Healing...

My, my...it's been a while. I would be ungrateful if I didn't say how overwhelmed I am by all the love and support we have received over the past few weeks.  I have 'ditto' what my wonderful husband said in the previous post.  I feel truly blessed to have so many people, near and far, that care so much about us and what we have been through.  I am still trying to get around to the countless emails, texts and facebook messages we have received by people who have expressed such sincere sympathy and understanding of how difficult these last few weeks have been.  I'm not going to lie, it's been rough.  All I can say there have been lots of tears, lots of pondering, and lots of love.


I haven't posted recently because I wanted to wait until I was in a better place and the dust had settled a little.  It might be forever until that happened so here I am.  I have also had school to keep up on and I let me say how blessed I have been.  I had to take a Peds test just two days after finding out about our negative cycle and I literally studied for an hour before the test and pulled off a 94%.  Crazy.  Same thing with Psych (not my favorite class)...pulled off a 96% with very minimal studying.  I am being forced to recognize by wonderful friends that I am being carried through this time, not abandoned.  


There has been so much going on in my head these past few weeks.  So many ups and downs but our hearts are healing.  I need to hold onto the thought that keeps flooding my head that there is definitely a reason this did not work...for whatever reason, it's not the time for us to have a baby.  It doesn't make this any easier but it's comforting.  I keep asking why, why did this not work?  The question why runs through my head about a hundred times a day but it hasn't been answered.


We had our "post-IVF consult" on Friday.  We met with our doctor to discuss the failed cycle and to talk about maybe what might we do differently next time.  I was having a great day, almost looking forward to the possibility of some closure but as I pulled into the parking lot, I was flooded with emotion and started to cry.  The last time we were there, we were filled with so much hope.  The dreams of becoming parents were almost tangible and now they are gone for now.  We saw a couple sitting in their car, crying.  I just wanted to rush over and hug them.  We saw another couple, holding hands and smiling as they walked out of the clinic.  I wanted to be them...they had so much hope.  Anyway, the consult did not answer the illusive question of why but it helped to talk to about it with our doctor.  She said she would up my medication just a little and have an ultrasound guided transfer next time.  Blah, blah, blah.  I can't even think about next time right now and I can't stop myself either.  We told her it might very well be another year before we could afford to do it again and she said we were fine as my age goes.


We are eager to be happy again.  We have been doing okay and trying to get life back to normal, whatever that is.  We might need to redefine normal.  Normal, for us, has been a year of  penny pinching, second jobs, baby name discussions, what to do with our extra room.  It's funny...thinking about bringing a baby home, our house started to seem too small.  Now, it seems so big, so empty, too much space.  I have been fighting with myself to not go back to that dark place I have been before finding out about our infertility.  It's a place where I can't be happy for people when they announce they're pregnant.  A place where I am judging how deserving someone is of having a child (seriously, a mother of four who has custody of none of her children because she can't stay off drugs...not deserving).  A place where I question what have I not been doing right to not deserve a child.  Michael keeps reminding me that is not how it works.  I'm fighting it and I am doing well.  It's hard though.


Gosh, I sound like I'm manic.  I'm really not.  I'm still sad, I still shed a few tears everyday, I still am trying to understand but I am also trying to move on.  This is by far the most difficult thing I have ever experienced in my life.  That Monday we found out was the worst day.  I never knew a heart could hurt so much.  But, we both have come so far since that day.  We laugh, we joke, we even hope a little.


A friend sent me this video and for someone who can be as impatient as I, it helps put thing into perspective.

Negative...

Forgive me if this is all over the place.  I just have so many thoughts right now and I need to get them down.  How can one person have so many thoughts and emotions at one time?  I feel angry.  At who?  I don't know but I want someone or something to blame.  I'm definitely in denial.  I don't believe it yet.  I want to go back and fix whatever made this not work.  I do not accept it.  I keep searching for a way to make it right.  This was supposed to work, it had to work.  There was not a reason why it should not have.  I feel lost.  So, so lost.  This was our life for an entire year.  We saved all of our money, Michael got a crappy second job that he absolutely hated.  We did not go on vacations, we did not put in a patio, we did not finish our basement.  We saved up our money to have a baby.  I'm lost because I don't where to go from here.  What is next?  There was only one path I was heading down and it's been wiped out.  I had plans, I was prepared for what was next.  I knew that if we got positive news, it would change our lives forever but so does this bad news.  I had plans for what was going to happen this next year and dreams of what it would be afterward.  I don't know where to go or what to do?  Somebody help me.  I feel like fool.  I feel foolish and like I've been tricked.  I feel stupid for being so sure this was going to work.  That I would no longer have to be sad about being childless.  I've been fooled into thinking this was fool-proof even though I really knew it wasn't.  I feel like a fool having to tell everyone this did not work when we have been so optimistic.  Should I not have been?  We were told we had no reason not be optimistic.  This was perfect.  Our embryos were perfect.  I'm healthy.  Our little problem was fixed the day they fertilized the eggs.  Every time we talked about it with someone, went on and on about how excited we were to finally know we are going to have a baby, we had to add obligatory, "well...if it works", not thinking it was really necessary.  Why?  What am I supposed to learn from this?  What?  Have I not suffered enough?  I pleaded with God not to let this happen.  I assured Him that I knew my limits and this trial would me far more than I could bear.  They say God doesn't give you trials you can't handle.  Right now, I don't believe that.  I don't feel like I will survive this.  I feel like my body let me down.  I'm angry to know that we probably won't get any answers from the doctors because they don't know why this happens.  So many times things "look perfect" and it just doesn't work.  I'm numb.  I have been awake since 4:30am (that is when I had to pee) and haven't been back to bed for fear of what it will be like when I wake-up.  I'm numb now and I know what will happen when I thaw out.  I'm not ready to deal with the real pain.  I have been crying, holding my husband, my husband holding me.  Oh, Michael.  I wish I could take it all away from him.  I know he still feels responsible for all this.  He said he wished he knew this about him before we got married so he could have told me.  My heart has never hurt so bad.  Through our uncontrollable tears I told him I loved him and I would have married him, even if I knew.  I said before that I wanted this more for him than for myself and I now know, that is completely true.  I didn't want him to have to feel this disappointment.  I didn't want him to feel responsible.  I didn't want him to feel like he had to say  sorry.  He does not.  Neither of us did but we both kept saying it.  I was shaking when I peed in the cup this morning.  I was shaking when I put the dropper of pee into the well of the test.  Then, I immediately shoved it out of sight.  I couldn't look at it.  I felt sick in my stomach and went back to the bed for 3 minutes.  Michael and I both went in to the bathroom to look because I couldn't do it alone.  I can't say the thousand things that went through my head in that moment when there was no second line.  I just thought no, no, no, no, no, no.  This cannot be happening!  This is not real.  It's just another dream.  A dream, or rather nightmare, like the ones I had been having all week.  Don't get me wrong, I've had good dreams too.  Just last night I had a dream that the test was really positive, so positive we were having twins.  Michael and I just cried, then talked, then cried again.  I went back a couple of times to look at the test (within the 10 minute window) to check again, still very, very negative.  Not a hint of line.  We went back and forth about whether we were going to take a test.  The nurses and doctors encourage the patients not to take a home pregnancy test before the blood test for fear of false negatives or false positives . We did.  Lots of people do.  We weren't going to do it but then decided it was important to be together when we found out.  If we waited until until tomorrow, we would not be together and I feel like that was a blessing.  Maybe it would have been better to wait until tomorrow, to live one more day in ignorant bliss but at least we have today to deal with the news, alone, with each other.  No one will be expecting the news today so we will not be flooded with phone calls, people wanting to hear the good news.  I'm glad I am with him today.  I can't even be out of the same room as him right now.  I don't think we are going to be the only ones who are disappointed or shocked.  I know enough about pregnancy tests to know that todays results are accurate.  I'm not letting myself think that maybe the blood test will be different.  That almost never happens.  Occasionally, there will be women who will not get a positive test until weeks or months later, or some, not at all.  I know in my heart I am not one of those people.  The Hcg from the trigger came out just fine in my urine.  I hate this.  I feel ill.  Deep down I feel like I knew this.  It was not just fear that it might not work, it was a deep down feeling that I knew this was going to be our reality, for whatever reason.  I pushed those feeling aside, brushing them off as fear of the unknown.  I could picture this not working and could imagine getting another negative test more than the other way around.  I knew in my head I was pregnant but not in my heart.  We went to the temple this past weekend and I wanted to stay there until I got the answer I was looking for.  I never did.  I did have the feeling that no matter what, it would all be okay and I absolutely hated that answer.  I knew what it meant.  I thought it meant that it would be positive because how could this be okay if it were negative?  I want to go back there.  I want to go back to having that hope again.  It is far better to have hope and not know than to know to ugly truth.  I have never been so broken hearted in my life. When we found out we had a problem, I was so relieved.  It was awful taking pregnancy tests, month after month, always that one line.  We knew we had a problem and although the fix was frightening and hard, we had a fix.  This is all those months of emotion, of negative tests, jammed into one Big Fat Negative.  This is devastation defined.  How can a heart so broken still be beating?  The human body really is amazing.  I feel like this could kill me but it won't, even though I might feel like I want it to right now.  Where do we go from here? I don't know.  On vacation?  Do we try again now?  Do we try again at all?  Do we learn to live childless?  I feel that would be an easier solution than to even think about mustering up the hope of another cycle.  How are we supposed to have any faith that it won't fail again?  This was supposed to be perfect.  My heart breaks every time I think about what I would be doing to in two weeks (an ultrasound), at Christmas (revealing the gender to the family), eight months (holding my baby).  I feel like I lost a life.  Those little beginnings of life inside of me were supposed to begin our new life, as parents.  We were ready, we are ready.  I don't know what this life is.  This life that continues to be empty of the thing that would complete us.  I feel like my life has been on pause for a year and now I don't know how to push play, or want to.  I guess I could go on and on.  I'm feeling too much.  Right now, I hate to say, I'm faithless, hopeless.  I guess we will see how resilient the human spirit really is.  I'm broken and I need to be fixed.  Blood test is tomorrow, September 21, and I'm grateful that I will not be blindsided tomorrow when I get the phone call that I'm not pregnant.  It would not be what I was expecting to hear.  Thank you for all the love, support, and prayers.
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It's now 2pm.  We called the nurse to ask if we could come and get a blood test today instead of tomorrow so we could just get on with mourning process.  They were really nice and told us to come up right away and they expressed how sorry they were but told us to not give up because the HPTs aren't always accurate.  They were really quick about calling back to confirm that it is indeed, negative.  I'm grateful for not having to wait another day to get the final, definitive answer.  We have just been calling our friends and family to tell them the news.  No one knows what to say, there isn't really anything to say.  All just expressed their love and sympathy, most just cried with us.  I'm sure we will find a way to come back from this but right now, our hearts are broken.

One Word...

...Negative.  How can a heart this broken still be beating?

The Dentist...

I am in a viscous cycle.  I hate the dentist; therefore I don't go nearly as often as I should.  And since I don't go like I should, when I do go it inevitably leads to extreme pain and discomfort on my part. Friday, I paid the price for this vicious cycle...

About 8 years ago, a tooth on the bottom right started to really hurt but I was uninsured at the time.  I finally went to the dentist and he did a root canal on it and put a temporary crown on.  I could not afford $1200 for a crown so I left the temporary on for as long it would last and just kind of ignored it.  The temporary eventually fell off and what remained was a little stub of a tooth that really caused no problems.  Fast forward to now, the tooth needed to come out.  I was told in September of last year that it was broken.  I have made several appointments but have shamelessly cancelled them at midnight the night before.  I finally got up the nerve to go on Friday simply because I am looking at hopefully being knocked-up soon and I want all my dentistry taken care of before that happens.   

So, I went in early Friday morning, and had it pulled. It SUCKED.  The doctor took one look at me, saw my horror and offered me the gas which I graciously accepted.  Three minutes later I was floating on the ceiling and I felt nothing.  However, he then said, "forceps", and started pushing and pulling and twisting.  I about lost it!  Even though I couldn't feel it, I knew what he was doing and it freaked me out!  After an hour, he finally got it all out, and I was able to flee the office, running like a scared schoolgirl.  

However, the extraction was nothing compared to what I am dealing with now.  Yes, it hurts but that can be medicated.  I hate taking medicine but I have been doping myself up with ibuprofen 800mg once or twice a day and I'm fine.  The doctor put in a bone graft that is just sitting in the socket, waiting for my gum to heal over it.  It's this gooey, movable sack of bone paste that feels like a piece of chewed up chicken.  My tongue, of course, can't stop playing with it and I feel like it's going to come out or break open.  Every so often, I accidentally bite on it which makes me gag. And, every so often when it moves it releases fluid out of it that tastes like what I imagine cauterized battery acid to taste like.  Consequently, my breath is fowl!  I try to talk to people from at least five feet away.  I honestly would rather go through the extraction 3 more times than this.

My loathing probably started when I was a young  and I have been building on the fear for the last few years.  I never liked to go but my mom diligently took us every six months and I would have a cavity every now and then.  We had a great dentist as a child who was very good with kids and you always got to pick a toy after.  But, to this day, I hate "soft rock" and "Highlights" magazine because it reminds me of the dentist.  I hate the pain dentists cause in my mouth. I hate the sounds, the smells, etc. of the dentist's office. I hate the guilt I feel when I go in there and they give me a mirror and show me how to brush better and lecture me about flossing.  I hate having to hold my jaw open, it gets really sore.  I hate having to try not to swallow.  I hate those little x-ray things that you have to hold awkwardly in your mouth and dig into your gums.  

I have to go back in two weeks to check on the extraction site.  Oh, and to also get a new crown on a tooth that he said was poorly done a few years ago!  Ugh!

I have no idea why I told you this - I guess I just wanted to share my tale of woe ("misery loves company" and all that), and to confess my vicious cycle. I can make no promise to break this cycle at this time but I'm taking it one appointment at a time.  I have to go dope myself up again.