymore that we will hear news that comes out of nowhere when I go see the people who wear the white coats. I have learned to expect bad news but I have yet to learn to anticipate news that leaves even the doctors at a loss. And I should have learned by now. It has happened more times than not.

I had to wait nearly 45 minutes before being called in even though I made sure I got the first appointment of the day and was the first person in my appointment time (they book 4 per slot). I finally got to meet Dr. No Face. Can’t tell you how much fun it is to meet a doctor for the first time when the only thing between you and him is a flimsy, white sheet.

We only made it as far as the cervix before he saw something in my cervix that looked unusual. On the u/s there was a distinct area that looked different from the rest of the cervix. Initially he said that it didn’t look like it was anything to be concerned with but he took some pictures and then said that he would like to give this some thought to see if there should be any reason not to start the Clomid. I told him about the radiologist who commented that my cervix looked irregular like it was red or inflamed during my HSG last year.

He also measured the fibroid that I already knew I had. He explained and showed me that it was outside the uterus on the right side. From his measurements, I think it has gotten bigger since the last time they measured in August ’05 from 1cm to 3cm. He didn’t seem to be as concerned about the fibroid as he was about the cervix irregularity. Finally, we got to the ovaries and both sides were free of cysts.

Dr. No Face gave me a prescription for Clomid (100mg per day), but told me to hold off until he calls me again later today to talk to me. We talked about the possibility that he may refer me to a gynecologist at his clinic (my previous pap smears and annual exams were done at student health as required by insurance). I assume that means he may decide the cervix irregularity may be disturbing enough that it warrants a closer look. I asked him about the irregularity and what he thought of it off the top of his head and basically, he just didn’t know what to make of it or even call it.

I don’t know how I feel about today’s news. I just feel weepy and want to cry. But, I’m being stubborn and I’m unwilling to give into it. I’m glad I have no cysts, today. But, I don’t know yet how serious the cervix irregularity is. Unfortunately, neither does Dr. No Face which means I don’t even know what, if anything, I can google. I expect he’ll call me in a few hours after he gets through all his morning appointments. I hope I don’t have to wait much longer than that to get some direction of where we’ll be going with this.

Updated to add: Dr. No Face has decided we should not go through with this Clomid cycle. He still doesn’t have any possible prognosis (or is unwilling to say at this point) about the weirdness in my cervix. My new next step is to do a sonohystogram on the 27^th plus, most likely, a biopsy. He wants to make sure it isn’t anything serious in case I get pregnant on Clomid and then, as he puts it, it’ll be 9 months before we can do anything. Hahaha! Wait until he treats me a while longer. Perhaps he will finally understand the discombobulation (is that a real word?) my body is capable of. I doubt he’ll be so optimistic then.

Is it the worrier inside me or is going for a biopsy Dr. No Face’s way of saying there is a chance it could be cancer without actually saying the words?

Step 2: check

2006-06-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Period arrived midday yesterday so I called the RE office and have a baseline u/s scheduled for early Friday morning. Now making a mental list of things to ask, should I pass the u/s check:

What are the possible side effects of Clomid?

When does monitoring start and does it entail bloodwork?

If I normally ovulate early (earliest, day 7, latest day 11, average day 9-10) does that affect when they will start monitoring? Will Clomid tend to speed up follicle development?

What things do they want to see while being monitored? What are the things that might cause this cycle to be cancelled?

Questions for myself: How much googling do I want to do beforehand? How much do I want to obsess (read instill fear and expectations) about the next steps?

As this cycle is moving forward, one thing I’m finding is that it’s easy to say I’m going to take it one step at a time and not think beyond that, but in practice it’s difficult. Step 3 is to pass the baseline u/s, but if I do, then the next step after that is to start taking Clomid. Practically, it’s not possible to pause, let Step 3 sink in then start thinking about step 4. This is all going to happen within a short time frame in the Dr.’s office which means I have to think several steps ahead if I want to take advantage of the time I have in there. And, that’s where I get into trouble because really, this whole process, if everything goes smoothly, is a continuum where steps mesh and overlap with other steps. Also, there is almost no way to think about these steps without considering what to expect if things go right. If something goes wrong, easy. We stop, we cry a little and then we re-evaluate what this means for using my eggs to try to get pregnant. But, if the next step goes well, then I can expect that we will do Clomid to induce follicle development and if that goes well, then I can expect we will trigger to induce ovulation and if that goes well…well, you see where we’re headed, right?

So, I guess the big question is how many steps can I prepare myself for without driving myself back to the emotional rollercoaster that was my life when we were trying to get pregnant on our own. That’s a ride I want to avoid getting on again.

Half a step forward

2006-06-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

The good news: Mr. Warrior got in a sample this morning. My period is still a no show, so he went ahead and made another appointment to try to freeze away a backup for the backup. Mr. Warrior will try again on Monday.

The bad news: The Andrologist hunted him down in the parking lot and told him there was a problem. The lid of the container was half way open and most of the sample leaked onto the lid. The Andrologist didn’t think he would be able to salvage enough of it to freeze. Mr. Warrior will try again on Monday.

The semi-good news: After his success this morning in producing a sample, Mr. Warrior feels more confident about Monday, so that’s a good thing. Confidence certainly doesn’t hurt in these situations. I’m starting to feel the greed, too, and am hoping (yikes, how did hope sneak in here?) we might even have a fresh sample to use on IUI day. Ok, now I’m really getting waaaaay ahead of myself. This is where you all come over and slap me and tell me to snap out of it.

Left foot, Right foot, Left foot, Right foot

2006-06-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

My plan to try to keep the fear at bay for the Clomid test cycle is to keep focus only on the next step and don’t give much thought to the things and possibilities beyond that. Surprisingly, this is going pretty well so far. I guess I have finally progressed to that part of living with infertility where you just try not to have expectations anymore.

Mr. Worrier has an appointment for Wednesday to bring in a sample to have it frozen. It was going to be too much pressure for him to try to produce a fresh sample, so we’re hoping we can have something frozen away if we make it as far as the IUI. Since we might not need to use it for at least another week, there is a chance if this Wednesday doesn’t work out, he can set up another appointment to try again. He has been out of sorts these last couple of days and I suspect it’s because he is getting anxious about having to produce a sample. He feels a lot of pressure and I told him first of all, we may not even need it so if he can’t, it may not be an issue anyway. Secondly, I would go through the Clomid anyway just to see how I respond. It will be a valuable cycle in knowing what my response is alone. So try to relax and not think about it.

I know, as soon as I said it, I realized how unhelpful I was. At least the Andrologist was considerate. When Mr. Worrier expressed his worry about being able to produce a sample by a certain time, he gave Mr. Worrier his cell phone number so that Mr. Worrier could call him personally to cancel.

I’m feeling less scared today about the upcoming cycle and what we will find. I’m feeling very neutral, in fact. It’s a welcome change from the abundance of emotional days I had in May.

Trying to live scared

2006-06-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of people left comments to my This is Only a Test post. I have wanted to thank them since the comments were left, but found myself unable to. Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiments, I do. But it’s been hard to let myself think about the recent news too much. I’m afraid I will feed hope and hope will grow and I’ll start dreaming and planning the next year based on what if. I have been down that road too many times these last two years. I was deeply afraid that even acknowledging people’s good wishes would start me on that road again. It would mean admitting to myself that maybe the something I have wanted so much might just be attainable and that would be enough to start a hope avalanche I would be powerless to survive. Yes, I know this sounds all oblique and abstract. But really, that’s the crux of it. As long as this all stays somewhat abstract then I can keep the hope tucked away and at bay.

Life, the universe and everything, however, seem to have other plans.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I found myself thinking about how my life would be impacted the rest of this year should the unthinkable happen. What things I might have to do differently, how I would handle things. I felt a little scared that I was letting myself go there and wondered if I was starting to nurture hope.

Two years ago, in the aftermath of my miscarriage, I had a vivid nightmare. I was at work and a coworker announced she was pregnant. In my dream and in those hazy moments afterwards upon waking, I felt an immense ache. Like a thousand stab wounds plus the weight of a thousand mastodons upon my chest. The pain and weight of it all left me breathless and unable to cry.

This morning, the same coworker that I dreamt about told me there was some news she wanted to tell me. I knew what was coming and felt my emotions disengage. As she was talking, I assessed if I needed to keep the conversation short so I can bolt as soon as it was over or if I could feed my need to know how far along she was and other torturous details. I was able to (nicely, I think) congratulate her and talk to her a bit. After the conversation was over, it was difficult to concentrate. For a few hours, all I could do was think about how quickly they had gotten pregnant (married first week of January, now 12 weeks along, must have happened on their first or second try) and the fact that she is married to my boss, so I would have to at least have another conversation about this when I congratulated him. I felt worn out and on the verge of a breakdown. I wondered if I was going to be able to get through the day or whether I should just give into the unfairness of it all and go home. I wondered when I would ever learn that hope would always lead to despair and berated myself for being weak last night and letting hope in. I knew for sure at that point the Clomid cycle I would start this month would be a dismal failure. Either I would get no response or the IUI would fail. It dawned on me that whether it was my eggs or donor eggs or adoption, I may never become a mother. I seriously considered, for the first time, living without children. And I realized, that these last few months I have had quite long periods of happiness and contentment even amidst the struggles I have had dealing with friends and families getting pregnant and having babies. That I do not hate the life I have now, even though it is a life without children. It is difficult and it is hard and I still desparately want children, but I can see that it is possible to live without them and still find some happiness. I will always be around people who will get pregnant easily and end up with a baby 40 weeks later. I realized how exhausted I am to have to feel so miserable and defeated each time I hear other people’s happy pregnancy/baby news and I am tired of feeling that way. Miscarriage and infertility have taken enough from me. They have changed me enough. I don’t want it to have that kind of control over me anymore. There are too many things in life I can’t control to let the things I can control have free reign over me. I can’t control the things that happen to me, but I can control how I respond. I don’t want to respond anymore with fear to pregnancy news or to news that I may be able to get pregnant with my own eggs.

I know that I will continue to react to news of pregnancies and babies with tears and heartbreak. I can accept that and embrace it, even. I have already learned to let myself grieve when I hear these things and learned to give myself permission to feel hateful without berating myself. Now, I want to work on my response after I have let myself react. I want to be able to face the truth of the situation instead of hiding away like a half-dead animal unable to live or die.

So, Carrie P and SusanG, thank you for your good wishes to my post. I hope, yes hope, it is a door to more good news, but if it’s only a window I can gaze at for a little while then I will accept that, too. But, I have to tell you I am scared that this Clomid cycle will tell me something good and I am scared that this Clomid cycle will tell me something bad. I am scared that I won’t get as far as an IUI and scared that if I do, I will ride the hope rollercoaster of doom only to find a negative at the end of the ride or another anembryonic pregnancy. I am scared, but I don’t want to live in fear.

More on Grandpa

2006-06-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

One of the good things that came out of our whirlwind trips is that I got to hear more stories about my grandfather. How much of it is exaggerated is hard to know. People rarely speak ill of the dead, you know? But, exaggerated or not, I’d like to share some of the things I learned about the type of person my grandfather was because, embellished or not, they are based on truth. And, as an immigrant who came to the US in his 80’s I know there were far fewer people at his funeral than would have been had he died in the place where he had lived for decades and made many friends, where family of his generation were close by, where his medical colleagues could have paid tribute to him. I also want to share some of these stories because these later years found his health and mental abilities declining and with it, my memories of him and the person he was. In these last years, I had forgotten about the more vibrant and active grandfather I knew when I was younger. And, I suppose like most grandchildren, I never stopped to think that at some point, my grandfather was just a person living life and trying to be a productive member of society. And that my grandpa was more than just my grandfather and may have affected more lives than just those of his family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grandpa was a doctor and apparently was incredibly dedicated and concerned for other people. I remember one of my grandma’s complaints about him was that he was too generous to others and often overlooked the fact that his generosity meant there was too little money for his family. Grandpa’s habit of loaning people money without expecting people to pay it back had always given me the impression that he was someone who was overly nice and, as a result, allowed people to take advantage of him. Since most of my memories of him were of a kind and gentle man, I always thought of him as having a passive nature and so, in some ways, not necessarily a “strong” man. But, this was only one aspect of the person he was. As a doctor of a mid-sized village in China, he came into contact with people of all levels of life. Some could pay for medical services, some could not. But, for Grandpa it did not matter. He treated people regardless of their ability to pay and never turned away patients who needed his help. My grandma told me that whether it was in the middle of the day or middle of the night, if he was home and got called upon for his services, he would hop on his bicycle, or in later years, flag down a taxi, and go to where he was needed. The nature of the illness also did not deter him from doing his job. My mom told me about how he was very proud of the fact that he was the only doctor within several surrounding villages willing to treat people during a cholera outbreak in the1930’s/1940’s.

The most intriguing story I heard about my grandpa concerned his parents. I grew up knowing Grandpa was raised by his uncle and aunt, an uncle and aunt whom he loved dearly and always referred to as “uncle” and “aunt.” The family story is that Grandpa’s father died before Grandpa was born and he was given to his father’s brother to raise because his mom was not able to support him. I asked my grandma for more on this story when I saw her before the funeral. She told me that Grandpa’s birthmother was so distraught over the death of his father that she entered a convent soon after giving my grandpa to his uncle. When I asked if this uncle and aunt ever had other children, she told me that they were unable to conceive. It’s clear to me now that Grandpa was adopted. And the story that was told about Grandpa’s birthparents and being raised by his paternal uncle was one to make his family story culturally acceptable to those around them. If he was related paternally to the parents who raised him, then he is “true” family (versus if he was related through his mother and given to his mother’s brother). The convenience of the “death” of his birthfather before Grandpa’s birth and subsequent “disappearance” of his birthmother to the nunnery is, well, just that, convenient. And who could question, openly anyway, the generosity of an uncle and aunt willingly to take in a nephew to raise as their own? And what a stroke of luck, too, being unable to have biological children themselves. Who knows. Maybe no one questioned it because this kind of story was “code” for adoption in those days.

For me, knowing these things about my grandfather helps me understand how he would have agreed to give my mom away to his sister-in-law to raise. I had assumed it was my grandmother who initiated the conversation between the two of them. But given my grandfather’s birth story, I can see how it could have been a mutual decision between a wife who loved her sister and a husband with a penchant for helping people, who had experienced the benefit of being loved and raised by people who were not his birthparents. It also makes me feel proud to know that my family was built, in part, from adoption and at the same time proud to know the roots of who I am.

When I was asked to give a short eulogy at my grandfather’s funeral, I was very nervous. Though I loved him, I realized I couldn’t really speak to what kind of person he was. Mr. Warrior encouraged me to look inside and just speak the truth. My truth was that I was lucky to be the first grandchild. And like many first grandchildren, I got a lot of the attention from my grandparents. I was even more lucky to have been taken care of by my grandparents after I was born when my parents went back to work and would drop me off at their house for the day. My parents, uncles and grandmother all talk about how my grandfather would carry me and walk around the neighborhood every day after work to show me off. So, even though I don’t have many memories of this time, I have fond feelings of my grandparent’s house. When I was five, my parents and I immigrated to the US. We saw my mother’s parents rarely in those years before they immigrated and by the time they had, I was away at college, then working, then in grad school. In these last few weeks, I learned more about the kind of person my grandfather was. How hard working he was, the 40 plus years he spent as a doctor, how kind and caring. In these last few weeks, I realized that I can see some of those characteristics not only in myself but also my family members. I hope I can continue to live with compassion for others as he did, so I can continue the influence my grandfather had on my family and others.

This is Only a Test

2006-05-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

So, it was an emotional week and a half while we were out of town. I woke up most mornings disoriented and wondering if it was going to be a happy day (wedding festivities) or a sad day (funeral related events). There is so much to share I hardly know where to start. The fun of the weddings, the sadness of the funeral and the wonderful stories about my grandfather. Then, I realized I hadn’t really posted about our last RE visit because I was still trying to understand what had happened myself. And before I knew it, we had even more developments along that front this very morning so I will tackle the RE visit in this post.

This RE appointment was the one I had made way back in February after a visit with Dr. Receptive. In that time, Dr. Receptive helped me get my FSH retested, along with a progesterone test on 7dpo. There was a total of 3 blood draws for this series of tests and every single one of them, including another day 3 FSH, came back within normal range. My second day 3 FSH was as freakishly normal (5.9!) as my first day 3 FSH was freakishly high (31.1). I had no idea what to make of it and because I was still experiencing perimenopausal symptoms (shorter and lighter periods, shorter cycles, possible night sweats, vaginal dryness) and I knew that women with high FSH could have fluctuating levels, I just waited for my appointment and prepared myself to hear that they would consider only the highest FSH when determining responses to ART and a rehash of the donor egg talk, etc. I also drew up a nice little summary of all my test results and the cycle days they had been done on and prepared questions I had about what to keep on top of in terms of my overall health due to the impending loss of regular hormone function (bone density, heart disease risk). I also prepared myself for the fact that this was a teaching hospital and just like my last RE appointment, I might very well spend most of my time talking to a fellow and have only a little time with the RE, so I made sure I had concise questions and prioritized them for the precious few minutes I may have face-to-face with the RE.

As with most of my experiences with doctors these last two years, I was in for a shock. First of all, we only waited a few minutes for our appointment to begin. Then, the doctor who walked in the door and spent the entire time with us was the RE himself! Dr. Thorough-and-Direct (“TAD”) had actually spent time reading my file before the appointment. He not only said so, but repeatedly throughout the appointment made references to what he had read in my medical file. When I mentioned my additional test results and brought out the summary sheet I had compiled, he asked to look at it and read every footnote I made about each test. Then came the biggest shocker of all. His take on my fluctuating FSH was that one of the tests was probably wrong, perhaps the result of a lab mix up. Because of my lack of hot flashes, I probably was not going through ovarian failure, despite my other symptoms. And so he felt it was probably the first test, the high FSH reading that was wrong. He thought the symptoms I had were troubling and thought that it could mean that I’m nearing the end of my fertile years, which meant we should proceed with some type of fertility treatment sooner rather than later, but we should try with my eggs. He thought we may still have a chance with using my eggs because in my previous ultrasounds during my miscarriage and my last fertility evaluation, they saw follicles! I was confused as to why I wasn’t told this before and it turns out that both times when the doctors saw “cysts” they were referring to the presence of follicles. All along I had thought “cysts” were a bad thing but Dr. TAD said these were antral follicles they saw and there were 4 on one side and 5 follicles on the other. He said that they prefer to see 5 and 6, but the numbers I had were good. Each time, I would bring up something that worried me and he would matter-of-factly explain to me why he felt we should not delay and proceed with treatment to see how I would respond. Throughout our appointment, I got the distinct impression Dr. TAD considered all the issues and concerns I threw at him (and I was throwing it all at him, especially at the end, mainly in disbelief that we were hearing good news) carefully and thoughtfully and still coming to the conclusion that I was not going through ovarian failure. He also mentioned that if he had only the first FSH result to go on, he definitely would have suggested we “close up shop.” But, in light of the normal levels in my second test plus that fact that my progesterone level at 7dpo was much higher than what he would have expected, he felt that at the very least my corpus luteum was functioning correctly which suggests something my ovaries were doing something right. When I brought up my concern that my egg quality may be bad (hence the miscarriage and subsequent difficulty in getting pregnant again) he said that there was really no way to know how good my eggs were. But, he felt that there were still eggs left because it seemed to him that I am ovulating and it could mean just trying to “call out a good egg.” He then suggested we do IUI with clomid or injectible IUI first. By this time, I was so overwhelmed with emotion and so determined not to start bawling like a baby in front of him, I was speechless and choking back tears. Mr. Worrier took over asked about the difference between the two treatments and expressed our desire to go with a more aggressive versus passive route. Dr. TAD thought if we wanted to be more aggressive, we could do the injectible IUI instead of the Clomid. Dr. TAD remarked that he felt my case was very interesting and said that he wanted to bring my case up in their next weekly meeting where all the RE’s and fellows in the medical group discuss their cases. Then, the doctor who runs the ART treatments in their department would contact me and follow up on what they thought we should do next. He told us we would have to get Mr. Worrier’s sperm analysis before we start any treatment and referred Mr. Worrier to an urologist for his ED issues. At no time during our appointment did I feel like he was rushing to finish our appointment and go on to his next one. At no time during our appointment did I feel like I was bothering him with my incessant need for reassurance that he wasn’t missing something and forgetting to take into consideration some aspect of my situation.

Mr. Worrier and I walked out of that appointment stunned and shell-shocked. Of all the things we were prepared to hear, ovulation induction with IUI was not one of them. We were and still are being cautious with our hopes. I am willing to accept that one of the FSH tests was wrong, but I feel like I have had my hopes dashed too many times to completely trust Dr. TAD’s assessment that the error lies in the high FSH result and not the normal FSH result. I have trust in him, but I am too fearful and protective of my heart to trust my trust in him, you know? I don’t even want to know what the chances of pregnancy with ovulation induction/IUI are. I know it is lower than IVF but I find that I am not even remotely curious at this point. I just want to know what the truth is. I just want to know if I have any eggs that will respond to ovulation induction. I feel like a possible answer to that is the only thing I’m assured of if we do this and that is all I’m counting on.

(I did notice I allowed myself to let in the possibility that I can get pregnant with my eggs. I found myself fondly searching and looking for babies and toddlers for a couple of days after meeting with Dr. TAD. And seeing my visibly pregnant cousin, C. at her brother’s wedding was a lot easier to do knowing that possibility was out there.)

While we were gone, we got our follow up call. It was from the same doctor who gave us the news about my high FSH in October (and who I have yet to meet in person). He is the doctor who works with all the patients undergoing fertility treatment (they only do Clomid and injectible IUI here. For IVF, they send you to their another clinic.) I called Dr. No Face back this morning and found out that they’re suggesting we start with Clomid for the ovulation induction/IUI instead of injectibles. The reasons for this are:

1) I'm young and they believe with the test results I have that I am ovulating. But, I'm not getting pregnant with one egg so they want to try to induce more than one.
2) Injectibles are stronger meds, so they want to go with Clomid first to reduce the chance of multiples because of my age (he actually said "complications" which I take to mean multiples among other things).
3) Clomid would also tell us if my high FSH was the mistake or my normal FSH was the mistake. If my FSH is high, Clomid would not do anything and they would know since they would monitor the follicle stimulation via ultrasound. Clomid is also the cheaper alternative and less involved than doing injectibles, but will tell us the same thing about my response to FSH.
4) They want to start this for my next cycle without waiting for Mr. Worrier’s sperm analysis and urology appointment. Their thinking is that we've waited long enough and he’s gotten two women pregnant so even if there are issues with his sperm it's not so bad that there is no possibility of fertilizing an egg.

So, all of a sudden it's like we've jumped back on the speeding train again and I
wonder, is this where I want to be? When we were trying, Mr. Worrier’s ED made an already stressful time, even more stressful. In some ways these last 6 or 7 months of thinking there was no chance we’d get pregnant with my eggs have allowed us to live our lives more contently.

We’ll have the option to try to freeze some of Mr. Worrier’s sperm ahead of time to reduce some of the stress, but another part of me thinks, hey, we might not even need to worry about having sperm. There is no guarantee this IUI won’t get canceled because of cysts (the bad kind) or my lack of response. So, to keep my sanity intact, I am treating this as another test, not as a chance of getting pregnant. A test to see if I have any eggs at all and if I do, if any of them will respond like the 33 going 34 eggs they should be.

Because being told that the first FSH results may be wrong is almost impossible to believe. It is like being told you don’t have cancer anymore, that it has miraculously disappeared. And much as I would like to believe in that possibility, I just can’t go there yet. So, if I get close to actually going through with the IUI, be a friend, won’t you, and remind me that this is only a test, ok?

Two weddings and a funeral

2006-05-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

The weekend with my mom and grandma was not as comforting as I hoped it would be. I think my grandmother is being scammed and paying way too much for the funeral and cremation. There is also a lot of family drama so the weekend was quite tiring and stressful.

I had my second RE appointment (finally!) yesterday. We got some news that was…unexpected. I hesitate to say it was good news because that’s the kind of scaredy cat I am and Mr. Warrior and I both need some time to process the new information. Plus, I feel like I’ve ridden this ride before and it may seem exciting and full of possibilities at the beginning but all the other times I’ve ridden it, it’s ended with me holed up under my covers, crying my eyes out. So, I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic, but I don’t do it that well (I’m an all or nothing kind of girl). Once I can wrap my head around this latest development, I will certainly post more about it.

I’m taking off tomorrow for my cousin’s wedding in LA, then to Northern California for my grandfather’s funeral and a friend’s wedding. We won’t be home again for almost two weeks.

Anyway, I probably won’t be posting for awhile but I will be keeping up on everyone when I can while I am away. Especially, you, Thalia! Keep the good news coming!

Grandpa

2006-05-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last night around 9 pm my grandfather died. He had been unconscious and on a feeding tube for over the last year. My mom told me that Tuesday night, my grandmother consented to take him off any support. I know it was a difficult decision for my grandma and one she struggled with. My parents were there to see him last night. Five minutes into their hour and half drive back home they got a call from her family that he had died. My brother lives close to where my grandfather died as does the rest of my mom’s family, so they were all able to be there soon after it happened.

I’m flying up to Northern California for the weekend to be with my mom and grandmother and the rest of my family. Grandpa will be cremated and I guess it takes some time to arrange that so the funeral will take place in about a week or so.

It feels good to think I’ll be seeing my family this weekend. Usually, I try to limit the amount of time I spend with them because it’s nice to see them, but after awhile the old, unhealthy interactions with them start creeping back in. The distance between Northern and Southern California never felt too big and was a nice buffer. Today, the distance feels immense and I long to be closer.

Red Light, Green Light (Updated)

2006-05-09T18:04:00.001-07:00

So after the initial shock and awe of last week’s baby news followed by some crying and shopping therapy, I started to deal with it better. At least the idea of having to deal with follow-up baby news doesn’t seem so hard to deal with. But, it’s still a pretty Jekyll and Hyde situation. Some news sends me wanting to run to the bathroom crying (like people talking about doing a group baby gift) but other situations I have no problems with (I was oohing and ahhing with the best of them when the email came in with a link to baby pictures). After giving it some thought, I realized that I was prepared to look at pictures of the baby because I anticipated it would happen at some point. Last night the image of the parents with their newborn popped in my head as I was going to sleep and I thought to myself, ok, that wasn’t so bad, I can handle that. But I wasn’t prepared for being asked to be involved in doing a group gift (since I already gave them something). And those things that I don’t anticipate I seem to react to the least well to. I found myself wishing people could understand how hard it was sometimes. And I wished there was some signal on my forehead people could see so that they could tell what kind of mindset I was in at the moment. Red light: Don’t you dare come near me with any baby talk or I will chew you up, spit you out then turn back time so I can do it all over again. Yellow light: I could be perfectly fine. I could lose it and cry my eyes out. You’ve been warned, proceed with caution. Green light: I’m good today but limit all baby talk to no more than 5 minutes per 3 hours. (Come to think of it, I could use a system like this for myself just so I can know how I am feeling.)

Anyway, I thought about sending this email to my coworkers:

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to ask a favor of everyone and thought this was the best way to do it instead of approaching each person separately. Some of you know or may remember I had a miscarriage two years ago. After that, C. and I shared our trials and struggles and supported each other when we were both trying to get pregnant the year before her pregnancy. Since then, I found out it may be difficult or impossible for me to have biological children. Which is not to say I’m not happy for the birth of J. and C.’s baby. I am incredibly happy their pregnancy went well and was successful. I know this is an exciting time for them and also for us as their friends and co-workers. But these last days since the baby’s birth I realized I am having a more difficult time than I anticipated. Most of the time, I am ok and can participate in the excitement of trading the latest news from J. and C. But there are times when someone asks me a question or makes a comment unexpectedly and it throws me off guard and I find myself a bit emotional.

I don’t want to make things weird and uncomfortable for people or for people to stop talking around me. I know the questions and comments are not meant to be hurtful. But I would like to ask if you have a direct question or comment for me related to J., C. or the baby if you could preface it with something like, I’d like to ask you something about J’s baby. Or we have some news about the baby would you like to hear it? This would help me see if I’m in a place to hear the questions or news you have and let you know if I need some time to process it.

I don’t wish to make my personal issues with this into a big, uncomfortable thing or a burden for the people around me. Like I said, I understand people just naturally want to express their excitement for this wonderful event. But I may excuse myself or walk away as people chat about these things. I hope you will be able to understand that if I do, it’s something I need to do for myself and I don’t feel any ill-will towards you.

Thanks for “listening,”

Summer

I don’t know if I’ll actually send it. I’ve sent this out to a couple of friends, who don’t work in the same lab I do, to see what they think. I don’t want to come off as needy and bitter (even though I feel that way sometimes). I just wish I had more warning and a little control over what is thrown at me. Is that possible to have? Maybe this is too much to ask of my coworkers? Would it seem too unprofessional to send an email such as this? Too dramatic? I don’t really want them walking on eggshells around me, just be more, I don’t know, aware? Would you send something like this out to people you work with, that you get along with fairly well and share some aspects of your personal life with (though I have only talked about my infertility with one coworker)?

An alternative is to say something like this to the people I’m talking to in my red light/yellow light moments. But, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it at those times and maybe have to repeat it several times in one day. Or, I could just not say anything at all and let it be awkward if I have to just walk away, but that doesn’t feel completely right. Plus, we have weekly meetings and I know this baby talk will come up in one of those meetings (it already has to some degree) and I couldn’t really just walk out of the meeting.

Updated to add: I decided to send a copy of the email to a couple of friends, one who used to be a coworker and knows some of the people in my lab. Both thought it was ok to send and one suggested I sit on it for awhile to see how I feel. I thought it was a good idea since I wasn’t completely happy with it. I showed it to Mr. Warrior after I got home and he thought it was a good email to send out but thought I should take out the paragraph about asking for people to say things a certain way. He said having it in there puts the responsibility on other people and if I just expressed that I was having a hard time, people will figure out how best to act. (He always has more faith in people and their actions than I do!) So, I looked at the email again, but without that paragraph and it did seem much better. I sent it out this morning and people have responded to it in a caring, sensitive way. J. made it a point to stop by and tell me how much J and C cared about us and how much they appreciated our support during their time trying. I was very touched by that.

Daughters

2006-05-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about the women I know and their fertility “journeys” (for lack of a better term). I posted some of those thoughts in the Moms post. This post (and maybe one or two more to follow) are more stories about the women I have been thinking about.

Growing up, there was little fanfare for birthdays and wedding anniversaries in my family. Chinese culture explains part of it. Birthdays are usually not a big deal (until a person turns 60). In fact, everybody “celebrates” being one year older on Chinese New Year’s instead of on the day of their birth. As my brother and I got older and the time in which my parents have lived in the US got longer, we began celebrating our individual birthdays. We would go out for birthday dinners and our family eventually developed a tradition of having ice-cream cake on each of our birthdays. I’m not sure if the lack of celebrating wedding anniversaries is also a Chinese thing. But, I have never heard my parents talk about their anniversary. Every February 14^th, my dad would buy my mom a dozen red roses and a card, but I have never seen my dad buy my mom an anniversary gift or my parents mark any of their “big” (10^th, 25^th) anniversaries. Whenever my brother or I would ask my parents how long they had been married, their standard reply was to tell us to add one year to my age as I am the oldest. If we ever asked when they were married, they would tell us they married on the Christmas Eve prior to when I was born. Since I was born in September, that makes it an almost perfect nine months from wedding to baby. Though it always seemed a little awkward the manner they answered our questions, we didn’t think much about it.*

One day when I was about 15 or 16, my mom brought out a picture album I had never seen before. It was very exciting because I thought I had seen all our family pictures at least 10 times. My dad is a huge fan of taking pictures, both stills and movies, and at least once a year we would break out the pictures and the movie projector. But here was a whole album of never-before-seen pictures of their engagement. On the last page of their album was a copy of their wedding invitation. It was in Chinese, of course, and even though my parents forced me to attend Saturday Chinese school for two years, I never became literate. Chinese numerals, though, I could recognize. I was surprised to see my parents wedding date was sometime in mid-February of the same year in which I was born. Which means I was born 7 months after their wedding. (My guess is that whole Christmas Eve story was based on the fact that it was the day I was conceived.) When I expressed my confusion (! because I can be just that stupid) to my mom, she just giggled self-consciously, closed the album and put it away, never to be seen again.

A couple of years after the unplanned pregnancy, shotgun wedding and my birth, my mom got pregnant again. My father’s parents were all hoping for a boy because, well, when you’re Chinese that’s what you wish for. In Taiwan, at the time, there was a pill for pregnant women that was purported to ensure the sex of the child they were carrying would be a boy. (I’m sure it probably worked, say, 50% of the time?) My mom was talked into taking these boy-making pills during her pregnancy. When the baby was born, the doctors saw that the baby would not survive for long. My mom was not allowed to see the baby but was told that the baby had no brain because the baby’s head was sunken in. My mom believes that my dad was allowed to see the baby and knew the sex but he always denied it. Because of his denials, she believes that he didn’t want her knowing it was another daughter and then blaming herself for the baby’s death because of the pills she took.

My parents tried to get pregnant again soon after the death of their second child. In the aftermath of my miscarriage, my mom told me how she spent every day for over a year obsessing about getting pregnant. But, it never happened. At some point she stopped hoping and obsessing. My mom did get pregnant again. My brother was born three months shy of my 5^th birthday, the first boy born of my generation and my grandmother’s sole favorite out of 13 grandchildren.**

So, like her Ma, my mom experienced what it was like to desperately want to be pregnant, but not get pregnant. Like her Ma and her own daughter, she knows the pain of losing a child. And though the pain of infertility never completely goes away and any children that come later never replace the ones lost, there is a coming to terms and acceptance of the hand life has dealt you. And, ultimately, you make the best of what you do have in life.

At least, that’s what I hope is in store for me.

*Later after my brother and I had both moved out of my parents’ house, I brought this up with my brother. When I told him I thought our parents had to get married because mom had gotten pregnant, it was clear from his response that it never occurred to him until that moment.

**I remember once when she lived with us for awhile, she went out and bought a new bowl and chopsticks for my brother. Then, she gave my brother’s old bowl and chopsticks to me. When I expressed my anger and indignity at being given my younger brother’s used dinnerware, my grandmother retorted that I was a girl and should be grateful she treated me with such kindness and generosity! I can laugh about it now, but this was one of many reasons why I loved my mother’s Mama so much more. I can also forgive her now for her ways because I understand that many of the things she did was the result of the traditional mindset she grew up with. Even for her generation, she was the last of a rare group of women who had their foot bound (warning, the link has some graphic descriptions and pictures). One time when she was in the hospital after a stroke, I saw the doctors bring all their interns to her room so they could parade through and examine a living example of bound feet.

I've had better days (or I need to buy myself something pretty)

2006-05-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

For as far as I’ve come in the last couple years, I forget sometimes that some days can still be hard.

We heard this morning at work that my pregnant friend (and the wife of one of my coworkers) went into labor and to the hospital early this morning. The word is that they may have a bit of a hospital stay before the baby is born. There is a lot of excitement at work and our meeting this morning was filled with guesses of when the baby would be born and if it would be a boy or a girl (the parents didn’t want to know the sex beforehand). All during the meeting, my mind kept wandering and it was hard to keep focus. I had tried not to think about the impending birth this last week or so (which should have been my first clue I might not take the news well) but I couldn’t keep thoughts back this morning. I tried joining in with some of the baby banter (dumb idea), but found myself welling with emotion. Knowing tears might be next, I disengaged. But, disengagement feels like adding salt to the wound, because now I not only feel sad from the news, but alienated from other people. It’s hard not to have people recognize that the news may be difficult for me. I feel slightly bitter that the same coworkers who were kind and caring when I miscarried two years ago can say things today like “There can’t be anything more emotionally difficult than knowing your baby is about to be born but not knowing exactly when.” I wanted to say, yes, there is. There is carrying nothing but an empty sac and knowing the baby you thought was there will never be born.

I know all this banter is not about me or people wanting to intentionally hurt me. Times like these I just want a little sensitivity. But asking for it feels selfish and I’m afraid of what people will think of me trying to bring my pain into the midst of all this “exiting” news.

I know this will pass and I can be strong again, but I also know when the baby is born, there will be more banter to endure. Then, more inevitable baby talk when my coworker comes back to work. And I’m sure there will be more stories about the baby and how it’s doing in the months to come. Fuck. I guess I didn’t realize until I wrote that last sentence that there would be all this baby banter to deal with at work for the coming days (weeks? months?). Maybe this won’t just all pass. Or, it will pass for this bit of news, but there will be more baby news so it will just come back and hit me again. And again. And again.

Fuck.

Anyone else not want to be where they are right now? Care to trade places?

Moms

2006-04-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

When my mom was about 6 or 7 years old, a woman came to her school, took her out of class and took her to a new home. Over the next few days, weeks, months--I don’t know how long-- my mother learned that the mother and father that she had known all her life were not her biological parents. Rather, they were her aunt and uncle. The woman who had taken her from the life she had known was her biological mother and the sister of her “Ma.” My mom’s biological mother, “Mama,” had been able to get pregnant easily and quickly after getting married, while Ma tried (and failed) to get pregnant for many years. Mama decided to give her first born to her sister to raise. According to my mom, she was born after 3 days of hard labor. Two years later, Mama gave birth to a son, again after struggling through days of labor. Mama got pregnant one more time, again, after 3 days of labor, again, to another son. With this third pregnancy, Mama had hoped for a girl because she longed to have a daughter, but didn’t think she could endure another birth. I don’t know all the details, but I think maybe Mama didn’t believe she could survive another birth. After all, this was 1940’s China, not a technologically advanced period of time or place. Sometime after the birth of her second son, Mama talked to Ma about wanting her daughter back. In my imaginings, there were hurtful words exchanged and many tears on both sides. Ultimately, Ma refused to give my mom “back” to Mama. This led to Mama taking the drastic action of taking a 6 year old girl and whisking her away to a strange home.

I learned the story of my mom’s two mothers in snippets throughout my life. I remember the day when I was 4 years old when I heard my mom call two women in loving yet distinct tones, Ma and Mama. I remember my mom telling me she didn’t know as she was growing up if she had a mom who loved her, because how could two women have given her up like that? I remember when Ma died and my mom cried and cried and cried inconsolably because she was thousands of miles away and didn’t get to say goodbye.

Mama was the only grandmother I knew. I love her dearly and have fond memories of being with her when she took care of me while my parents worked. I remember the smells of her kitchen. I remember catching a dragonfly in that kitchen and putting it in a jar and staring at its glistening wings. I remember wanting to keep it forever. But, my grandmother gently told me I had to let the dragonfly go because it wouldn’t live if we kept it in the jar. I’m sure I didn’t understand what death was. All I wanted was to keep that dragonfly forever. But, my grandmother just gently explained to me again how it would die, how we couldn’t do that to a living creature and we had to let it go. She had me open the lid. The dragonfly flew around the kitchen a couple of times then out the door. This memory and Mama’s love for me was something I held onto in my teenage years when it felt like no one in the world cared about me.

It wasn’t until these last couple of years, that I have thought about Ma as more than my great-aunt who took care of my mom for awhile (Ma later adopted a son and a daughter after Mama took my mom back. ) As I have struggled with my infertility, I have thought about Ma more and more and of her struggles and of her pain. I think about how lucky she must have felt to receive the gift of a child from her own sister and how devastating the loss to have the same sister take that gift away. I think about how IVF would likely have helped her to get pregnant (her infertility was due to blocked tubes), if only it had been something available to her in her lifetime.

I don’t know how Ma and Mama worked out the pain of loving and wanting the same child. Maybe it was never worked out, though I know both Ma and Mama and their two other sisters were all very close to each other later in life. I just know that it was a lucky thing for me that things turned out the way they did. If Mama had not come to get my mom, my mom would have grown up in a different place, probably never met my dad which means I would never have been born. So, I feel a need to have a place in my heart for Ma even though I didn’t really know her. Because the pain she suffered and endured allowed me to be.

Anniversary

2006-04-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

Two years ago today, I peed on a stick for the first time in my life and saw two lines. Since then, there has not been a day in the last two years I haven’t thought about babies or pregnancies. According to Google that’s 730.484398 days of hurting, dreaming and hoping.

One year ago today, I was sad that I had not been able to be pregnant again and tired of the monthly disappointment of seeing my period. Mr. Warrior and I began to talk about the possibility of IVF and found we were both ready to try it if we still had not achieved pregnancy after the “requisite” one year of trying. I hoped it would not have to come to that, but felt prepared to do move to IVF if only to secure a larger chance of success.

Today, I’m accepting of the low or no possibility of having a baby with my eggs, even with IVF. There are still bad days when it’s difficult to cope with my infertility. But those days are fewer. I think I am integrating IF more and more into my life and into my identity. And I think I am starting to realize that my life and my family may not unfold in the way I imagined when I was 10 or 20 or 30 years old, but maybe it can still be a good one.

Guess who has a new post?

2006-04-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

I know there has been a lack of posting here these last couple of months. One reason for it is that there hasn’t been much going on, on the IF front except waiting for my RE appointment in May. I have been getting my FSH and other levels retested, but that has just added more mystery to uncertainty (which will be a post for another day.) Another reason for the lack of posts is that things at work are on an upswing and I have been spending many hours on my experiments and feeling incredibly motivated. More motivated than I have felt for a couple of years. In fact, so motivated, that I have been working weekends. It feels great to be so productive on the one hand but is quite tiring on the other.

When I do have downtime, I’ve been knitting. Last week, I finished knitting the baby gifts for my friend who is due in early May. I gave them to her and her husband last Friday. Thank goodness the baby shower thrown for her was out of town and only family members were invited so I didn’t have to go to that or have to tell her I can’t handle going to her shower. I know she would have understood, but it’s easier not to have to deal with the issue at all.

I think my behavior modification experiment is doing me some good. I feel good and positive about things most of the time and I am certainly feeling better about myself in general. I hope these good feelings like it here and decide to stay around for awhile.

I heart Dr. Receptive

2006-03-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last week I had another appointment with Dr. Receptive to see what he thought about my day 19 bloodwork results and also to ask him about getting more bloodwork done while I waited for my mid-May RE appointment. Once again, I walked out of that appointment feeling good.

Dr. Receptive said he was glad to see all the numbers within normal range even though the bloodwork was done later in my cycle. He said that he was glad to see that my FSH levels were not “screaming at the top of their lungs” and were just “quietly talking.” Most of what he tried to tell me, I was already familiar with, but you have got to love a doctor who tries to explain things to you so you can understand it. (And with such anthropomorphism! I love it!) And he did it without being condescending. I think the other thing about him is that, unlike my experience with the doctor who told me about my high FSH results, both times I have talked to him he gave me the sense that all hope is not lost. It wasn’t in anything he said explicitly (“Don’t worry, everything will be ok”). He is somehow comforting without being unrealistic. He certainly has a gentle compassion about him and he is definitely a doctor who is open to patients doing their own research. In fact, he complimented me on the fact that I was trying to learn about POF and being proactive in dealing with it.

I told him about my appointment in May and my idea to get my day 3 FSH retested as well as progesterone testing done before my RE appointment because it was highly likely the RE would ask for those again. He had no problem writing up the lab requests for it and he asked me questions again about insurance coverage and made sure to put in my possible diagnosis of POF to ensure the greatest chance my tests would be covered. He asked if I was aware I could ask to be put on a wait list for any earlier appointments that might come up with the RE (I was and had been). Then, he made a note to himself to talk to an OB/GYN affiliated with the medical practice I have an RE appointment with, who was coming in a few days to talk to her about my case. He said maybe he could see if she could see me before mid-May just to get me into their system (which he has no access to) and get some things rolling.

So, my plan for my next round of bloodwork is to wait for my next cycle and do all the bloodwork within that cycle. I could have gotten my progesterone done now then waited for my cycle to start next week and do my day 3 repeat, but I called the RE’s office to see if there were any cancellations and to confirm they have a note to give me an earlier appointment should it come up. It seemed to me that the chance of getting in any earlier than mid-May is low to impossible. So, I thought I’d collect some good data on myself this next cycle and try to get as much out of my next RE appointment as I can. One thing that has been nagging me is whether I’m really ovulating. I’ve read that people with POF can have an LH surge and all the signs of ovulation but no ovulation. And when I was temping before, I had a temp rise after my LH surge but it was moderate, and I would see only see a more substantial rise 3 days later. I never knew what that meant but maybe with some bloodwork and close monitoring I can get a better picture of what my body is doing.

So, the BBT is coming back out of retirement for a few weeks and I know I’ve got some OPK’s under the sink somewhere. I’m going back to monitoring my temps for my next cycle so I’ll know what “dpo” I get my progesterone drawn. Then, it’s just a matter of waiting for the test results and maybe another ~~pick me up~~ appointment with Dr. Receptive before seeing the new RE.

Reaction to Karen’s post

2006-03-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

I read Karen’s post this morning and started typing a comment which turned into a (bad) college essay. So, instead of using up her space, I’m posting it here..

I have mixed emotions after reading the two review articles on Debora L. Spar’s book The Baby Business. The tone of both reviews sounds like it was written by someone who read the book, but clearly never had to deal with IF. The business week article, in particular, was highly judgemental about IF treatment and adoption. It seemed like it was written by a person who was more interested in perpetuating his/her disdain of IVF (which seemed to be based on either an ignorance of technology or an over-simplified understanding of it) rather than a review of what was actually written in the book.

I was especially irked by two things written in the business week article:

“…in the emotional world of infertility, couples often keep paying until they run out of money; very few run out of will. Those who do give up can turn to adoption along with about 120,000 other U.S. families each year, shelling out up to $35,000 per child.”

“The most disquieting parts of the book are those chapters that detail some very advanced reproductive technologies. Doctors can now remove one or two cells from a two-day-old embryo in a test tube, tell the parents its gender, and test for certain genetic defects. The parents then choose which embryos they want implanted. Scientists are also only steps away from cloning a human.”

The first because it feeds the desperation concept (us infertiles will throw all our money at IVF treatments, then throw another 35k we don’t have to adopt—plus, it implies the 35k is all going to one source to “buy” a child) and the second because it equates IVF with eugenics and human cloning. We are not “steps” away from cloning a human. That is a misconception perpetuated by the media and by a general public fear of cloning.

I thought the Plotz review was slightly less judgemental and at least it seemed to deal more with the content of the book. I do agree with the fact that one aspect of IVF clinics is that it is a business. (I also think that medicine is a business, but calling something a business doesn’t mean that it is bad. I think businesses can do good things, including helping people.) And that some IVF clinics maybe many (but not all) are ran more like businesses than medical treatment facilities (for example, those that exclude women from treatment because they deem them as having a low chance of success, in an effort to maintain high stats for CDC). But, I think the business aspect of medicine is inherent in all medical care in the US. I also agree with the assessment that some RE’s don’t wish to deal with or want to recognize (publicly) the business part of their practice, that they like the perception that all medical professionals do their job solely because they want to help people. And that this leads to a

“…pretense of noncommercial activity makes infertility opaque for customers: They don't know whether they ought to be paying what they are paying, or if they are getting a good service, because the usual market checks — information, competition, transparency — are absent.”

I think that most of the time, medicine lies somewhere in between being a business and being altruistic care of people’s medical needs and it would be nice if more people, especially doctors, acknowledged that.

As for Spar’s point about a need for more regulation of IVF like what is seen overseas (number of eggs retrieved, number transferred, etc.), I have problems with that. Each person is different with a different set of circumstances. Medical choices, it seems to me, should be made, assessed and presented by medical experts and chosen by the patient, not by any branch of government.

From the reviews of the book (which I haven’t read yet), it seems like Spar presents a very academic, economic and cold assessment of reproductive technology and forgets (or more likely never considered) the emotional, human aspects. From the salon interview she gave, I don’t think it was ever her point to consider any emotional aspects of IVF because that was not what she was interested in. She is interested in assessing the business aspects of IVF, not making judgements on the people undergoing IVF. It’s the reviewers of the book who are making judgements about infertiles. I think that is where the damage lies. That people will only read the reviews and the reviewers' biases and misconceptions about IVF and adoption and believe infertiles are all desperate people willing to do everything and anything to “buy” a baby.

Behavior Modification

2006-03-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, I envisioned it as a place I would go to be quiet with myself and dig deep so to be more aware of what I am feeling. I also thought if I gave myself this safe place, this haven, I would be able to sort out issues or give voice to feelings I wouldn’t normally allow myself to speak of otherwise. When I was thinking about a name for my blog, Worrier/Warrior seemed to perfectly define the states of my mental life when dealing with life’s struggles. I begin by worrying about every possible detail and the things that can go wrong then develop a methodical attack in hopes of conquering them.

I notice that many of my posts in the last month or so have been Worrier-driven rather than Warrior-driven. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it because it’s a reflection of the fact that I have started treating my blog as a place I go to only to put down my negative or confused thoughts rather than a place where all my emotions can reside. It’s like I’m giving too much power to my negative emotions and not nurturing my positive ones. When I focus on the struggles and emotional turmoil, I give them more worth and by default, the good things in my life become worthless. So, these last few weeks I have been trying to modify my behavior. I have stopped checking the various infertility and related boards every day and limited my blog reading to lunchtime. I had been a little afraid of this change because it meant I would have more time on my hands. For so long, that time on my hands meant the emptiness which encompassed my body after my miscarriage could surface and I would aimlessly go through the motions of “working.” Not so these days. Most of the time, I am able to focus and actually be productive.

One side effect of this behavior modification, though, is an avoidance to blogging. I’m not sure why. I get the feeling that I am in the process of integrating my IF into the bigger scheme that is my life. That while IF has been the central focus of my life for a long time, I am only now, fully realizing the chronic nature of being in the midst of and eventually going through ovarian failure. It means that my road to motherhood will be long, most likely difficult and possibly filled with making hard decisions. It means that even if I achieve motherhood, there are health consequences that will require my attention for at least decades if not for the rest of my life. And, while I started this blog with all intents and purposes as a chronicle of my IF journey, IF is not the whole of my life.

So, I intend to keep on with this behavior modification experiment for awhile longer to see where it leads me. I don’t know what that will mean for the frequency or quality of posts. I plan to post updates on my on-going (but perhaps fruitless efforts) to work with doctors on campus while I wait for my RE appointment. I think, eventually, I would like my blog to reflect the whole of the person that I am and not solely my infertility. If and how that will come about, I can only wait and see.

Results Normal…for cd19

2006-03-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

Well, got my results today from my retest (of FSH, estradiol, TSH, LH and prolactin). My FSH was a 3.1 for cd19. That’s exactly ten times lower than my cd3 levels I had taken back in October. But, since this is a luteal phase FSH level all it does I think is rule out the fact that I’m in menopause. I’m still not sure what if anything this latest round of bloodwork is really useful for except to confirm my TSH, LH and prolactin levels are normal. I didn’t question what Dr. Receptive was ordering last Friday because, really, I just wanted a referral to an RE from him. The fact that he listened to what I was saying was a bonus. When I called earlier this week to get an RE appointment, the earliest they could give me was Mid-May. Yeah, that’s right, not for another 10 weeks. The receptionist said she made a note to move up my appointment if another one opened up earlier, but I’m not about to rely on someone catching that so I will call the office every couple of weeks to see if there is a cancellation. Though Dr. Receptive was attentive, I am hesitant to do consult him in the interim since I still question his thinking that taking a cd19 FSH was useful. (At one point during the appointment he had said something to the affect that he was curious to see what it was. I didn’t ask why.) Plus, really, he has no expertise in this area and I think I’m much better off seeing someone who is at least more knowledgeable about ovarian function even if they don’t know anything about POF. The only reason I may go back to him is to ask for a luteal phase progesterone level and there’s no reason to rush that one since I’m about to start my period either tonight or tomorrow. What next? I don’t know yet. I’m feeling a bit fragile which probably has more to with the fact I’m about to get my period than anything else. But, I’m feeling disappointed in myself that I didn’t push more on getting my FSH on day 3 and/or calling back to get progesterone levels as well (as Thalia suggested in the comments of the last post). I think I’ll revisit all this in a few days when, hopefully, I’ll be over my PMS and can think more objectively.

Boost

2006-02-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

Well, the appointment to try to get a referral to check out my non-IF related issues turned out better than I expected. I think it helped that I got in to see a doctor this time instead of the nurse practitioners that are so prevalent on campus. No offense to NP’s, but I think in a situation like this I really needed someone with more experience. I could just tell that even though this was not his area of expertise, this doctor as least knew enough know which direction to go and to point me to. Dr. Receptive was not only nice, but he listened to every little bit of minutia I had to say. You know how sometimes you can talk to a doctor, or anyone for that matter, and you can tell the exact moment when they have stopped listening to you? Well, that never happened at any point during my appointment and can I just say how great that was to have somebody listening to everything you say and not be dismissive. From his comments to me, I could tell he considered every point I put out there and then made his own assessments. It felt a little more like the collaborative effort I was hoping for between me and the doctor. And, it gives me hope that I can find a specialist who I can interact with in the same manner.

So, I did repeat bloodwork for FSH, LH, TSH and prolactin. Even though I was in mid-cycle (cd19), Dr. Receptive wanted to see what my FSH was. His thinking was that it was too early to say it was POF since I just had the one FSH level. But it was high, and if the mid-cycle is also high, then that indirectly confirms my high FSH. I’ve thought about the validity of that logic these last couple of days and I’m not sure to think. I wish I had the presence of mind to ask for a progesterone level, too, just to see if those levels are high or low since I read that women with POF tend to have low progesterone also. But, it’s a start and the appointment energized me to move forward. The other little drawback was that he seemed to have a specific specialist in mind to refer me to, but he couldn’t remember his name. And he referred me to a “Gyn Endocrinologist” and so my referral got sent to Endocrinology because the receptionist didn’t find a number for “Gyn Endocrinology.” It didn’t occur to me until later that he might have meant to refer me to an RE which means my referral probably should have gone to OB/Gyn since that’s where the RE’s are. In any case, at least I have the referral and I can sort the details out one way or another.

Tests come back Friday.

Random Thoughts

2006-02-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

Been having a lot of random thoughts and was putting off writing a post until I had something more substantial, but that at the rate I’m going, that could take weeks. So I’m just going to go with the random thoughts since it’s been awhile since I last posted.

[begin random thoughts]

Spent most of last week preparing a presentation for a group of faculty, post-doc’s and other grad students. I hadn’t given a talk like this in a long time and was quite nervous. It didn’t help that my results from my latest experiments are leading me in a completely different direction than I started out with and I don’t really understand the implications of it all. Plus, I haven’t felt much excitement about my and the absolute worst thing is to try to talk about something you have no interest in. I mean, if you’re not interested in your own work, then how do you expect other people to be? I felt tongue-tied and twisted throughout the talk, and no one asked any questions, but the reaction after the meeting (there were 3 of us presenting) was positive. In fact, they were almost completely the opposite of what my perception of my talk was. Usually I’m pretty good at gauging how well I do. I’m not sure why there was such a huge discrepancy between my perceptions and reality. That bothers me a little but I’m glad I didn’t come off as bad as I thought. So, I’m going to try to be happy with what I have.

After the talk, I spent most of the weekend feeding my Firefly/Serenity obsession. I got Mr. Warrior hooked and so, even though I finished watching all the episodes and the movie only a week and a half ago, I have been re-watching it with Mr. Warrior. It’s almost more fun the second time around and you get to catch more of the dialogue.

This week has just been trying to get back into regular old working routines and trying to remember where I left off. So, far work has only been minimally productive this week and so I’m really glad it’s Friday. I plan to finish the baby toy I’ve been knitting and plan a baby-something or other for my cousin C., as my next knitting project. I had sent my cousin C. an e-mail awhile back to see how she was doing after losing one of her twins and she responded this week. Turns out they had severe male factor (plus she’s over 35) and they were not expecting to get pregnant without help. She was vague as to what the underlying problem was, but whatever it is their urologist had suggested a risky surgery and there was no guarantee of success. By the time they saw their urologist to discuss whether they should go ahead with the surgery or not, she was pregnant. The urologist was, apparently, very surprised she got pregnant. So, her due date is early August and they are cautiously planning the baby’s arrival and looking to buy their first house. I was not so hurt by hearing all her news, but not so happy either. I really am happy for her, that she was able to get pregnant without IVF or her husband undergoing surgery. I did wonder if there would ever come a day when news of an unassisted, we-have-problems-but-we-got-lucky-and-got-pregnant-anyway pregnancy won’t ever make me flinch just a little. The bright spot? While I was having that thought, I saw me asking myself “does it still hurt?” then looking towards two little kids, my kids, playing on the floor in front of me. I don’t know if that image will ever be my reality, but being able to picture a reality like that made me think that maybe I can have a future where I am happy in my life even if things don’t go the way I would like.

I was able to get an appointment today to try to get a referral to do more testing. Last time I tried this, the nurse practitioner insisted I could use my referral for my IF evaluation. But since the doctor basically told me there was nothing they could to for me on campus and to go to an IVF clinic and what I want to do non-IF wise is to find a doctor who has some understanding of POF or peri-menopause, I didn’t think the IF referral would cover that. I don’t want to get an appointment, have tests done and find out that I need to pay for things that would have otherwise been covered if only I had the right paperwork. Somehow, I couldn’t get the NP to understand that before so, I decided to make an appointment with somebody else to see if I get someone who can understand my dilemma. This was actually my cousin TPED’s (the potential egg donor’s) advice. To just keep bugging different people until I get what I want.

It’s taken about 2 months to get myself to make this appointment, so I’m hoping the doctor I’m meeting with today is more receptive. I am tired of receiving bad news or feeling completely stuck after a doctor’s visit because I can’t seem to get what I need. I’m a little afraid that if the doctor today still won’t give me a referral, I’ll just put off seeing a specialist again. I don’t want to keep putting this off, so I’m telling myself that no matter what the outcome today, my next step is to make an appointment with an RE and just deal with the insurance fallout.

[end random thoughts]

Odds and Ends (aka The Boring Post)

2006-02-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

This week has been kind of a hodge podge of all sorts of different things. Started the week feeling good after learning that a talk I had to give was postponed for a week. Then learned about a stitch n’ bitch group that started on campus and their monthly meeting was Wednesday. I had been looking for a knitting group to go to, but most of them I knew of were some distance away. I’m not the type of person who meets new people easily and having to travel a long distance only to find myself in a socially awkward situation kept me from ever trying to go to any of them. But going to one on campus seemed like minimal effort and since they were meeting in the middle of the day, I could always use the excuse that I had to go back to work to get out of any unpleasant situation. So, I packed my current knitting project in a bag and headed over there Wednesday. It was a little awkward at first, but I think I was in the frame of mind to have a go at meeting new people. Some people really took to the project I was working on and that felt nice to have people compliment me. I ended up having quite a nice time. I was actually a little sorry to go back to work. Later on in the day, however, I wasn’t feeling as grand. I had a horrible headache and felt unbearably tired. Since other co-workers had been sick, I realized I must have caught it, too. Went home early and slept until the next day. Spent the next day at home, too, napping, eating very little, reading and being completely enthralled by the TV series, Firefly. Got the DVDs as a gift from my brother because he thought I might enjoy it and boy, was he right! Last couple of days, I’ve just been having fun watching the entire series (easy since there were only a few episodes) and movie, Serenity, which was made a few years later. It felt good to let myself just be sick and completely lose myself in front of the TV.

Not a very exciting post, I know, but I felt like I was in a slightly different head space for awhile this week and somehow it made me feel a little more like my pre-IF self and it felt good to be her again even if it was for a little while.

A Call, the Sequel

2006-02-06T23:04:00.000-08:00

So, I took out my cell phone that I never really use unless I am out of town or we have visitors to charge up the batteries and saw that I had two messages. One was from my cousin I., left last Friday. She asked me to call her back because she was going through something personal and her sister C. suggested she talk to me. My heart leapt into my throat. I felt so guilty I didn’t call her as soon as I heard about her miscarriage from my mom. I took a breath, put the negative feelings away and called her up. Turns out, her miscarriage was very similar to mine. She didn’t suspect anything even though her period was weeks late and she had to get bigger pants (ditto), she got in for an u/s right away (ditto) and they just saw an empty sac (need I say it, again?). Time from positive hpt to dropping hcg? Three days. Beat my record of seven days, hands down.

She ended up having a D&C Saturday and for everything she had just gone through, she sounded upbeat over the phone. It was hard to read where she was emotionally, whether she needed support or if she only called me up because she didn’t know whether she should go ahead with a D&C or wait it out. In my opinion, after my long, dragged out experience with my miscarriage, the D&C would probably be the way I choose to do it if I had to again, so I let her know that and I think she appreciated the assurance. We talked awhile longer. She wanted to hear my story. I asked her more details about hers. And I told her that if she needed more emotional support, I would be here for her.

I hope that I can stay true to my word.

------------------

Talking with I. made me realize how insular my world is. It comes with the territory of being introverted (whereas I. is extremely extroverted, bubbly and, it seems, always surrounded by friends). And, for the most part I like that. I like my introverted-ness, the quietness that comes with sitting by yourself or with only one or two people and you can just be. But, I am beginning to realize more and more that if you add deep-seated doubts about yourself to the introverted-ness (I think I’ve used it enough that it has to be a bona-fide word now, don’t you think?), then it can become something that blocks people’s connection with you. I. had many people who asked about her and what was wrong which led to total strangers (people who knew people she knew) calling her and telling her about their miscarriage experiences. From this, she was able to get support, hear encouragement and cope with her tragedy. During the time after my miscarriage, there was really no one in my circle who was able to relate to me or tell me stories about their experience or tell me it was going to be ok, even. I. not only had friends who had gone through it, but a co-worker, a friend’s neighbor, her mom and me, her cousin. I don’t bring all this up to play another round of poor me (though I realize I have been doing that at least once a post for, oh, forever!). It is something that has been on my mind since thinking about how to tread this path of DE/IVF. My SIL, also a vibrant extrovert, went through DE/IVF due to age. Her egg donor literally fell into her lap. Her RE first thought they would try with her own eggs (though I have NO clue what he was thinking since she was 48 at the time), then decided last minute that her chances would be better with donor egg (gee, do you think?). The receptionist at her RE’s office knew of someone who wanted to donate her eggs because she saw a friend’s struggle with IF. They were able to work it out (no agency, no contract, no fees, she just paid the donor’s meds, monitoring, etc.—a completely altruistic donation in my opinion) and started cycling almost right away. My SIL had a total of 5 embies from this donation. Three were transferred and two iced. Today, there are two rambunctious 4 year olds running around our family gatherings.

In thinking about my cousin and my SIL, I can’t help but think that there is some life lesson I should be learning about tapping into the collective web of humanity that I so infrequently participate in either consciously or as an indirect result of playing by myself and liking it too much. I don’t want to become a totally different person than I am now, just slightly…re-formulated. I just don’t quite know exactly how to do it. Any ideas?

A Call

2006-02-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

A couple of nights ago, I got a call from my mom. One of my cousins, I., who is 40 and got married a couple of months before I did, had gotten pregnant and then miscarried. I hate that I feel this way, but I was relieved. After the emotional week I had, I was glad I didn’t have to deal with any family pregnancy news. I knew I. would try to get pregnant right after her wedding, but a little shocked it happened so fast for her. But, wait, my mother wasn’t finished. Another cousin, C., younger sister to I. and a couple of years older than me, was also pregnant. She had twins, but apparently lost one. Her due date is sometime in July.

I had known C. was trying to have a baby. She and I had been e-mailing for the last year or so and we shared our stories about trying to get pregnant. She is one of the few people who know the details of my IF. She has been dealing with some IF issues herself, due mostly to slight male factor.

I don’t know exactly what to feel now that I have had some time to digest some of this news. The night of the call, I was very sad but also quite disgusted with myself and my reactions. You would think that as someone who went through a miscarriage, I would have more compassion for my cousin I., instead of just relief for myself. You would think I would have wanted to reach out to her right away and offer her my understanding instead of hating her because at 40, she was able to get pregnant more easily than me. At 40, her eggs weren’t good, but still better than mine. I also don’t know how to deal with C. I’m sure the loss of one of her twins must be hard. But she is still pregnant. I’m sure she will go through the next few weeks, maybe months wondering if she will lose her other child and here I sit dreading the day this summer I will find a birth announcement in the mail. It feels petty and selfish. Even more important, this is not the kind of person I want to be. I am so tired of being this person filled with negative emotions.

And you know what else kills me? It is that C. and most likely I. were both pregnant when they came to our wedding. I had worried about how they would handle being around the small kids and babies and a visibly pregnant woman who would also be here. I spent time debating if I should warn them ahead of time (ultimately I decided that with the way we set up the house (separate kids room with games and video) and the backyard, it was big enough that they could go somewhere to totally avoid any kids or my pregnant friend).

Looks like I didn’t have to worry about them at all. As Mr. Worrier noted after I told him the news, they seemed quite happy around the other kids when they were here. Now, he understands why.

[Note to Thalia: Yes, I am grateful for Mr. Worrier and what we have. Without him, especially in these last few years, I don’t know how I would have survived. I do forget what a good life I have with him. Thank you for reminding me of that.]

------------------

Despite my emotional inability to deal with my cousins’ pregnancies and losses, I ended up having lunch with my pregnant friend the next day. I wasn’t sure how I would handle it but I realized I didn’t have any negative feelings toward her, at least not any strong enough that kept me from talking with her and enjoying our lunch together. I was even able to handle having a whole conversation about how her pregnancy was going and hearing how the baby is getting really active. Yet, today, I still feel dismayed and discouraged about the news about my cousins. Go figure.

Have you seen my courage?

2006-02-01T22:35:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago a friend of ours, A., came to stay with us for a few days. During that time, A. and I ended up spending most nights talking and staying up late. It was not something I expected we would do, because we hadn’t been close friends. But A. has been going through a difficult year and it seemed like she was in the process of trying to make some life changes. During our talks, I realized she was taking huge emotional risks by talking to me about her fears and hopes in an effort to open up her life to better things. It got me to reflect a little on my life and where I wanted to be. Talking with her reminded me of a book I had on my Amazon wish list called Changing for Good by James Prochaska. The book is written for and targeted to people who want to change bad habits (smoking, alcohol abuse, etc.) but applies, really, to anyone wanting to make a change. Soon after A. left, I ordered it. I have been reading it these last few days and am finding that there are many passages in the book that really speak to me.

Last night, I was reading about the preparation stage of change and was reminded of the real definition of courage—that courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to act in the face of fear. I dawned on me that I had lost the courage to tackle the difficulties of life and it has been missing for many years. I realized that it is cowardice that is holding me back from going forward with dealing with my infertility and verifying that my ovaries are indeed starting to fail. I am fearful of the bad news another visit to the doctor may bring. I am at a complete loss as to how to act despite my fears. Knowing that I am unable to act makes me feel bad about myself. Having these bad feelings intensifies my fears and I loathe exposing myself to situations that may open the door to bad news. Lather, rinse and repeat.

So, I guess the question now is, how do I find my courage again? I know it’s possible for me to be courageous because I have acted with courage before. But what deep, dark crevices of my soul has my courage been relegated to? Where do you go look for something that has been pushed so far down that you weren’t even able to see it was gone?

A midlife crisis to go with my midlife ovaries

2006-01-30T23:01:00.000-08:00

These last couple of weeks I’ve found myself just going through the motions of life and feeling unsatisfied. Up until the last couple of weeks, there has always been something to do—putting away wedding and Christmas things, preparing for visitors, then the accident and all the paperwork, dealing with insurance, etc. It felt never-ending but then, it did. And I thought it would be great because now I would have the time to spend on myself and my needs. Can you guess what happened? That’s right. I got what I wished for but I found I really didn’t want all that time for contemplation. I began looking for things that needed my immediate attention so I can avoid facing myself and my feelings. Deep down, I know it will help me to sit and be quiet and listen to myself, but I don’t want to. I’m not really sure what I’m afraid of. Am I afraid of what I’ll hear myself saying? I don’t know. I just know that avoiding it is making me miserable, but I can’t seem to get myself not to avoid it.

I’ve been in this place before, years ago when I was depressed and trying to fight my way out of it. I went to therapy and that helped some but it was a long process. I also had Mr. Warrior reminding me that the truth was my friend and that no matter how painful the truth may be, in the end it was better to know the truth and let it help me, than to push it away.

I don’t know exactly the nature of the truth I should be searching for within myself. Certainly this struggle with infertility is causing pain and anguish, but I’m also reaching the end of my graduate school career and I know that this is also causing stress and anxiety. It’s an ending that is not unwelcome, but at the same time I don’t know what I will do with myself once it happens. I have some ideas, but can’t get myself to act on anything. When I first made the decision to go back to school after having spent 6 years out of it, I was motivated by how I saw myself 10 years down the road. I thought it was a means to a more fulfilling work life and I imagined myself happily working during the weekday and being mother and wife the rest of the time. Now, I can’t imagine what my personal life or work life will be like 5 or 10 years down the road. These last years in graduate school have sucked my love of work out of me and infertility has vanquished my mommy dreams to some distant land that I’m afraid I will never be able to go to. I have to give up the future I had written but I don’t know how to re-write a new one.

For a moment

2006-01-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

I was driving a company car a few days ago. Had just finished a left turn into the median, checked the lanes to see if there was traffic (none) and began merging into the lane. I hear my co-worker beside me say something frantic. As I’m trying figure out what she is trying to tell me, a truck crashes into the side of the car. This time I felt clear headed and collected. Perhaps I had already expended all my frustration at the near hit last week when Mr. Warrior was driving. Perhaps my reaction last time was due to my volatile premenstrual hormones and now I was floating in my post AF calm. Perhaps it’s because I have finally realized that there are many things in life I can’t control. After all, relative to miscarriage and infertility, this was small in comparison. The people involved were mostly ok and it was 90% certain the other driver was at fault. Really, this was just a small glitch in the overall arc of my life. This accident was just one bad moment.

---------------

When I was pregnant, there was one morning when I was only the one working in an office annex. The radio was on and 100 Years by Five for Fighting came on. As I listened to the song, I began crying silently. They were tears of pure joy. Listening to this song and being pregnant, I felt so connected to the world, to life. And I felt lucky and grateful to have what I had. I felt like for once I finally got something I deeply wanted without having to work and plan and struggle for it.

Since then, I’ve only heard this song a few times by chance on the radio and on TV, as I never owned a copy of this song. Each of those times, as I listen to the song, I cry silently and

I'm 33 for a moment
Still the man, but you see I'm a they
A kid on the way
A family on my mind

-------------------

Tonight, I sat down to finish a knitting project and decided to use this downtime to listen to all the songs on my iPod for the first time. My brother had given it to me as a belated birthday gift and part wedding gift. The wedding gift part was to load it up with songs. 100 Years was one of the songs. As I listen to it tonight, the familiar sadness, the silent tears and the aching surfaces for a moment. Subsides. Then surfaces again.

Tonight I realized that these moments will always be a part of my life. But, maybe I am learning to live with these moments. You see, that knitting project? It’s a baby toy for a pregnant friend due in May. If I can feel these moments of aching and sadness while knitting a baby toy and just feel those moments without directing anger and hate towards my pregnant friend and pregnant women everywhere, well, then maybe I have the wherewhithal to make it through whatever is in store for me.

These tears I’ve cried

I’ve cried 1000 oceans

And if it seems I’m floating

In the darkness

Well I can’t believe that I would keep

Keep you from flying

And I would cry 1000 more if that’s

What it takes to sail you home

Sail you home sail you home

--Tori Amos

Lucky but Mad

2006-01-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

Mr. Warrior was driving me to work this morning. We were in the right-most lane of a large street that has two lanes of traffic going in both directions. We came upon a T-intersection with a one-way stop. The traffic going in our direction and the oncoming traffic do not stop. A car that had been stopped at the stop sign in the T-intersection began pulling out, not realizing we were headed towards them. Mr. Warrior immediately started to hit the brakes and pull to the left lane to avoid being hit. The other car then slowed down. I thought to myself, Oh good, she saw us and now she’s attempting to stop. But, her car kept pulling out, albeit much slower than she had been traveling before. At this point, Mr. Warrior floored the brakes and swerved into the left turn lane for the traffic in the other direction where we were able to stop completely. We must have sat there with our car facing the wrong direction, stunned and shocked for about a minute, probably a minute and a half before the world seemed normal again. We were lucky there were no other cars near us in any direction when it all happened. I looked around to see where the other driver was. I turned around and saw the car through our back window. The car had just completed finishing the left turn and the driver was casually driving away. As if nothing ever happened.

It has taken me all morning to calm down from the shock and the anger of it all. I can understand a mistake. You pull out not realizing there is a car coming, you try to stop and hope the other driver is also maneuvering to avoid being hit. Maybe you avoid an accident, maybe you don’t. But how do you pull out into the street, see that the other car is almost right in front of you and not try to stop? Ok, let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you are shook up, too and are not reacting in the best manner. Maybe you are a mother who didn’t sleep all night because your kid was sick. Maybe you are full of hormones because you’re infertile and have been trying for 5 years to have a baby and this is your 6^th and final IVF because you can’t afford it anymore financially or emotionally. Given all that, if you see that the car you almost got into an accident with, the car you forced into a lane for oncoming traffic, even if there was no oncoming traffic at that moment, wouldn’t you get out of the car and see if the people in the other car were ok? I suppose she could have just assumed we were not damaged because our car was not damaged, but it seems like an awfully callous assumption to make. Was it too much to ask for her to stick her head out the window and ask if everyone is ok? Maybe my expectations of total strangers are too high, but it’s maddening that someone could have acted in such an indifferent manner.

Whiny

2006-01-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

Been feeling sorry for myself these last few days. Hormones (whatever I have left of them) is playing some part as I’m about to get my period any day now. Unless my body has decided to go into full on ovarian failure, that is. In which case, this annoying spotting, stop, spotting, stop, spotting may be all I get this month. And if my ovaries don’t completely fail today, it will one day soon, maybe before I reach 35 and most likely before I hit 40. It’s ironic. One year ago, I would have been excited that I might not be getting my period. Now, I not only hope for a period, but for a lot of good bleeding because that would mean my body is capable of being normal. I don’t remember the last time I was scared I might soak through a pad or had flow overnight. And to top it all off, I get to go through this even more frequently now because I go through a cycle about once every 24 days! That’s every 3 weeks and 3 days. Every 3 weeks and 3 days I get a lovely reminder of how pathetic my body has become.

Life feels very unfair right now. I turned 33 less than 4 months ago. I shouldn’t have to be worrying about whether this is the end of my reproductive life. I shouldn’t have to wonder whether I should be taking some kind of hormone replacement because I’m starting to get night sweats. I shouldn’t have to wonder how much money I will have to spend in order to have a family.

Logically, I know that my condition could be a lot worse. My ovaries could have failed years ago or I could never have had any functioning ovaries. I could have cancer instead of ovarian failure. Logically, I know my life is generally a good one. But today, I feel like my whole body not just my ovaries have failed me. And life feels incredibly unfair.

Wavering Worrier

2006-01-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

So the wedding is over, the new year has begun and it’s time to go full guns on this IVF thing, right? Except, every time I think I’m ready to call up a clinic to make an appointment I start second guessing myself. What if this isn’t the best clinic for me and our issues? What if I haven’t done enough research on other clinics and I really should be going with another one? What if they push me to DE (even though I’m ready to go that route) and I still have a chance with my own eggs? What if they push me to try with my own eggs, I get pregnant and miscarry again because my eggs are shit and I should have just gone to DE? What if I have a whole slew of other problems that will affect my IVF outcome, but they overlook it or don’t test for it because I’m “young” or have gotten pregnant before or because the sun always rises in the east?

As more time passes, I get worse and worse and I have been wavering like this for at least the last week or so. I finally realized that a large part of it is that I’m terrified that going to the Dr’s will mean more bad news. Since my pregnancy in 2004, it seems like 3/4’s of the time I’ve gone to see a doctor or gotten tested it’s ended in bad news. And I’m tired of feeling hopeless after an appointment. Right now, I’ve got this Pavlovian response to seeing Dr’s about my infertility and I’ve got to get over it. How, I don’t know, but I can’t keep wavering. I felt best when I was moving forward and right now I’m stuck just sliding side to side. Stuck gets me nowhere near having a baby and a family. Stuck just ain’t going to cut it.

I guess the good little warrior got too much attention these last months and the worrier wants some attention, now.

New Year, New Beginnings

2005-12-31T09:57:00.000-08:00

Here’s hoping 2006 brings us a little closer to all that we hope for in life.

Happy New Year

Wedding Day

2005-12-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

Warning: very loooonng post

Like any other little girl, I had many fantasies about what my wedding day would be like when I grew up. What happened December 10 was nothing close to any of those childhood dreams. What happened December 10 was truly an outpouring of love and joy.

Flights of relatives and friends from the Midwest and East Coast were delayed or outright cancelled due to bad weather and that little incident of the plane skidding off the runway in Chicago. Yet, people stuck it out through the delays or wrangled with the airlines to change flights and made it to Southern California. By the day of the wedding, the tent where our ceremony was going to take place had not gone up yet. And our patio where tables were to be set up for the reception had not been swept or cleaned out. Not to mention there was still more cooking to do and most of the rooms of our house was still not ready to be a place to spend any enjoyable time in. We woke up that morning knowing we would be married that night, no matter what, but feared the ceremony would take place among piles of unused decorations and tangled Christmas lights. Eight of our friends and family volunteered to come over that morning for last minute preparations. Little did they know what they had gotten themselves into.

By the time I left for my hair appointment at 9:30AM, only my brother and his wife had arrived to help. I had just moved to this neighborhood and called up the closest stylist a few weeks before to make the appointment. I had read all the advice about testing out a stylist before the big day, but with our timetable, that was just not feasible. I just tried to keep the faith and focused on the fact that we were doing this solely as part of the process of starting a family. Whether I was the most beautiful or ugliest bride in the world did not matter. What would matter is that by the end of the day we would be married and one step closer to having a family.

I got to the salon right on time. I saw my stylist, an older woman, doing the hair of another older lady. She turned around to say good morning and I saw her unstyled hair, pushed back by a head band. Thick eyeliner outlined both her eyes. I have to admit, I got a little scared at this point. When you go to a hair stylist, you kind of want to have some confidence in the work that they do. The way she looked did not engender any kind of confidence. But what could I do? I had no hair styling ability myself and as I settled down in a chair to wait for her to finish, I took a deep breath and told myself that no matter what happens with my hair, it didn’t matter. The outcome of my hairdo was not going to affect the outcome of the day. I decided I would tell her in very general terms what I wanted (hair up, out of the way and in place for the whole day) and let her do her best. She was a very friendly woman but after about 45 minutes (!) and what I thought was an 80% completed updo, she decided to unravel the whole thing and start all over! Part of me wanted to scream NO! The other part just wondered silently what else I could do except wait it out. It was too late to find someone else so I took another deep breath and reminded myself again that no matter what I would be married by the end of the day. About 20 minutes into her next attempt, the phone rang. She went to go pick it up and ended up having a 10 minute conversation with a tenant of hers about complaints from another tenant of hers. After the phone call, she decided she could not have any more distractions and needed to focus on what she was doing. Her solution? To leave her phone off the hook! So, now the phone makes that annoying and loud signal to alert you that the phone is off the hook. After several minutes of this, the phone finally falls silent and by about 11AM, she was done. As suspected, it was not the best updo but not the worst. And it was quite suitable…for a housewife…in the 1940’s. But, what was done was done. I headed home and just tried to make the best of it. It was turning out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there were a few clouds in the sky (just enough to make it pretty) and I swear, the temperature must have been about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). By the time I got home, almost everyone who said they would come over to help had arrived. The patio was being cleared and the tent frame put together. There was a fun energy reverberating throughout. Everyone commented on my hair (positive but outright lies! But, very sweet and appreciated). About 20 minutes later, the tent was lifted up. Remember that scene in Witness where Harrison Ford participated in an Amish barn raising and the frames of the barn are pulled up and the music swells, then everyone sits down, happily eating lunch, talking and laughing (ok, so only the men sit down and eat happily and the women stay standing and serving the food, but imagine that with both men and women enjoying themselves)? That was exactly what it felt like when I saw the tent go up. People from different parts of our lives, family and friends, helping us build something beautiful and promising.

By lunchtime, the general look of the ceremony tent and patio was taking shape and we felt relieved that with the good weather (and rented console heater as backup) and tables and chairs available in the patio we were at least ready to handle everybody who would be showing up in a few hours, even if none of the rooms in our house was presentable. Everyone by this time would just pitch in and do anything and everything that needed to be done. No questioning, egos or bad feelings. Just a lot of joking around and running around getting things done. Several people even picked up the clothes they were going to wear to bring them back to our house so they could stay with us through the end and then just change into them right before the party. Table decorations were made up, candles put out and a million other little touches we didn’t even know about until days later when we started to put things away. About an hour before guests were going to arrive, I started to make the last of the food. The potato omelet. It was to be my downfall. The first omelet was burnt, the second spilled all over the stove and the third all over the sink. At this point, I decided I was too stressed out to cook and knew if I attempted anymore, I would just end up wasting all the eggs. We dropped many of the side dishes we were going to buy because we didn’t have anytime to run out and buy them, so it was kind of critical we had this dish. Mr. Warrior said he would try once he got a few more things done and in the meantime, my brother made an attempt, but it was just as disastrous. Pretty soon, people started to arrive and we realized, we had not yet changed into our wedding clothes yet. Half an hour later, still not changed. An hour later? Yep, still in our work clothes. Finally, we got our clothes and headed toward our master bath (quite a feat considering there were people now in every room of our house as well as the patio) and locked the door. We looked at each other, took a deep breath and realized…we had not yet cleaned our bathroom. There was no way we could only open up our one guest bathroom when there were 80 people milling around, so we proceeded to (silently) clean the floors, toilet, etc. We took turns going out and discretely grabbing cleaning supplies so to keep the bathroom occupied while it was still being cleaned. Intermittently, people would knock on our bathroom door and we would have to shout, “we’re still getting dressed!” As we finally started to get dressed (for real), we noticed how much more frequent the knocking became. Someone finally shouted through the door that the other bathroom had backed up and has been unusable. And could we maybe let one of my cousins in since it was an emergency? We were stunned!! We were really halfway through getting dressed at this point, so we quickly threw on the rest of our clothes and Mr. Worrier, in his suit, grabbed the plunger and headed to the other bathroom. (Now I wish I had a picture of that, but at the time it was a horrifying thought. What if the contents of the toilet backed out violently and onto Mr. Worrier and onto his suit?!?) Luckily, Mr. Warrior cleared up the situation (ahem) and all the bathrooms were now suitable for use. We decided to give people a few minutes to use the facilities and prepared to start the ceremony.

I knew one thing my father really wanted was to walk me down the aisle. Many, many years ago when I was about 11 or 12, my family and I were walking from the parking lot to the mall. He held my hand as we crossed over to the mall and said to me that this would probably be one of the last few times he would every hold my hand again since I was growing up. And that the next time would probably not be until I was getting married and he walked me down the aisle. So, even though we were planning a very low key and informal ceremony, I wanted to make sure that he could hold my hand one more time. I started to look for my father to start the ceremony and he was no where in sight. After several inquiries it turns out that the battery of my father’s video camera which one of my relatives was operating had died. And my father had gone back to the hotel to pick up his extra battery. Now, the second most important thing to my father for the wedding besides walking me down the aisle, would probably be to have pictures and video of the wedding. My dad has always been a picture and video freak when it comes to any occasion so it was no surprise he was so intent on getting a battery for his video camera (even though my brother also had his). We waited and waited for my father to get back. We checked to make sure he was the only person missing (he was) and waited some more. Crazy thoughts went through my head while we were waiting (what if he got into a horrible accident on the way back and was killed?) but he finally got back. We ushered everyone out to the patio and tent. Asked everyone aged 55+ and their companions to take a seat (we didn’t have enough room for everyone to sit down), then lowered the age limit to 50+ when some people didn’t want to own up to their ages and half the 25 or so seats we had available (remember we had 80 people) were still not taken. Then, added people with children. My brother started the music (Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole) and my father and I walked down the aisle. Our friend who was marrying us said some words and Mr. Warrior said a few sentences (can’t remember exactly what, was too busy trying to figure what I was going to say), then I said a few sentences about how I was happy to see all the different people in our lives being with us. Then we took turns reading the selection “On Marriage” from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Our friend asked us if we would take each other as husband and wife. We exchanged rings (Mr. Warrior placed mine on the wrong hand! I tried to discretely tell him to put it on the other hand, but he didn’t hear me. Oh well. I switched it after we walked into the house after the ceremony.)

Now, the dinner craziness starts. We planned to start people on the soups and salad while we finished the preparations for dinner. We didn’t have time to pick up the Thai soup, so we just had the one cream of corn and roasted pepper soup and our salad bar. We also had appetizers we started serving when guests were still arriving and those were still out, but people kept coming into the dining room where we had a buffet set up to “take a peek” at what we were going to have for dinner. People also started grabbing dinner plates to use those for salads when they came in to “peek” which became annoying and created a large traffic jam, because other people saw this and thought dinner was ready. There were other people who came in and actually provided help. Like a friend of ours who is an avid cook who jumped in to make those annoying omelets. And several times, as I would try to put out food, someone or another would see what I was doing and just take over and finish up, without me asking for help. And as the dining room became more crowded, my brother and another cousin of mine (male and very tall) started acting as buffet bouncers, stopping people from coming in and closing as many doors as possible to cut off the area. It was ingenious! Especially on the part of my cousin who probably figured that helping out in this way would also ensure he would be one of the first in line when dinner was ready!

After about another half hour or maybe 45 minutes (it was hard to tell and I didn’t really care how long it was taking as long as things were getting done), we were finally ready to open up the buffet area. When we had first moved into the house, I had noticed a good size bell that hung outside next to the patio. I had rung it once before to see if it worked and to see what it sounded like and new it had a nice, solid ring to it. As we got ready to announce that dinner was served, I yelled excitedly to Mr. Warrior that I was going to ring the bell. He got my brother posted at one glass door that opened to the patio and my bouncer cousin posted at the sliding door that opened to the living room. I went to stand next to the bell and Mr. Warrior signaled a countdown with one hand. At “zero,” I rang the bell once…the doors flew open and our guests were surprised (stunned?) into silence. I rang the bell twice, then three, four and five times. Mr. Warrior announced that dinner was ready and everyone applauded and half our guests jumped into line.

After everyone had a chance to eat dinner, we started our White Elephant gift exchange. Some of the older folk and others who didn’t bring a gift to participate left at this point. We had about 45 or so participants and so it went on for about two and half hours. By the end of the night, I was very tired but quite happy how things had turned out even though there were many things we didn’t get to do and many little crises that turned up along the way. It was not how I ever imagined my wedding to be, but it was wonderful, heartwarming and full of family and friends we really care about. Mr. Warrior’s cousin, his date and her two daughters stayed after (without being asked!) to help us put away the leftover food. We went to bed about 2AM…happily married.

T Minus 2 Days and Counting

2005-12-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

The cooking frenzy begins! Our planned menu for our buffet dinner was:

-Salad Bar (spinach and/or lettuce plus lots of chopped tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, celery, corn, red onions, carrots etc.)

-Soup “Bar” (two soups—Creamy Corn with roasted red pepper and a Tom-Yum Thai soup ordered from a local restaurant, and it really is yummy-yum-yum)

-Carrots with Coriander*

-Rosemary Potatoes (bought at Costco)

-Steamed then chilled broccoli with a yogurt-ginger dressing*

-Quinoa pilaf

-Tabouleh*

-Whole Roasted Pig (20 lbs; ordered form a Chinese BBQ restaurant)

-4 Roast Ducks (3 cut up, 1 kept whole for presentation; ordered with pig)

-Whole poached (then chilled) salmon

-Chicken with yogurt*

-Spanish Potato Omelets*

-Steamed Asparagus (served chilled)

-Octopus Salad (from a local Italian deli)

-Various and sundry items from Whole Foods deli as additional side dishes that Mr. Warrior would pick up

(*these recipes are from cookbooks written by Marian Burros which are no longer in print. But, if you are ever looking for good, simple, relatively quick and absolutely tasty recipes, she is definitely the way to go!)

So, we had to cook about 2/3’s of the foods we planned to serve and a good friend of mine was coming to spend two days with me to help me cook all of it. We had planned to start early Thursday morning, but I ended up having to go to Costco that morning to pick up 4 dozen red roses I was going to use for making my bouquet and corsages/boutonnieres and my friend ended up not arriving until after lunch. We started off with the easy stuff and steamed all the veggies that needed steaming, then stored them in the refrigerator to chill. That took only about an hour and a half. We were quite proud of ourselves and started cooking the carrots for the carrots and coriander dish. When that was done, we started on the tabouleh. That went great until we realized that the corn oil had gone rancid! Of course, we didn’t realize this until we had already added it to the 6 cups of soaked bulgur. Luckily, the oil was poured more or less in the middle of the bulgur and we were able to dig out all the affected kernels, so we didn’t have to completely start over. By the time we finished the tabouleh it was near 11pm and I still had to make my bouquet. I knew it would never get done if I put it off until the day before the wedding, so we broke out my trusty how-to book and sat down to make it. It turned out pretty wonderful and I was very proud of the fact that it only took about $10 worth of roses to do it. I had gotten a quote from a wholesale florist and was quoted $250 for a duchess rose bouquet! Here is a picture of it taken the day after the wedding:

It was a lot of fun just talking and hanging out with my friend while we made the bouquet, but I was quite tired by the time I got to bed by 1AM. Lots more food needed to be cooked and more people would be arriving the next day. I was already more than exhausted. I wasn’t sure at this point how I was going to be awake enough to make it through the wedding ceremony that was supposed to take place in about 40 or so hours. And did I mention that we hadn’t figured out what exactly was going to happen at our ceremony and had no ideas what our vows were going to be? We were having a civil ceremony using a friend of ours who got “appointed” (i.e. fill out a form and pay $50 to the state of California) to be a Deputy Marriage Commissioner, who would then have the legal power to marry us. The paperwork we got stipulated that the only things that needed to happen during the ceremony was that we each had to say we would take the other as husband or wife and the Deputy Marriage Commissioner had to announce he had the power to marry us and proclaim us husband and wife. Although we wanted a simple ceremony, a three sentence ceremony just wasn’t going to cut it. But, we had no idea (or the time to think of ideas) of what else we wanted to have in the ceremony.

So, let’s recap. With 40 hours left to go, we still had half the food to cook, the tent for the ceremony to put up, the patio where we would have tables for dinner to clean up because it was a mess and filled with Christmas and other decorations, still in their original packaging. We had the clever idea of turning one of our bedrooms into a kid’s room, but it was still filled with 78 pots of poinsettias. These poinsettias were going to double as wedding decoration and wedding favors. Another clever idea, but they were taking up way too much space at this point and getting in the way of all the last minute preparations. Basically, we had a house and backyard/patio full of clutter with too little food to feed the 80 people that were going to start descending upon us.

Any bets as to how much we actually got done before the ceremony?

T Minus 4 Days and Counting: If there’s family drama, it must be a real wedding we’re having…

2005-12-21T17:25:00.000-08:00

My parents took a very long time to accept Mr. Warrior. In fact, it took about a decade. When we first started dating in 1992, I was 19 and he was 44. Add in the fact that he was not Chinese and I knew my parents would go ballistic. So, the first 6 months or so of dating, I didn’t tell them. It was not hard to do because my relationship with my parents wasn’t a very communicative one. But, one day I just decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore. It wasn’t about wanting to be closer to my parents, it was wanting them to accept me for who I was no matter how much they disapproved. And, I was tired of keeping things from them just because I was afraid of upsetting them. I was tired of doing things the traditional way, where the negative and the unpleasant is not talked about in an attempt to make them nonexistent. When I called my mother up to tell her about Mr. Warrior, she was calm at first, asking me all sorts of questions, trying to gage the situation. I answered everything honestly and we got off the phone. Then I waited. Because I knew I wouldn’t get my parents real reaction until after she had processed it all and talked to my father. Sure enough, she called back several hours later and it all exploded. There was yelling and crying, yelling and pleading, yelling and lecturing and then just plain yelling. It was exhausting, but all along I knew it was the right thing to do. A week later, they asked me to come home to “talk” to me. I think they wanted to get me back into their territory because they believed Mr. Warrior was brainwashing me. (Years later I would learn that they were afraid he was part of some syndicate where the men tried to seduce young, Asian college women to con their families out of money.) When I went home, they wanted me to drop out of college, come home and figure things out with them about what I how I was to handle my relationship with Mr. Warrior. Well, I KNEW how I was going to handle my relationship with Mr. Warrior, it was my relationship with my parents I didn’t know how to handle. Of course I refused. I made plans to have Mr. Warrior come get me out of their house if they weren’t going to drive me back to my apartment 2 hours away, but for some reason at the end of the weekend they did. Then followed weeks of various family members calling me and telling me how much my parents were hurting and to break off my relationship with Mr. Warrior because it was causing my parents so much pain. No calls from my parents, but plenty from all my relatives. During this time, they also asked Mr. Warrior to speak with the matriarchs of the family at one point (very strange, since it was always the males in my family who made the big decisions when I was growing up). This included my grandmother who spoke no English, my father’s sisters and my mother. Mr. Warrior (who was very patient through all of this and supported me the whole time) went. It was a lot of questions about his intentions and he answered honestly. That he didn’t know where this was going or if it meant we were going to be married eventually, but he cared for me very much at this point and had no intention of doing me or my family any harm. That was not what my family wanted to hear and I think they came away from it very dissatisfied. After a month or two, I guess my parents just go to the end of their rope. My mom called me up, crying and gave me the ultimatum. Them or Mr. Warrior. I couldn’t have a relationship with both. I told her, yes, I could have relationship with both, but if they chose not to have a relationship with me because of Mr. Warrior, then that was their decision, not mine. My father came up the next day and told me I had to withdraw the money they have given me to put into a bank account for my college tuition. He told me it wasn’t just because I chose Mr. Warrior over them, but because they were having financial troubles and needed the money. (I think he said that second part to “throw off” Mr. Warrior because they were still afraid he was after their money. Also my parents figured if I didn’t have any money for college, I would eventually have to return home). I told him, I’m sorry he’s having financial troubles but I needed money to continue school and to live in general. That I know the money was their hard earned money and I would find a job to support myself and eventually give them their money back. I just couldn’t give it all back right now. We drove to my bank, I withdrew half the money I had in my account and gave it to him. And that’s how I came to be disowned by my parents.

Eventually, I got a job and Mr. Warrior lent me $2000 so that I could get through my last two years of college and graduate. After some time, my parents started speaking to me again. First my mom, then eventually my dad. (My mom would make surreptitious phone calls, telling me she wasn’t supposed to be talking to me but that she just needed to know if I was ok. I would tell her I was ok, she would cry then say bye and hang up.) For years, though, we did not ever talk about Mr. Warrior. They kept to their “if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist” philosophy and I went along with it. I spent Thanksgiving with Mr. Warrior’s family and saw my parents for Chinese New Year’s. My family always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, so I would go by myself to see my parents a few days before Christmas, then drive home Christmas morning to spend Christmas day with Mr. Warrior and his mom. Then, in the summer of 2003 my parents decided to visit us. By this time we had moved to Southern California and they flew in for a day and a night. It was the first time they spent any time with Mr. Warrior in the 11 years we had been together except for my mom when she saw him at the matriarch meeting. My brother and his girlfriend, now wife, came to visit also. We were a bit apprehensive at first, but it turned out well. Since then my parents and I have developed a better relationship and a more communicative one. I finally felt I could be completely me with them and be accepted by them. They still had their issues, but I could see them trying to respect my choices and keep their opinions to themselves. Mr. Warrior was finally invited to Chinese New Year’s in early 2004 and officially accepted into the family. A few months later when I found out I was pregnant, I had expected my parents pressure us into getting married. Instead, my mom told us to do what we thought was best but she knows how tiring it can be to be pregnant and advised us to wait until the baby was older to get married. She was sincere and I believed she felt like Mr. Warrior was my de facto husband and trusted him to take care of me and our baby, no matter what legal status we had. My parents were both devastated when I told them about the miscarriage. Apparently, they had already started thinking about Chinese nicknames they wanted to call the baby (my mom kept suggesting names for a boy and my dad objected since he was convinced it was going to be a girl). At my brother’s wedding this last summer, in the four days we were there, my father spent more time with Mr. Warrior than I did. Because he kept insisting on taking Mr. Warrior along wherever he went. By the time we had set a date for the wedding, they were probably more in love with Mr. Warrior than I was.

Which was why it was such a shock to be finding ourselves angry at my parents four days before our wedding. We had planned a Saturday morning breakfast at a nice restaurant for Mr. Warrior’s parents, my parents and our siblings. In fact, we had a private dining room all to ourselves. We planned for just the immediate family because our parents had never met before and even though we knew we would be crazy-busy with last minute preparations, we thought it would just be plain uncomfortable for them, and inconsiderate on our part, if the first time they met was at our wedding with 75 other people around. And since more than half of those people would be my relatives, we thought it would help Mr. Warrior’s parents feel less overwhelmed by my family. We couldn’t do it any earlier, because my parents weren’t arriving until 10:30pm the night before the wedding, so the morning of the wedding was when it was going to have to be. I put together a slideshow of pictures of us and our families for the wedding, and Mr. Warrior suggested we show it to our parents at the breakfast to take the pressure off of the first meeting. When I first told my mom about the breakfast, her first response was that we had to invite her brother who they were flying in with. I explained to her that this was going to be a quick breakfast and the point was for them to meet Mr. Warrior’s parents and having other people there would just be a distraction. She told me it wouldn’t look good if my uncle knew about it and wasn’t invited. I told her he wouldn’t be upset if he didn’t know about. Two days later, four days before the wedding, my father calls back. He says they have to bring another uncle, his brother-in-law, because he was going to be in town by then and my parents promised his wife, my dad’s sister, they would make sure my diabetic uncle ate properly and timely. I told him I’m sure my uncle could take care of himself being that he has had diabetes for years and if he couldn’t, surely his daughter, daughter-in-law and grandson, who were in town for the wedding, could take him to breakfast that morning. My dad then told me how my uncle does not wish to see any members of his own family at this wedding but I was not to tell my cousins about it. Now, how my uncle was going to avoid seeing his daughter, daughter-in-law and grandson when he came to our wedding which was going to be held in our 3 bedroom, 1700 square feet house, I’ll never know. But this is when I started getting really upset because twice now they have tried to get an uncle of mine to come to this breakfast, even though I made it very clear it was just for the parents so that they could meet each other and so that Mr. Warrior’s parents would not feel overwhelmed by the tidal wave of Chinese people they were going to encounter later that night. Plus, I suspected something else was going on because all the explanations about why one or the other of my uncles had to be there was a bit ludicrous. And from the way they were acting, I knew I was not going to get the real reason out of them. I felt that they were placed in the middle of something, but I couldn’t figure out if it was cultural traditions that were blocking them in (i.e. we need a male elder to be present at the meeting of the parents) or family pressure (i.e. my father’s sister insisting on her husband being looked after at my wedding) or their own discomfort at meeting Mr. Warrior’s parents. And the way my parents were dealing with this whole situation was a little too reminiscent of all the weirdness that resulted when they first found out about Mr. Warrior. I felt like all the progress we made as a family was for naught and we had regressed to the relationship we had a decade ago. We were back to the old way of dealing with things and I didn’t like it. I felt they should have trusted me and Mr. Warrior. That we would have made the meeting with his parents as un-awkward as possible for everyone even if the situation was less than ideal. I was frustrated at their need to hide behind tradition or excuses in an attempt to alleviate their own anxieties. I decided to play their game and told them I wasn’t sure we could have my uncle there because we already made the reservations and I didn’t know if the room we had could handle more people. Two hours later, my brother calls. My dad had called him asking for either him or my sister-in-law to back out of the breakfast to make a space for my uncle! At this point, I dug my heels in. I explained to my brother why I wanted both of them there and not my uncle (of course my brother understood) and told him that I would handle my parents. I called my parents back the next morning and asked them, straight up, why they were so insistent on my uncle being there. Was it tradition? Family pressure? What? They kept to their story about him needing to be looked after and how he did not want to see his own family. This made me even more furious. Because, if true, I was being asked to endure a breakfast with someone who is almost always belligerent and difficult to deal with on a day when the focus is supposed to be on me and Mr. Warrior, not on an uncle I never see. Why I was expected to deal with my uncle’s issues with his family when he chose to come to a wedding knowing his family members were also going to be there, I’ll never know. When I hung up the phone, I wanted to throw it across the room and yell and scream. Then I wanted to cry. And I did. I cried and yelled and screamed and told Mr. Warrior I wanted to cancel the breakfast. He agreed. He was as pissed off as I was and at this point wanted to have nothing to do with my family. I called my mom back, told her we had way too many things to do and we were canceling the breakfast. She responded with relief, saying it was probably the best solution.

I still don’t understand why and what happened. On the morning of the wedding, Mr. Warrior received a call from my cousin, the daughter of the uncle who was so insistent on not seeing his family. She called to say that she would be late in coming over to help us out (which was ok with us since she spent the whole day before helping out and we had a phalanx of people already at the house). The reason? She was going to have brunch with my parents, her sister-in-law, her nephew and HER FATHER.

As far as I can tell, they had a perfectly pleasant brunch and both my cousin and her sister-in-law had a good time seeing my uncle whom they hadn’t seen in quite awhile. As for me and Mr. Warrior? Well, we decided the traditional ways are not so bad after all. We plan to never talk about this incident again with my parents.

T Minus 5 Days and Counting

2005-12-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Since college, I’ve always been a list girl. Sometimes I write my lists down, sometimes the lists only exist in my head. Most of the time I make the list because I am stressed out and sitting down and writing out a list of things to be done soothes that anxiety by giving me a sense of control. Then the feeling when I cross things off the list once their done...priceless!

Of course, throughout all the wedding preparations I have made endless lists. The last list I made before the wedding was something like this:

-order whole roast pig

-shop for groceries

-prepare/cook food for wedding

-clean bathrooms

-finish setting up patio (tables, seating, candles, etc.)

-make reservations for dinner Friday night (for people arriving early for the wedding)

-make reservations for breakfast Saturday morning (so parents can meet for the first time!!)

-make reservations for Sunday brunch (for people who have not left yet)

Not too bad, right? Except, if you look closely, you will see that a few of the items like “shop for groceries” or “prepare food for wedding” is quite involved and probably required sublists in and of themselves. But, I was still in my “oh everything will turn out ok, because really, what has gone wrong?” state of mind, completely blocking out the fact that in the last 18 months I had lost a baby, haven’t been able to get pregnant again and found out I will probably never be able to have my own biological children. But, hey, it was my wedding and every woman has delusions about how perfect her wedding is going to be, right? And, honestly, as I think about it now, I think I was almost purposely testing Life. I could no longer have delusions that I could have anxiety-free sex, get oops! pregnant, stroll through 9 months in a state of bliss and have a baby in my arms. But that wasn’t going to stop me from having delusions of a dream wedding. How was I going to cook for 80 people and still feed them on time, after the ceremony? It was just going to happen. How are we going to set up the house in time, when there were still a million boxes of random things lying around in every room and the carpet still needed to be vacuumed, the bathrooms cleaned, the tables to be set up and a thousand other things done? It was just going to happen. This wedding was as much about believing again that good things can happen in my life as it was about becoming legally husband and wife. We didn’t know how things would get done, but I had my list and we had a group of people we knew would be showing up to help in the last few days. And.It.Was.Just.Going.To.Happen. Whatever gets done, will be it. We may not end up having every last detail we hoped for (I may have had my delusions, but I was also realistic), but whatever we ended up with was going to be good. Wonderful, even. So what if I had never poached a whole salmon in my life and didn’t have the proper pans to do it? It was going to happen and I was determined to believe in it to the end.

Whole Roast Pig? Ordered, paid for in advance and pickup time determined.

Shop for Groceries? My cousin (same cousin we are considering to be our donor) and good friend who came to help me cook kept me sane by driving me to the grocery store when I could no longer think complete thoughts let alone drive. One read the grocery list while I directed them to the right location in the store and the other managed the shopping cart. They kept me going and on track and helped me get the shopping and cooking done.

Poaching that salmon? A friend's husband, who is a chef, lent me a gigantic pan and a wonderful recipe.

Clean the bathrooms? Well, kind of. Good enough anyway and there is a (now) funny story that I will write about in the wedding day post.

Reservations for various meals? All cancelled! Why you ask? Long story (again will be told in an upcoming post). But, in the end it was all mostly for the best.

I learned many things during the last few days leading up to the wedding. But, most importantly I learned that it is good for me to make my lists, to lean on other people if I need to in order to make the things on those lists happen and then I need to let the list go.

Because I can still end up happy even if there are things on that list that never get crossed off.

T Minus 7 Days and Counting

2005-12-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

One week before our wedding day, we woke up to find that it was freezing cold. Now, we have lived in southern California for the last five years and what happens when you have lived in southern California for that long is that you forget there are days when the temperature can go below 55 degrees Fahrenheit (about 13 degrees Celsius). Pretty much anything below that feels “freezing cold” after you have lived in a place where the average temperature is about 65 degrees. Year-Round. (You also start doing things like get cranky when the sun stops shining for two days in a row, but that’s another story.) Normally, when the temperature drops in December, we take it as a nice reminder that winter has arrived. But, when you have planned for 80 guests to be standing outside at 6pm for your wedding ceremony, then sit outside a (covered) patio for dinner, when the temperature drops like that, you start freaking out a little bit. It was probably foolish to believe we could pull off an outdoor wedding in December, even if it’s in southern California, but foolish we were and now with only 7 days to go and weather.com predicting a 20% of showers, we were starting to fear a disaster on our hands.

The next morning we woke up and it felt as if icicles were hanging off our noses. As we laid in bed, dreading the cold, thinking about our failed test run to warm the patio even though we had put up plastic sheeting all around the sides and used 3 gas heaters, we pretty much just freaked out completely. We counted and recounted the seats we had around the house and realized that even with creative seating (i.e. counting both toilet seats), we would be able to have no more than half of the people stay comfortably indoors. The Sunday before the wedding became a mad scramble to figure out what we could possibly do to pump heat into the patio.

As we laid in bed, afraid to move for fear of the cold and of the pending disaster, we told ourselves that no matter what, we would be married on December 10. If need be we would do it in our kitchen, with a 6pm ceremony and a repeat 6:30pm showing for those who couldn’t get close enough to view it the first time. We hoped we wouldn’t have to resort to that, but the most important thing was to get married so that we can start a family. It would be nice if we had a nice wedding and all our guests could enjoy it, but you know what? If we can survive a hellish miscarriage and a year and counting of infertility, our family and friends could probably survive a few hours of discomfort.

After this realization, we were able to unlock ourselves out of our fears, call up party places to find the only one that still had console heaters to rent to heat up the patio, buy a tent under which to hold our ceremony and get ready for the last crazy days of wedding preparations. We were quite pleased with ourselves to have worked through the weather crises. I even allowed myself the thought that perhaps everything would be smooth sailing after this point.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Calling Western Union

2005-12-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

Wedding over STOP Almost recovered STOP Many posts in head STOP Will be back in the blogosphere soon STOP

Blogger's Block

2005-11-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

I realize there has been a lull in my posting, but I can’t seem to come up with any worthwhile posts. One part of it is that we have been using this time off to finish off the last big pieces that still need to come together for our wedding. It has been going more smoothly than anticipated (knock on wood), though the days are busy and there is still much to do. The other part, though, is that there seems to be a run of bad news in blogland (like here and here) and it just doesn’t seem right I should revel in the trivial aspects of my wedding preparations. I love the way our wedding is taking shape and how much Mr. Warrior is also getting into it. But, a main reason for getting married is to start building our family and it is really heartbreaking to see how difficult a road my friends on the internet are having. Talking about wedding decorations, guest lists, etc. feels frivolous.

But, how do I balance that with the responsibility I feel to the people who read this blog? I installed a counter a few weeks ago because I was curious to see how many people actually come here, and was surprised to find that I get a steady stream of 10-15 visitors on most days. I then found myself getting more and more anxious the more days that pass without a post. I know I started this blog as therapy, but now that I feel like I have made some friends in blogland, posting takes on another dimension. I’m not sure how to handle this responsibility I feel to post more often.

Have you had times like these? What do you do?

Hey baby, what's your sign?

2005-11-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

On and off the last few weeks, I have been scouring the internet looking for profiles of women willing to donate their eggs. Many websites will post pictures of some of these women with short descriptions of their jobs, interests, hobbies, etc. I usually start out not being very picky. I do want a Chinese donor because, well, being Chinese, if I gave birth to a completely Caucasian baby (Mr. Warrior is Caucasian) it might make the whole donor egg thing more evident. And, while I have no problem with people I know, knowing about it, I don’t really want to have it broadcast to every stranger I meet. Most sites with donors have very few Asian much less Chinese donors. Every once in awhile, though, I will come across one with several Chinese donors. In cases like these, I find myself focusing in on the ones I find attractive and only reading their profiles. Then, I start thinking about how I prefer egg donor Donor KF345 who enjoys cooking as a hobby rather than Donor AL981 who enjoys extreme sports. And, well, if I had a choice, yeah, the one studying to become a lawyer instead of the one who is an actress/singer/waitress/real estate agent. Oh, look there are two attractive Chinese chefs studying law. And, if I look at their pictures again I see that the way this second donor is posed makes me think she’s open, gregarious and sweet while lawyer-to-be #1 had a slightly slutty come hither look that seems to say, hey baby, looking for a good time? instead of, hey don’t you want to use my eggs to make your baby?!

At this point, I usually have to slap myself so I can come to my senses and ask myself what is most important?

I realize I am in the strange predicament of actually choosing certain characteristics that may be inherited by my future child. On the one hand, all I want is a healthy, happy child. No more, no less. On the other hand, I do have a choice now so why not exercise it as best I can? Infertility has taken away so many of my first choices, shouldn’t I try to make lemonade out of my lemons?

If I had it my way, I would rather have no choice at all. My children would inherit high cholesterol, bad teeth and near-sightedness (yes, it seems some agencies will ask donors to provide information on whether their family members wear glasses or not). But, that no choice option is not an option for me anymore. Just as I would avoid caffeine, alcohol and smoking during my pregnancy to give my child the best start in life possible, wouldn’t I also choose a woman who exercises 5 times a week in her spare time over one who goes to the movies 5 times a week? And while I believe nurture plays an equally an important role as genetics in who you are and who you turn out to be, why wouldn’t I choose a college educated donor over a high school educated one if I would also choose to read to my child every night instead of plopping them in front of the TV?

Yet, I can’t get over the creepy feeling the inevitably crawls up my back whenever I spend a long time going through donor lists. I feel like I am placing judgments on women, their lives, their beliefs and their values. And it's all based on very little knowledge of who they really are. I am almost glad that Asian donors are so few. This is tough enough already when, at most, there are 10 donors in a particular agency’s pool to choose from. I don’t know how I would handle choosing from a much larger pool.

Good News, Bad News

2005-11-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

Good: My mom just called to tell me an aunt and uncle of mine are coming to my wedding. I am very shocked because they are currently living in Tokyo, due to his job, and are flying back to the US to come to my wedding after having just been back for another family wedding last month. When I remarked that I couldn’t believe that were doing that, my mom says everyone in the family really wants to come to the wedding because of me. Sure, that makes me feel real good inside. That everyone is making such an effort to attend my wedding given the fact that the first 5 or 6 six years of my relationship with Mr. Warrior was filled with family uproar and disapproval (I really must write a post chronicling all the weirdness—like when Mr. Warrior had to face the bevy of family matriarchs, alone, and explain his motivations through a thick fog of cultural and language barriers), is a great gesture on my family’s part. I just wasn’t really expecting EVERY single person we invited to show up, you know?

Bad: My cousin (who also happens to be the daughter of the aunt and uncle mentioned above) will be coming with one of her kids. My parents don’t know if she’ll be bringing her youngest or oldest, but my guess is the youngest. And that makes me nervous. This is the same cousin who was due at the same time I would have been due when I was pregnant. I have been dreading the first time I would have to see her youngest daughter, not knowing how well healed I would be. I don’t know how to feel knowing it might be on my wedding day. When her Christmas letter came that year, I thought I could handle reading the news of the birth because I had heard about it already and had time to process the details. And that part of it was ok. I was even ok seeing pictures of the baby she had sent along with the letter. But, I wasn’t expecting to see a picture of her lying in bed at the hospital, pre-birth, naked tummy showing with a contraction monitor hooked up, reading a baby names book. I just broke down when I saw that picture. I don’t want to burst into tears seeing this child for the first time. At my wedding. I don’t want to start dreading my wedding day. How do I prepare myself for this? Is it even possible to prepare myself for something like this?

Huh?

2005-11-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

So, this morning I woke up and fragments of three dreams swirled around my head. The first was getting up to go to the bathroom and realizing I had not used this bathroom in our house for a long time. The toilet seat felt different and that’s how I knew I hadn’t used it for who knows how long. Then I realized that this wasn’t the bathroom in our current house. It is the master bath of the condo we previously lived in. I was thinking that I was not looking at things as they are and kept shutting my eyes tightly and opening them up to see if I would see our real, current bathroom. It was kind of like the feeling when you know you are dreaming and should wake up. So, I kept shutting and opening my eyes. Each time a little piece of our current bathroom came into sight until it turned into our current bathroom. Our old master bathroom was much lovelier and cozier than the one we have now. But I remember thinking as we cleared out the things from it during our move, that in a way I was happy to leave it because it was in that bathroom that my miscarriage began.

The second and third both involved pregnant women. One was an ex-coworker. In reality, she has two kids. About 7 months after my miscarriage, she had a miscarriage herself (from an oops pregnancy). When she was going through her miscarriage, she reached out to me, having known that I had gone through it. A few months later, I asked her if she was ok, to see how she was holding up. Her response was that it was for the best because the pregnancy wasn’t planned anyway and it would have been hard on them financially, so maybe God was looking out for them. I just couldn’t relate, not because I don’t believe in God, but because even if there is a God, I would find it hard to believe that God would allow her to become pregnant then take that pregnancy away in order to “look out for them.” In my dream, I ran into my ex-coworker in the hallway and she was visibly pregnant. But, she looked upset. She went into my “office” which, as I think back on it now was more like my bedroom. I closed the door and locked it and asked her what was wrong. She started crying and said that she and her husband were getting a divorce. She didn’t say it, but I sensed she felt overwhelmed and not sure how she would take care of her two children plus the one on the way by herself.

The other dream fragment was about the wife of a coworker who is currently pregnant. She and I had traded stories and encouraged each other over the past year in our ttc struggles. It turned out to be male factor for her. They were considering ART, when, you guessed it, they got pregnant. This was right before my DOR diagnosis. I was actually ok about it when I heard the news and am genuinely happy for them. In my dream, they had come back from a trip (in real life, they did go on a trip to Europe and just flew back yesterday) and she was now visibly pregnant. She kept talking about “Barney” this and “Barney” that and I realized she was referring to their baby. Then she pointed to her belly and said, “Well, we’re just calling him Barney while he’s still in there. We’re going to name him Benjamin after he’s born.”

Now, I don’t know what to make of these dreams, if anything. I didn’t wake up with any bad feelings from them, but I can’t say I have good feelings from them either. And the thought crossed my mind this morning, that with my high FSH and pending POF, I could stop having my period at any time. What if it happens this month? What if I don’t get my period, ever again? It seems I would still be able to do IVF with donor eggs, but the thought of one day never getting my period again while I’m still in my thirties is disturbing to say the least.

I feel like I should look into making an appointment at a clinic so that we keep moving on the baby front. Yet, there are so many things I want to do for the wedding and wedding things are just so much more pleasant to deal with. Perhaps the worrier princess in me is fighting to be let out because she feels she’s been shut away for too long behind the wedding planning. Is she sending me pregnant women in my dreams to try to knock me off track?

Thalia

2005-11-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

Thalia found out her IVF failed in the worst way imaginable. Please send some support to her.

Busy Bees

2005-11-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, I had just found out about my high FSH and realized I would be entering the IVF battle. Fighting against the odds to have a baby, fighting against the insurance paperwork jungle to get medical expenses covered, fighting against my broken self-esteem to have some functioning semblance of myself. Just a few short weeks after starting this blog, Mr. Warrior and I decided to set a date for a wedding. And though we have been making baby steps (ha-ha) towards IVF, we have mostly been caught up with wedding preparations. We see the wedding as a step for us, in and of itself. Not towards IVF, but towards our ultimate goal, making our family. Ideally, our family would be built through pregnancies followed by the births of healthy, live babies that are biologically mine and his, but we know the chances of that happening is low and are willing to make our family in other ways.

All these wedding tasks have left me little time to blog and I probably will blog a lot less about the struggles of infertility until this is all over and we get knee deep in the IVF fight.

However, making all these million and one decisions about the wedding has made me realize some things about myself. One, that I can feel good about myself again. It’s been so nice to worry about something happy and positive instead of the negative and unknown. I just feel better about myself and feel more competent. Those are two feelings I haven’t felt for a long time and wasn’t sure I would feel again. Two, I am learning what is really important to me and what are just nice extras that I can live without and still be happy. For a long time after my miscarriage, I had a real need to have something, anything go my way. If I couldn’t choose the quickest checkout line at the grocery store, if I couldn’t find a scarf I was looking for, every little thing that I put energy into but didn’t receive gratification from could devastate me. I think I was looking for some sign, some hope that things would be ok and took those “failures” to mean nothing would go well in my life again. Three, I feel transformed in knowing I will be married. That is surprising because I had felt that Mr. Warrior and I were married even though we didn’t have the paperwork to show it. But, you know what? Wearing that ring does make a difference. We got our wedding bands yesterday and I have been wearing it to see if the sizing is right. And somehow, I feel transformed. I don’t know how to describe it much more than that. For people who haven’t been together as long as we have, weddings are true beginnings, the start of a new life together. I don’t see us starting a new life after we are married, but it does feel like we are starting with a new slate. The old slate is scarred and full of the pain of miscarriage and broken hopes and dreams of someone who thought she was fertile. It will not be forgotten, but it is no longer the basis for what is to come. The new slate has infertility and IVF written all over it, but it also has the possibility of new dreams and futures. I think it is because of this new slate that I no longer avoid babies and toddlers in the grocery stores for fear of feeling that stabbing pain and ache in my insides.

I don’t know how long these good feelings will last. I hope the wedding preparations are not just a temporary distraction. I hope I can carry some of these good feelings with me through IVF.

When it rains, it pours...

2005-11-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

In preparing for the upcoming wedding, Mr. Warrior and I called up some family members who live on the opposite coast and offered to pay for their trip and stay in town should they have the time to make it to the ceremony. In part, we were doing this because these cousins were the first to welcome Mr. Warrior into the family without reservations. (For a long time Mr. Warrior was not accepted by my family and I was disowned, but that is a post for another day.) They are also the family we are closest to and since our wedding will be a small affair without a DJ, photographer and many other things that tend to make a wedding expensive, we decided to spend the money on people who have meant a great deal to us throughout our relationship. One of these cousins is someone we had on our “short list” to ask as a possible donor for IVF. She is single and older than me, so her age is not ideal, but I have always felt close to her and have always been comfortable talking to her about the things going on in my life. However, we had not yet broached the subject of donor egg with her.

Two days ago, she called to say she would be coming to the wedding. Mr. Warrior was at home at the time and they talked. At some point in the conversation, she half-jokingly asked why the rush after all these years? She had known we were trying to get pregnant again and was probably wondering if we were finally successful. (In fact, most of the people we invited are probably wondering the same thing.) That’s when Mr. Warrior told her about my recent test results and that we were thinking about her as a donor for us. When he first told me what he did, I was surprised but ok with it. We had wanted to talk to her in person, but this opportunity opened up and I’m glad he took it.

Last night, I called her again to get her final travel details and she told me about her recent trip to Hawaii. I hadn’t been sure if I was ready to talk about the donor egg subject with her myself, but then she told me about how she lost her driver’s license during her trip. How she has this habit of pulling out her ID and credit card and putting it in her back pocket when she doesn’t feel like carrying her purse. And how weird it was she still had her credit card but not the driver’s license. All through her story, I could picture everything she did. Every move, her thinking process as she was doing it, the very pocket she placed the items in because, that is something I do, too. Now, I know this is probably not something unique to just my cousin and me. I’m sure lots of women do this. But, at that moment it really hit me that we really are alike. Mr. Warrior had tried to convince me of this before. He saw similarities in the two of us that I never realized were there, until last night. And we know that her life values are similar to ours. In fact, many years ago we went to visit her and after the first day, Mr. Warrior and I both had the same thought--that if we ever had children and something happened to us, we would want her to raise our kids.

So, last night, I decided to talk to her about being our donor. The conversation was emotionally wrenching and draining, but in a good way. There were many issues we touched upon. Like how her first reaction when Mr. Warrior asked was that this was a gift of life and she was willing to give it. I could hear in her voice how much she really meant it. I almost broke into tears. I know we have much more to talk about because we all have concerns about what this would mean for our relationship with each other. And because of her age, it’s not a sure thing that she could be a donor for us even if we were all ok with it.

But, for the second time in two weeks, I see a future that is not bleak and empty but full of possibilities. I know this in no way guarantees a pregnancy or a baby for me. But, I know one day I will have a family. I don’t know what path I will need to take and how difficult it may be, but I am going to get there.

Emily at Scrambled Eggs wrote an amazing post on how infertility was like being thrown into a prison, unexpectedly and for no good reason. It is exactly how this last 18 months or so has felt for me. I don’t know what has happened to me in these last weeks since getting my FSH results back, but things are different. Getting that FSH of 31 was devastating but I think it started something that has somehow led me out of the prison. Maybe I have only found my way out to the exercise yard, but it feels good to breathe the fresh air and feel the rain falling on my face.

Life Lessons

2005-11-07T16:11:00.000-08:00

I started reading blogs last year, one night when I couldn’t sleep, while waiting to miscarry. It occurred to me people were wrong and that it is possible to be a little bit pregnant. On a whim, I googled “a little bit pregnant” and of course I ended up at alittlepregnant.com and drawn into the IF blogdom where pain, sorrow, anger and humor, the same emotions I was fumbling through, leaped out my computer screen and into my heart.

Many of those old friends have, by now, found their way through the first phase of IF and achieved or are on their way of achieving their THB (take home baby--either through adoption or IVF). Their struggles now are different and, to be honest, I don’t quite relate to them as fully now but I enjoy spending time with them. Just, not in the same way.

In these last weeks, as I have started my own blog I have come upon new friends. Some of them struggling with their first IVFs or trying DE/IVF, some not infertile at all. In getting to know these new friends, I am realizing more and more how I am in a time in my life where I am, for want of a better word, living the prime of my life. That sounds funny on one level, because I always thought the prime of your life was supposed to be the good times. But, no doubt about it I am living my prime.

To really get a sense of what I’m trying to convey, I should probably backtrack about a year. Last November, one of my cousins was getting married. I was still in a fragile emotional state as my due date was November 8 and I wasn’t sure I could handle a wedding two weeks later, where there would be other cousins my age with their toddler children and possibly pregnant with their second child. I decided it would be best to stay away. I learned early November that it was the right decision. In talking with my mom, I found out that my cousin who was 3 months older than me, who had a 3 year old was also skipping the wedding because she was due to have her second child the same week as the wedding. It turned out she had her second daughter the very day of the wedding and I knew, knew I would have been a broken mess of a blob at the reception. Crisis averted, good for me.

Later, when I saw pictures of the wedding and all my family, I was struck by how old my parents and their generation looked. I had this overwhelming sense that I, my brother and all my other cousins were the adults in our family, now. Until that moment, I still thought of myself as young, still seated at the child’s table. But, seeing those pictures reminded me of the pictures from my parent’s wedding album and how their parents looked aged in them. I had somehow stepped into my parents shoes and walked around in them without realizing it. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was no longer a child.

With adult shoes comes experiencing the adult life. As I re-connected with some of my cousins who also wanted to have kids, we shared more than our common struggle with getting pregnant. We shared our life experiences, heartaches and struggles. And, in learning of their struggles, I realized how much pain each person in the world experiences in their life. This was reinforced as I learned about the heartaches and struggles of my new internet friends. The struggles in their detail may vary among all of us, but the level and depth of the heartache are similar. I have learned it is not the cause of the pain that determines the degree of the heartache. One might say that my infertility is more heartbreaking than your broken engagement or your cancer is more heartbreaking than my inability to have biological children. But the heartache that accompanies the burdens you endure in life is equal. Pain is pain. But, we as adults, we fight on. Sometimes bravely. Sometimes blindly. But we go on.

I have fought depression in my life. Most recently due to IF. In those times, I have often wondered why do I go on living? What is the point if I can’t possibly have the type of life I envision? In this last year, I have slowly come to the realization that most everyone has something in their life they aren’t happy about, wish were different, wish would go away. I have realized that this struggle to cope with these things, to make something out of it is what adults do. As children, the people who take care of us shield us from having to struggle with this too much or help us find our way through it. As people get old and leave their prime of life, they live more passively and leave it up to us “young people” to deal with the world. But as adults in our prime, we struggle to live and re-shape our dreams as life throws us ordeals that test our capabilities. In our prime, we cope, adapt and try to move forward as best we can. Because that is our part in life’s journey.

Whirlwind

2005-11-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

In having to deal with the many medical issues recently, the fact that Mr. Warrior and I are not legally husband and wife keeps popping up. Not in a disdainful, why are you living in sin and thinking about bringing up children kind of way. After all, I live in California. More objectionable unions abound. In fact, most people are overly polite in the way they address our relationship as if they’re too embarrassed to call attention to it. It’s the non-people ways that are annoying. For example, in the numerous forms to fill, there are the ever present check boxes to mark whether you are single, married or divorced. I never know what to mark. I’m not married and never been so it’s not “married” or “divorced,” but neither does it seem right to describe myself as “single.” After having been with the same person for over 13 years and knowing, no matter what our legal status, this is the person I am going to share my life with, I do not consider myself single. Problem is, there is no good simple term to describe being in a committed but not legally recognized union. Significant other is so wordy and unemotional. And, domestic partner suggests more of a same sex relationship. So, there is no good category for what we are. I am also finding it harder and harder to constantly fight the accepted societal and cultural ideas of marriage and having kids. Practically, there is also the issue that if we adopt one day, not being married will probably work against us.

Marriage has been something we have talked about since before my pregnancy and miscarriage. We would think about possible dates, but never made it to actually picking one. One reason is that neither of us wanted a big, formal to do but we couldn’t really come up with an idea for a small, informal event do that fit us and felt right for us. The closest idea we had was to rent a big house for a weekend somewhere, invite our family and friends and have a wedding “weekend” where we would prepare and eat meals together, play games, hang out, laugh, talk, etc. (think Big Chill).

Last weekend, in a stroke of genius (if I do say so myself), it occurred to me the perfect fit we were looking for. Until a couple of Christmases ago, we had always had annual Christmas parties where we would invite upwards of about 30-40 people to our house. We would have decorations up the whazoo, lots of food and a white elephant exchange. We have always loved these parties with all the people, the laughter and the fun. So, I said to Mr. Warrior, why not have a combined wedding and Christmas Party? We already have most of the decorations and could start putting them up weeks ahead of time. We would have a quick, civil ceremony followed by a Christmas party. We talked about it for the rest of the day and it continued to feel right. We picked a couple of weekends in December and started calling parents and close friends to see if they were busy. And what do you know? We found a weekend that worked for them and us. So, on December 10, we are actually. getting. married.

There is a lot to do before then. And this last week or so has been a blur. We printed up invitations and finally sent them out yesterday and today. Our guest list is bigger than we anticipated and we may have more people than we can handle at our house. But somehow, we just believe it will all work out. All of it. Not just having the wedding, but having and growing up babies and being a family.

I can’t remember the last time, I have felt so much hope with so little fear of the outcome.

Good Things

2005-10-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

Purple-orange sunsets.
Cuddling on the couch after a long day at work.
Having a nice, cool watermelon on a hot day.
Reading a good book by the fire.
Sleeping in on a rainy day.
Walking with someone you love on the beach, in the fall, when no one else is around.
Having dinner with friends and talking, laughing, eating, drinking late into the night.
Opening up a birthday present (or any present) and being truly surprised and delighted.
Knowing Christmas is just around the corner.

Yeah, like that.

2005-10-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Emily over at Scrambled Eggs wrote about the ache and pain of hovering outside the circle. It's heartbreakingly beautifully.

Infertility with a side of Sjogren's

2005-10-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last few days, my left eye was feeling a little swollen and itchy. I had been dealing with underlying eye infections for almost a year and they have been mostly annoying more than anything else, so I just continued my usual eye hygiene (yes I practice good eye hygiene!) and didn't think about it much. This morning when I woke up, both my eyes were painful. It hurt, everytime I blinked. So, I pulled out my handy Merck Manual and it looked like I had an infection of my tear glands/ducts causing "abnormal tear production" which leads to dry eyes which can lead to infections. Ok, nothing new there. Then, one sentence caught my eye. "Abnormal tear production may be due to a problem with the tear glands and ducts or due to a systemic disease that affects the tear glands, such as Sjogren's syndrome" (pronounced "show-grins" but you know what? I ain't smiling). I remembered coming across this Swedish sounding name in my reading about autoimmune diseases and POF. Looked on my computer to see if I could find the information again and sure enough some people with POF also have Sjogren's.

After reading some more about the symptoms, I suspect that I may have it. But, you know what the best part of this syndrome is? Sjogren's, like POF, is one of those things Dr's don't tend to catch or gets misdiagnosed. The average diagnosis time, according to the Sjogren's Syndrome Foundation, is 6 years. Which means that I may have to deal with a whole second set of Dr's for the Sjogren's on top of the Dr's I'm hoping to find to treat my POF and have a baby. A whole other slew of Dr's I may have to fight to get the appropriate testing done, a whole area to research so that I can properly take care of my condition in case the trained professionals aren't on top of things, not to mention any insurance battles I may have to contend with.

This is going to be a spankin' fun weekend.

Drawing circles

2005-10-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

I know there are many, many women who are dealing with DOR or POF. But I feel like I'm standing outside the circle. I don't technically have POF because my FSH is high, but not so high that I’m menopausal. My high FSH means I have DOR, but most of the research, support groups, etc. involve women over 40, because the majority of women with DOR are in that age group. In fact, the RE hadn’t thought it was worthwhile to test my FSH because I am not yet 35.

I understand that regardless of my age, I am not really all that different than these women, but I feel I am different. I feel like I’m not exactly part of the group. I know that has a lot to do with who I am and how I view things. I have always felt like the different one. The girl who never had the right clothes or the right look. The new kid in town who doesn't know all the rules of the game. The one who missed the first day of school and everyone else already has their safety buddy. The one who doesn't belong.

I have struggled with feeling this way for most of my life. I have come to a place where, 85% of the time, I realize it is just my perception of the situation and not rooted in reality. I know my tendency is to view the glass as half empty instead of half full. Most of the time, I can usually keep those I-don't-belong thoughts at bay and not let them overtake me. But, in trying times, I am weaker. I let those feelings come creeping up and they hungrily feed on my weakness. They feed, I weaken, then they get stronger and feed on me some more. In those times, when I read about infertile women achieving their families, I feel disheartened instead of hope. I don’t belong therefore what happened to them can't possibly happen to me. And, before I know it, I’m stopped in my tracks, stripped of my warrior fierceness.

I know that eventually I shake these feelings off. Things become clearer, more hopeful and I’m ready to fight for my chance at having children, again. I’m just at a loss at what I'm supposed to do when I’m in the midst of it. How do I keep myself from standing outside the circle? How do I keep myself from drawing that damn circle in the first place?

Snuffleupagus

2005-10-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about this blog and the support I have been getting. In part, I started this blog as an alternative to therapy. I was in therapy in my early 20s and it was life changing. Partly because I was ready to deal with the things that were not good in my life and partly because I lucked out with my therapist. She was a great therapist for me and helped me figure out how to listen and be true to my own voice. I tried therapy again after my miscarriage because I suspected I might fall back into depression. But, I just didn't click with this therapist (different one). I tried writing in a journal, but felt like I needed to have some coherency and focus to what I was writing instead of just stream of consciousness writing. A big reason for this blog is to get me to listen to my own voice again. I also thought it might be a way to find support from women who might relate to what I was going through. I knew that starting my blog didn't mean anyone would be reading it right away, that it would take time. I was also open to the fact that no one would ever read it and writing would just be therapy time for me without the expense of actually paying anyone to hear me ramble. I was happily surprised, then, to start getting comments after posting for only a short while. It also made me realize how alone I felt in this whole thing, because it felt so good to know someone was out there. So, to those who have commented on my blog, thank you not only for your comments so early in the game but for letting me know you're out there. It comforts me like the taste and feel of warm soup on a rainy day. And if you’re a lurker, please keep lurking...or else I'll have to own up to having more imaginary friends.

Normal by omission

2005-10-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a co-worker I hadn’t talked to in awhile asked me how I was doing. I said I was doing ok and then we proceeded to talk about various shows on TV. Granted, he and I usually talk about TV shows. That’s the nature of our relationship. But, it got me thinking about how my life appears quite normal and mundane to most people I interact with even though the pain of miscarriage and infertility has been something I have been dealing with for over a year. I also thought about how I see other people’s lives. That, with the exception of a few people, I think most people I am around have pretty good lives with some struggles here and there, but overall happy and free of worry. But, if I come off normal and relatively worry free when a lot of the time I am completely the opposite, how true is it for other people?

The truth is that I don’t talk about my problems to most people and in not talking about them, I come off as someone whose life is without hardship. Now, we all know everyone has their problems and struggles, but for the most part, for most people we know, we never know the exact nature and depth of the problems they face. And that makes me sad because maybe if I had known, I could have helped. Maybe, if I knew the woman on the second floor has suffered something similar to what I suffered, we could be supportive of each other. Maybe, if I knew that the 8 month pregnant woman down the hall, working with 2 other pregnant women, has struggled with diminished ovarian reserve and it took her 4 IUI’s and 2 IVF’s for her to get to the place she is now and she is still scared shitless that she will not be going home with a live baby, I can have some comfort in knowing that what I am going through, the longing, the disappointments, the constant hoping against hope then receiving bad news, is not such an uncommon struggle after all.

The head is willing, but the heart still hopes

2005-10-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since getting back my FSH results. In that time, I have read everything I could to understand what is known about high FSH and what it means for having a baby with my own eggs. In short, it's a low probability of pregnancy and if we were lucky enough to get pregnant again, even lower probability of live birth. This is true whether we try on our own, try with clomid+IUI or IVF.

As I look back on my cycles in the last few years, I realize they probably started gettting shorter about 4 years ago. I also realize that what all the Dr's and nurses were telling me about my anembryonic pregnancy (aka blighted ovum) being a fluke was probably wrong given what I know now. It wasn't my miscarriage that was the fluke, it was that I was able to get pregnant at all. Once pregnant, studies show that the chances of having a live birth are only about 20%. On top of that, because of egg quality issues, if I was able to have a baby with my own eggs, there is likely a stronger possibility of having a baby with Down's or something worse compared with other women my age.

Knowing all these facts, my head knows the right choice, if I want to experience a pregnancy, is to do it with donor eggs. DE means I have a great chance of pregnancy and a great chance of a healthy baby. Because, even though my eggs are equivalent to that of a 40 or 50 year old woman, the rest of me is still a good, young, acceptable 33. And I know I will love any child I have whether it be through DE/IVF, adoption or kidnapping*. And I am so ready to have a baby. NOW.

But it is so hard to give up the idea of having a biological child. I may not have many good ovaries left, but the fact that I am still getting periods (every 24 days! Beat that!) is actually a good sign given I have high FSH. But no one, not even the best Dr’s know or can figure out how many good eggs I might have left. Let alone how to catch any of them, if and when they decide to pop out. Yet, I can’t help but hope. I can’t help but think maybe I can get lucky just this one time. And I can’t help wondering if I give up on trying on our own now, whether I am giving up on having a child from my own genes in a rush to have any children at all.

It doesn’t help either, that on a month when I know my FSH is so high I get egg white cervical mucus on cd11 and cd12 when typically I get it cd7 and cd8. Ever get the feeling God is just fucking around with you because he has nothing better to do?

*Not really considering kidnapping as a viable option…just a cheaper one than the other two.