My Dear Watson

So today I ducked out of work and went to yet another alternative-type:  a new acupuncturist.  I’ve been seeing a female acupuncturist for a couple of years, and haven’t been all that impressed with her.  Call me crazy, but when you walk out of the office with NEEDLES STILL IN YOU — TWICE — it’s a bit disconcerting.  I mean, doesn’t her job consist of two basic steps:  needles IN and needles OUT?  How effing difficult can that be?

The last time, I made it all the way home thinking:  Wow, that treatment must really be working!  I have little cramps in my lower abdomen and I’ve never felt that before. This must a good sign.

Turns out?  She left TWO needles in my stomach!  Now of course I’m the retard who didn’t notice the teeny tiny needles in my belly as I was zipping up my pants, but still.  STILL.  You’re very groggy after a treatment and I was obviously not searching for errant needles.  I wrongly assumed I was paying her to keep track of how many punctures she made and then to make sure she removed all the needles she stuck in me.

So needless to say, I’ve been asking around and heard good things about Dr. Pain.  (I’ll refer to him as that not because it was particularly painful, but his real name sounds a lot like ‘pain’ and I think it’s a funny name for a person trained to stick you with needles.) (I know. Such highbrow and clever comedy.)

Anyhoo, I went today and was sweating like a pig the entire time. It is, they claim, the hottest the earth has been in like 400 years and we’re having a heat wave in Northern California, so the combination of global warming and our hot streak has rendered me a whimpering cry baby, dragging my limp body around until I can get home and collapse on the couch.

So there I am, sweating profusely, looking for his office which is in a completely residential area.  No offices or medical buildings for miles around. 

As I walk up the front steps to a house, I think to myself:

Self, what the fuck?  Seriously, you moron, why are you always going to strange places — ALONE — to meet strange Asian men?  Why Why Why??

As it turns out his office is in his home, which is odd, but whatever, I roll with it.  He greats me at the door and says, "Please. Follow me." I think okay, he’s either 1) a reputable Doctor of Chinese medicine and this is all very normal LALALA or 2) a broker in the infamous white slavery rings of the Far East.  (I know!  Again with the white slavery thing…)

He checks my pulse, has me fill out some forms and looks at my tongue.  For the needling portion of my afternoon, I am told to lie face down on the table, using the head cradle (is any of this sounding familiar??).

Being face down?  Me NO likey!  I want to see the needles as they’re coming toward me, not be all surprised as he jabs me in the lower back and the ankles. It’s hard to relax, and of course he soon says "relax, take a nap."  My face is straining through the cradle, just like when you’re little and pull your skin really tight and say, "See Mom? My pigtails are too tight" and she puts the fear of God in you by saying that your face could freeze like that?  Remember?  Like that.

Despite the skin-pulling discomfort, the needles don’t hurt and I do manage to relax.  Time flies and soon it’s time to pay him and get my herbs. Which?  I was dreading.  DRA-DEAD-ING. I have tried these so-called Chinese herbs before and they are, without a doubt, the most disgusting, revolting, stomach-turning, gag inducing stuff known to man.  They come in little brown bags, and you can smell the pungent odor a mile away.  When you stupidly look IN the bags, they are filled with dried twigs, berries, white things, rotten nuts and God knows what. It could be newt eyes, bunny fur, horse hooves and human entrails for how good it smells.

And I am supposed to boil and choke down drink this concoction twice a day. And go back to see Dr. Pain next week.  And stop drinking coffee.  And stop eating salads, for crissakes, because apparently I have low-functioning kidneys and poor kidney chi and if I had a dollar for every time I heard that I could pay for frigging IVF three times over.

Bitter?  Me?  No. Bitter is the disgusting tea I’ll be enjoying later tonight.

Wish me luck!

Oh!  And he said, on my way out:

"No getting pregnant this month.  Wait one month or two month."  To which I said "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." 

Like THAT would ever happen.

I swear I am planning on wracking my brain to come up with a response to Stephanie‘s tag — thank you by the way!  LOVE being included in all the bloggy fun of these things…helps erase the memories of my sad, traumatic days of junior high when I was always left out of the fun, which I won’t go into now.  Suffice it to say the few friends I had were all on the yearbook staff and even though I was the only one not on yearbook, we all ate lunch in the yearbook room every day.  In the yearbook room.  GAWD.  Could it be any more pathetic than that?!?  I was chubby and just learning to wear make up and deathly afraid of boys and bell bottoms were in fashion…need I say more?

Anyway, what I really wanted to say today was how crazy this messed up world is.  There is much good news out there in the blogosphere, but much sad news too.  And I wish I could do something.  For Nikole and for Sube, my heart goes out to you … you both have been so supportive since I started this blog, and I read your posts with increasing excitement as you each had good news to share.  I am so sorry things have turned out this way.

I wish there was a way to harness the power of these blogs, where we reach out from our isolated islands of infertility to make friends, laugh, learn stuff and go through this journey together.  Maybe there is power in our collective prayers.  I’d like to think so.

So I send you my prayers, knowing there are others out here doing the same thing, hoping you can feel our collective friendship and support.

Well, peeps, I am back. My trip was great, but very exhausting and it seems I need a vacation from my vacation. 

BeBop and I went to New York City, then up to Westchester for a friend’s wedding.  We stayed with my aunt and uncle and not to sound like the worst, most ungrateful guests EVER, but it totally sucked.  Totally.  Sucked.  They live in the ‘homestead,’ the first structure to be built in the little township where they live. This was in 1901. Save for some indoor plumbing and electricity, they haven’t made many improvements since then.  I swear, the two nights we stayed there it was like 1) going back in TIME or 2) being on one of those PBS reality shows where they make you live like old-timers.  GAWD. Old creaky floors, no air conditioning, poor plumbing.  We had to share a bathroom with said aunt and uncle.  (I lived in abject fear of accidentally walking in on my uncle ‘sitting on the can’ as BeBop so eloquently puts it. Thank the sweet Lord that didn’t happen!)  Cold shower until someone flushes the downstairs toilet and then HOLY HANNAH the scalding.  Oh, and the stories just before bed about how the place is haunted.  And you KNOW that crap freaks the hell out of me.  The first night I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so I made BeBop get up and check the hallway, making sure no ghostly apparitions were out there, just waiting for me and my small bladder. I am SUCH a baby!

Thankfully, after two practically sleepless nights (on two tiny twin beds that I’m sure the first settlers to the region fashioned out of wooden planks and horse hair) we escaped to the city. 

I HEART New York!

We:

• Ate a lot, and drank a fair amount too because since I’m not pregnant why the hell not?!
• Walked all over the city and all through Central Park on a gorgeous, sunny day.
• Saw Avenue Q, which rocked.  (Although, not for the kids!  Don’t let the puppets fool you!  I am still trying to cleanse my brain of the sight of naked puppets, doing it!!  Blech.) But seriously, besides the skin (felt??) it is a great show.
• Saw Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin filming ‘A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing.’
• Saw someone (probably a stunt double for Scarlett Johansson) filming scenes from ‘The Nanny Diaries.’
• Did I mention the eating??

Then, it was on to PA where we visited with BeBop’s parents, who I really adore.  And the visit with my very pregnant friend that I was sort of dreading (just because of the whole ‘oh you’re pregnant and of course I’m NOT’ part), but I was actually okay with it.  I didn’t dwell on it too much.  Every once in a while I would think, "Hmmm…I am going to see her soon and she will be very pregnant.  I thought for SURE I would be pregnant.  And we’d order our husbands around and make them get stuff for us. Like food. And iced tea.  And presents.  How fun! Oh, wait…"  And then I would snap out of it and be fine, and happy for her.  And then I would have a glass of wine, because I can.

It was an exhausting trip home, and I was out of it most of the day.  But even in my stupor, this thought kept creeping into my mind:  Now that you’re home, you have to decide WHAT TO DO.  What to do about getting pregnant.

Oh yeah, THAT.

When the last IUI failed, I was relieved we had this trip scheduled, knowing that I would take June off from the clomid and another IUI, if in fact we decided to try it again.  But now that the vacation is over, this nagging thought keeps slinking around in the dark recesses of my mind:  Should we actually try a 5th IUI?  Is that just insane?  Should we look into IVF?  Should we give it a month or two and see what happens??  I wish I had a better sense, I wish my intuition was a little more on the ball and could give me some direction.

Right now, my intuition is just too tired from the trip and is no help at all!  Damn her. Maybe I should consult the all-knowing WHIRLEY GIG !!

If we were going to do another IUI, I would have started clomid on Sunday and would have had the joy of a CD3 internal exam yesterday.  Since we are not doing another IUI this month, the upside is I get to skip all of the above. 

So I’ve got that going for me.

And today, it feels like that’s about ALL I have going for me.

I should be more excited that we leave on Friday for vacation.  But today I am just really sad and depressed…and totally clueless as to what we do next.

I had my phone session with Teresa last night, and it was okay.  She’s an RN as well as a certified nurse midwife, along with being intuitive.  So she brings a lot to the table.  Unfortunately, I have already done almost everything she suggested.  And obviously NONE of it has worked.

She starts by asking tons of questions about your medical history and IF background.  What your test results have been, what you’ve already tried.

All the regular  tests:  baseline bloodwork, glucose, HSG, FSH, etc.  Check, check, check and check.

Sperm count? Check.

Thyroid? Check.

Mercury levels? Check.

Did I have my mercury fillings removed? Check.  Did I do a cleanse following this procedure?  Check.

Eating, drinking, caffeine, smoking.  Fine, moderate, no and no.

So, in the end, she had nothing new to suggest and no new directions to explore as to why we haven’t been able to get pregnant.  Did I expect her to come up with some out-of-left-field, pulled-out-of-her-ass ‘ANSWER’ to this question of why we can’t get pregnant?  I’d be lying if I said no.  I was totally hoping for something like that.

The second part of the call centered around energy work, her ‘looking’ to see where my energy might be blocked, what I need to work on in order to be ready to conceive.

I have to say sometimes that really pisses me off!  I mean, it feels like every other woman on earth can just get pregnant, but nooooo….I’m the one with all the blocked energy!  That makes me want to scream. 

Although I am very open to alternative healing methods, sometimes they seem to find the patient/client at fault.  I’m the one with issues, I’m the one that needs to be fixed.  But the fixing part is often more sessions of one thing or another, or work that I need to do to unblock all this blocked energy.  I have a full time job, people, I can’t spend my whole flipping day unblocking my own energy!  Can’t I just pay someone to do it for me, like an energy plummer!?

She did have some interesting thoughts about my short luteal phase and some progesterone issues I might have, which is a lot more concrete (and helpful) than the energy work. She didn’t get the feeling that we would have to do IVF, but I’m not that keen on doing injectibles, figuring it might be better to just move on to IVF.

At the moment, I don’t want to do anything. I want to stick my head in the sand and pretend I’m not trying to get pregnant. 

No, I don’t want to have a baby, thank you very much, la la la I can’t hearrrrr you….

It’s probably just all that goddamn blocked energy.

Well, you all know how THIS turns out…

If I had good news I sure as hell would’ve posted sooner. I would have been all, hey ladies, Watson here in the hizouse with some good nizuse.

But that’s not how this story goes. I swore I wouldn’t — couldn’t — take a HPT. I resisted until Friday and then cracked. Like a crazy person who cannot accept reality even when it’s biting her in the ass, I still had a small fraction of hope. A tiny glimmer of…maybe I could be pregnant? Maybe?!?

My friend S. was pregnant and her HPT was negative for almost two weeks after she expected her period! Maybe that’s happening to me!!

Yeah, right.

Anyhoo, the test was so freaking negative. I mean, not a shred of a line, just a stark white window staring back at me.

So when my period started today, I can’t say I was surprised. Sad and depressed and frustrated, yes. But surprised, no.

Where do we go from here? I wish I knew. We’re going to be on vacation this month when I would be clomiding and ultra sounding and IUI’ing, which means a break, at least for June. That actually makes me feel better, like I have a pass from this nightmare for at least a few weeks.

When we get home, I guess we’ll contemplate more IUIs or injectibles or IVF or tying large rocks around our necks and jumping from the nearest bridge.

Okay, I’m just kidding about that last part. Kinda.

I am having a reading on Monday with a woman who works with issues around infertility, looking at the whole mind-body-connection thing and where your energy might be blocked. You know, that’s what we wacky California girls do when we need answers, consult the local psychic healer!!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

*Edited to add*

I am such a loser, I started this rant without really making clear that no, while I have not tested yet, I just KNOW I am not pregnant.  Thank you careful readers for mentioning that I neglected that detail. 

I guess you could say, in terms of trying to stay positive: I’m just not that into you.

I cannot bring myself to test and see yet another blank white window. I can’t I can’t I can’t.  See below re:  self-pity morass.

In honor of National Self-Pity Day, I am happy to accept this award for Most Pathetic. 

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.  This moment is so much bigger than me.  This moment is for all the women who stand beside me, the nameless, faceless infertiles who have also experienced the self-pity that comes with not getting pregnant.  Gosh, this is somewhat of a surprise, so I didn’t really prepare a speech.  I mean, I feel like I am the most pathetic, but I just didn’t expect to be recognized by my peers like this.

Thank you. I’m so honored. So honored. I’d like to thank, first and foremost…my reproductive system!  Without her, I wouldn’t be standing here before you, accepting the title of Most Pathetic.  Despite all of my efforts over the last few years, she has remained steadfast in her refusal to get pregnant. Amazing!  Through treatments and breaks alike, my feminine bits have worked closely together like a well-oiled machine to thwart any attempt to reproduce.  It’s truly inspiring, the way my ovaries have acted on screen like they were prepared to produce an egg or two, what with the follicles and all, only to somehow fail to do so, month after month.  And the uterus.  What can I say?  She, along with her partner the cervix, has stayed in the background of this drama, giving the ovaries the spotlight and never complaining about the long hours of filming.

Thanks to modern medicine as well, who has been unwavering in its failure to figure out exactly what is wrong with me.  I couldn’t have made it without their vague label of ‘unexplained infertility’ which they so graciously bestowed upon me.

Gulp, sniff sniff (tears start to form at the corners of my eyes, then stream down my face, while I try to dab with a hanky)…I’m sorry.  This is just so overwhelming.

Thank you.  I,I,I…who else? Let’s see: 

I need to thank lastly and not leastly, Long’s Drug Store for supplying me with home pregnancy tests month after month, along with the tampons and panty shields I needed after those tests came back negative.

I know, I know, my time’s almost up, (sob, sob) I can hear the band starting!   Just, just thank you to everyone who helped me get here, this award is such an honor.  Thank you for giving me this chance, for believing that I could be the Most Pathetic. 

THANK YOU   THANK YOU  THANK  YOU

So two more days until I can take a HPT.  But, to be honest, I don’t think that will be necessary.  I just do not think I am pregnant.  Part of that is self-protection, so I don’t get my hopes up and then dashed — like last time.  Or like the last forty straight months, but who’s counting, right?!

I don’t feel pregnant.  I am tired, craving chocolate and extra-super-irritated.  I was known as Ms. Cranky Pants around the house this weekend.

I am sort of…what?  Resigned to?  Accepting of?  Sort-of-maybe-okay-with…going back east for a friend’s wedding and a family visit, and not being pregnant while doing so.  Of course I was totally hoping we would have good news to share with BeBop’s family, even though it would have been so early, since we rarely see them in person, we probably would have spilled the beans.  I just don’t see that happening, unfortunately.

And of course, of course, I have plans to see not one but TWO very pregnant friends!  AT THE SAME TIME!  Kill me now. 

I have been trying to get knocked up for so long that I have seen many of my friends have kids.  Many of these women have actually had TWO kids in the span of time we’ve been trying for one.  I’ve thrown a bajillion baby showers.  I have tried time and time again to be happy for their good fortune (and I am!) but still, when you’re knee-deep in the freakish fun house of infertility, it’s always hard to be around the beautiful pregnant ladies. 

Am I right?  Do you feel me??

I have done a lot of personal work around this whole issue of having people close to me get pregnant and have babies over the last few years.  After hosting  back-to-back baby showers that almost killed me I was so depressed and dejected, I just had to come to terms with the whole notion of being truly thrilled for my friends.  I had to focus on the fact that I loved them and felt genuinely happy for them.  And that their fortune did not equal more unhappiness for us, as if there was a limited supply of babies and one for them meant one less for me. 

I had nightmarish visions of just cracking under the pressure and running screaming from a baby shower, all dressed in white with really cute shoes, just after the salad but before the cake, clutching a stuffed animal that was a gift and shrieking: you stole my baby you BITCH, that one was MIIIIIIINE!!!!  AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Luckily, for the most part I kept it together and really tried to focus on my friends’ happiness.

But still.  STILL. 

Sometimes it just freaking sucks.

Okay, switching gears here. Let’s move on.

Since self-pity hour just ended, I am happy to report that my mother attended one of her conspiracy conferences over the weekend.  What a joy it must have been to sit in a room for hours on end hearing about the bird flu pandemic and the tsunami-causing meteor heading our way and the imminent market crash.  It makes for such fun dinner time conversation!

Oh, and if this blog is suddenly pulled without notice…you’ll know why…{insert dramatic theme music here.}

For those of you who read my post about the colon cleansing camp’s talent show, and the infamous light bulb eater…this is

HIM

Here’s the post, since I can’t figure out how to link to it…durrr…

A couple of years ago, my mom and I spent a week at a health ‘spa’ (very liberal use of the word spa here.)  You go there to cleanse your system, and the whole program revolved around raw foods, wheat grass juice, and colonics.  That’s right.  Colon cleansing as part of a vacation YOU PAY FOR.  You start off with a three-day juice fast, and then integrate raw and sprouted foods into your diet as the week goes on.  You have to cut and juice your own wheat grass three or four times a day.  To this day when I enter a Jamba Juice the smell of wheat grass makes me gag.  The funniest part (well, really, what’s NOT funny about a colonic?) was that at the end of the week they held a talent show.  Guests got up on stage and performed, one guy was a magician (in his non-colon-cleansing life) and he ate a light bulb.  WHICH, hello, was totally NOT on the diet.  The whole thing was like summer camp with enemas!  And although I did feel cleansed by the time I went home, apparently the raw food diet caused my entire digestive system to shut down and I didn’t poop for like a month.

Well, I don’t really have much to say.  I guess without news to report on the infertility front, I’m a hollow shell of a woman.  I must have nothing else going on in my pathetic life, other than going from one two-week-wait to another,  only to start the whole thing over again, like a crazy hamster wheel.  Blech!  I am sickened at the patheticness of this.

But.  There is one tidbit of news to share:  I decided to stop taking my BBT each morning. For much of the last couple of years, first thing in the morning I have faithfully jammed that digital thermometer under my tongue, being careful not to make any unexpected moves as that could raise my temperature a teeny tiny fraction of a degree.  I had my own private lab set up, with pen and clipboard and chart right next to the bed, so that I could perform this diagnostic test without disturbing BeBop or Bosco the Dog, who just lies in wait at the end of our bed until one of us moves which is apparently dog for:  crawl right up between us and put your furry head on my pillow.  Yes, QUITE the mecca of romance what with the chart and the clipboard and the thermometer and the dog. (And I wonder why we never have sex unless we ‘have to’??)

Anyhoo, I’ve always loved the TCYF thing because it did make me feel that I had a degree of control.  Which?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE. But. It’s not so much control as it is insight or knowledge.  And yes knowledge is power and blahdyblahblah, but what the BBT-ing did was give me a window into what my body was doing and when, without having to rely on OPKs or tests or doctors.  And I did feel empowered by this.

And then…it just all felt like a cruel joke.  Yes, I could pretty well tell if I had ovulated and if so, when. Even last month I saw a one-day drop at 10DPO (implantation, I shrieked that morning) and then a second temperature rise (I’m pregnant, I shrieked that morning) but we all know how that turned out.

So long story even longer, I realized that doing this every morning was a self-imposed prison of some sort.  I believed that knowing what was happening could give me that sense of control I so crave, but it was all an illusion, much like that scaly David Blaine’s attempt to escape from those under-water chains and hold his breathe for like an hour.

About a week ago, I stopped taking my temperature each morning and I have to say: 

I’M FREE, people! 

Raise the roof, wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care, oh yeah, sisters rejoice in the freedom that is RCYF (Relinquishing Control of Your Fertility).

So I have no idea if I ovulated or when, I don’t know how the timing of the IUI was (or wasn’t), I won’t know when to expect my period.  I am totally in the dark, letting my body do its thing, and it feels great.

I’m sure I’ll freak out in about another week, but for now I’m trying to enjoy the not-knowingness.  Farewell expensive but thoroughly accurate digital thermometer.  Goodbye entering the information into a computer program and waiting for the temp. shift. Peace out checking for my ever-elusive cervical mucus which always seemed more Rubber Cement than Egg White.