Surgery Number 7

So after taking a long break. I decided that I was well rested. I went back for surgery number 7. This one was the easiest so far bc it was just a simple hysteroscopy. Let's call it a spring cleaning.

I had my first hysteroscopy four years ago when they found uterine polyps. I had my second one last year and again they found micro polyps all over. This time they found about 6 larger polyps. I am not sure if this is better or worse than having tons of micro poylps.With the micro polyps you need to get scraped out which causes more pain and bleeding afterwards. This time with them being larger, he was able to cut them out, so I had minimal bleeding.

The procedure went really smooth. Being that it was number 7, I was well prepared. I got dressed in my rubber soled slippers, drawstring pajama pants and shirt, and a zip up sweatshirt.  We got there and everything went on schedule. I also made sure DH was prepared to sit around and wait. I had to pack him an activity bag with snacks, paper/pen, music, laptop etc. I wanted him to remain calm and not get grumpy.

I had to answer them same list of questions over and over from different people. For the first time when they asked me if I was allergic to anything, I had to say Dillaudid. Last year I got a mega rash from head to toe from it. I also mentioned that most times, something made me vomit despite them telling me they put something in my IV to prevent that. I got thinking about it, I asked them if I could go easier on the pain med. My GI system is very sensitive to narcotic pain meds, and I think that is what really makes me sick.

The anesthesiologist was really great. She listened to my concerns. She said she would go really light on the sleep meds, not use narcotics unless really needed. She said they would use a stronger local block.

When I woke up I was alert and pain free. I was still in the OR and my legs were still up which meant my bottom was out in the open. I was still groggy but BRRRR it was cold. I could not complain bc I requested that they go light with my meds.

After that it was great. I had the best transition ever. In recovery, they gave me a heated blanket. After a short while, I was able to just go back to my room, eat my crackers, drink my ginger ale, pee and go home. No pain, no nausea, no vomiting, no rash. It was great to be able to just wake up and get ready to go.

I got home and felt fine. I had taken the next day off just in case I was ill or in pain. So today is a bonus for me.

I am glad that I decided to do this. The Dr said that it was worth it. My DH calls them cave trolls and I am glad they are gone, at least for now. The dr said they will just grow back. I have had them out three times in six years. He said the quickest he saw them come back was 2 months. So my dh and I better get busy. Well after the two week  BD ban is  over from the Dr.

Being Thankful

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I traveled down to visit my family. I had a nice time. My sister was not there so that made things easier. My cousin had a baby 3 months ago. She looked great but she was complaining that she used to have a flat stomach...UGH  It was hard for me at first, but then I slowly got used to it. She is not such a show off like my sister. Also, she has been more kind to my situation. She also had a tough delivery bc she was induced, got bells palsy from it, and then her baby had major acid reflux. This made me feel less jealous and more sorry for her. After awhile though I started to reach my limit when the only topic of conversation for my relatives was the baby over and over.
 
It is that time to reflect on what you are thankful for. DH and I have been really thinking about this one lately. Being childless is still a major crisis. I still think about it every day, but I am trying to also think of the many blessings I have.  It is really hard when there is something you want really bad and you know you'll never get it. It makes you obsess over that one thing and forget about all the other good things.

We really do have a lot to be thankful for. We have a stable marriage, a house,  we are both in good shape and in good health. We both have jobs. I have a job that I love. I get a lot of time off including the summer. I have good friends and family who care about me. None of my family lost their lives or house during that hurricane last month.

 Even though we are on a budget due to saving for the adoption fund, we decided to work on the house some more. We kept it simple and bought some organizers and other items for the house. Sometimes a small change can make life better. I had a small section of my bedroom where I keep my extra sheets and blankets. It was a big mess. I had them on a table in the back. I finally bought a tall storage cabinet to store them in. It is great bc now they are tidy and you cannot see them behind the closed doors. There are also many shelves so I can sort and organize them.

I took last month off due to a cyst and I am taking this month off too. I just reached 5.5 years of TTC and I am tired of all this. I would like to relax and enjoy the holidays.

Updates

It has only been 9 days since my last post and it seem like forever. I have been so busy with school that I don't have time to think about blogging during the week. My students have gotten better and so have I. It takes a  ton of patience to keep them on track. It is exhausting. They are starting to act better. The raffle at the end of the week is a huge hit and it really helps. I am also trying not to let the stress of all the new regulations etc bother me. We just got a new piece of technology that I am excited to try. It was half installed today. It is like a smart board but it is a projector and a stylus that works with your regular dry erase board. This is great bc I can use my regular board with markers or the interactive board with the computer.

Not much else going on. Things have been better with my dh. He is starting to realize that I need some space. IF has probably scared me emotionally for life.

On the cycle news. I am not really sure where I am, I got really lazy about charting. I figured that Wed was just about P+14 so I took a test and it was negative. I was not really surprised. I started to feel like AF was getting near. I had some minor spotting since Tues.  I stopped the progesterone Wed night. It usually take 2-3 days to clear out of my system so I should be due tomorrow.

I am about to finish my 6th chart which means 3 years of charting. UGH I am so tired of charting. I emailed my FCP for more charts. Then she wanted to do an annual review. I emailed her back and told her that I just cannot speak to her about my lack of fertility anymore. I am so burned out about I just cannot do it. it. She emailed me back and I have not been able to open it yet. UGH I am wondering if I really need to bother anymore.

I am almost done with updating my bathroom, which is good. We started it last year and have been working on it piece by piece since then. Last week we finally went to finish putting in the border. Then we discovered that we did not buy enough. I was so mad bc I measured it three times. We were about one whole roll off which I thought was weird. Since we started the border last year, we had most of the bathroom done and then we ran out. I was upset bc that border might be out of print by now. I went online and found it. Then I saw that it said the roll had 15 feet. The roll itself says 12 feet. So it seems that I did measure correctly. The error was the online catalog where I ordered from. The roll just came in, so now we can finally finish that project this weekend.

Huge Fight

I am around P+7, not sure. I kind of stopped charting. I am on the last row of my 6th chart which means I have been doing this for 3 years.. I emailed my FCP for more charts and she never got back to me. Then I got to the point where I was getting burned out on it.

My DH and I got into a huge 3 day fight. It ended with him sending me flowers at work. We have been married for ten years and he has only sent me flowers a few times. That shows how huge this fight was. Basically, I am tired of BD. Being that he is a man, he wants to do it every day. I am burned out on that. Not sure if there is some psychological aspect to being infertile, or if its my age, or hormones, etc 

5 years ago, we had a once a week thing going on. Then when we started TTC we upped it to 3-4 times a week. Sometimes more. Now that it is clear that I will never have a BFP, I want to take a break. Clearly  that was not going to cut it. So we had a fight. The start was the day I had a mole removed from my back. I mentioned that I was not in the mood bc my back was sore. Then he started to try to fix my back problem. I was totally offended that he did not just let me be.

In reality, I would like to take a month off or more to get back the flame, but I know that will never happen. I have been pushing myself the last few years to BD bc I wanted a child. Now  it feels like a chore.

He does not understand that I am just not in the mood at all. I need my space and he won't give it to me. It is getting to the point where I wonder if I want to have a marriage like this. That is how bad the fight was, we started to throw around the D word. I do love him a lot and we get a long so well except for that one topic right now.

I told him that I wanted to make a poll about the freq. He said women would down play and men would exaggerate.

I hate to say it, but if we had kids, we would not have so much free time and we would not have so much alone time. Then he would have to learn to adjust.

Visiting a Friend for the First Time After She Had Her Baby

Last summer I made a new friend and we were both struggling with IF. Then she had her surgery with the same dr as me and then a few months later she got her bfp. I was truly happy for her, but it was a major sting to me that my surgery did not give me the same result. She was very compassionate about telling me and I was ok with it. I went to her baby shower.

We went to visit them for the first time since she had the baby. He is now 6 months old. I cannot believe how time flies. He was a very mellow baby which helped. We were able to carry on a conversation. I interacted with him. I held him and felt good about it.

Later on she asked me how things were going. All of a sudden I felt extremely shy about it. I did not want to discuss it with her any more. It is amazing bc last summer we were talking all about napro, our surgeries etc. Now I wanted to avoid this topic like the plague. It was awkward that she was sitting there with her baby on her lap while I have no chance of ever having my own.

I have no hope and  talking about it would make me cry, so I just told her ya know the same old situation. Then she asked me about adopting. UGH I was just so uncomfortable. I don't even know what I said. She got the hint eventually and changed the subject. I know that she was trying to be good. She has been very sensitive towards me, but now she is on the other side.

She mentioned getting AF even though she is nursing. She said it is bc her baby sleeps though the night. She is not going back to work.

School starts back up in a few days.We have a new teacher evaluation system starting so I have a lot of meetings during the first two days to learn all about it. I have a lot to do to get ready. My dh said I will feel better once I get back into my classroom with my students. I don't want to get a big head, but I do have some more confidence now that I got that excellent rating. Last year started with a lot of drama. I had a major meltdown. This year, I hope to have a solid calm start.

Completed the First Month of LDN

Today I have been taking LDN for a month. It is also test day.

I am not sure if the LDN is doing anything for my fertility. I will be getting some immune tests done next month to find out. This month was the transition month. I had to ease into this drug by taking 2mg, then 3mg, and finally 4.5 mg.

Every time I upped the dose I had the same symptoms. Crazy vivid dreams that could turn into nightmares. Sleepless nights. I used to always go to sleep right away and would always sleep through the night. This past month has been totally different. I can't go to sleep right away. Then when I do get to sleep, I have dreams or I wake up repeatedly. Some nights I would wake up and then I was totally awake and had to get out of bed and go downstairs.

The weird thing was that I kinda felt tired but not like you would expect.  I was not cranky at all. There was a period of about 2 weeks where I did not sleep, but I was not crabby at all. In fact my dh said that my mood was better. He said that in general I was more even and calmer.

Eventually I could not take the fact that I was not sleeping so I started to take some benedryl post peak. This made it much better. I did wake up once or twice but I was able to get back to sleep.

Now that I am at the end of a month of LDN, my sleeping is starting to get better. Last night was pretty good and I did not take any benedryl.

I had no pms at all this month so at least the LDN did something. 

I took my test today and of course it was negative. I am not sad, I am mad. I have been sticking myself in the belly twice a day all month for nothing.  Also I think the LDN is making me really CSP. I usually have that issue in general, but magnesium makes it all normal. This month has been really bad. I have had to start back on the prunes in addition to the magnesium. UGH

Over 1,000 Page Views Today

 Today I went to check my blog stats and I saw this graph. My first reaction was oh man, I was doing terrible earlier this week. Then I saw that I usually have about 100 visitors each day, which I thought was great. Then I saw that today I had over 1,000. OMG  Of course I had to investigate to see what was so popular.  It was this post  about a website where you can look up food and find out the nutrients in it. I posted that almost a year ago. It was on August 21, 2011. I think it is weird that today so many people found that post, Right????

Today was p+7. There was some drama at the clinic. Which was all me. It was packed today bc there were many men there. I had to wait 45 for a blood draw when they usually take you on time. I noticed that only two women  were called before me. Then when they came out they had US photos in their hands...........UGH so I got really mad that I had to wait behind them, when I would have been done in five min. I know it is stupid, but that's how it is. Then I had to wait all day for the results. They go online to the  patient portal and it usually takes 2 hours. Well they did not post until 4:30 which is closing time, so I think someone forgot to post them.

After waiting all day, I had good numbers so I felt better. My progesterone was 20.6 and my Estrogen was 184. I know that progesterone numbers do not indicate anything about BFPs but I am super excited that my number was that high. That is really good for me. I went back to check my charts. In 2.5 years of charting I have only had a number this high 3 times before today. Two of the three were on PIO. I changed a few things this month and who knows if that affected it. I started LDN and had to take generic prometrium. I started taking lovenox twice a day. At least I can feel comfortable that those changes did not move me backwards. I also had a larger than normal follicle this month which is most likely the culprit.

So to answer the question from the last post, that 21mm follicle was a good thing and it appears that it popped.

Good or Bad?

Summary of my scans this month
CD3 I had a possible cyst on my left. My right which had the dominant last month was clear. =)
CD10 lining looked great. Had a 14mm and 17mm on the left. Right was still clear.
CD13 lining looked great. Had a 14mm and 21mm and  on left. Right was clear. (Today)


The weird thing is that I have not gotten a +opk yet. Every month without fail,  I have always gotten a +opk at the same time when the follicle was about 18mm. So I was very surprised to see 21mm without one. I use clearblue easy monitor sticks. They measure estrogen and LH. Since the estrogen line got lighter I knew that my estrogen was high. Also yesterday I had tons of 10KL so I thought today I would get a +OPK. 

I am very concerned about LUFS this month since my body has not made LH on its own and it is time.. If you've been following me that has been a major battle for me. I am taking my trigger tonight so there is a chance.

One thing that is different this month is that I started taking LDN. Dr. Boyle said that LDN was not going to give me LUFS. Since napro has used it for years, I trust that it is fine.

The other thing that is different is that I started taking lovenox twice a day instead of once. I have many blood clotting issues so I figured it was time to step it up.

So who knows what is going on. This could be a good thing. Maybe getting my follicle to 21mm is better than 18mm??? or its a sign of LUFS.

FX that it will pop.

My Response

Thank you to all the ladies who gave me advice. It is a nice reminder to hear that I should take the high road etc when I am in the middle of a rage attack.

I gave it some time. Then I called my mom. I wanted to know what my sister's intentions were. My mom made it clear that her intentions were to just get involved in the party. I tried my best to hold back, but I cried and raised my voice with my mom. I told her that I was not mad at her, but I was so hurt by the fact that I received a business proposal after being ignored for almost 4 years. My mom restated the fact that she just wanted a small party nothing fancy. She had no ideas about my sister's grand plans.

I told my mom that I wanted to help and that I would do the invites on my own. I would also send my sister some photos for the video as she requested, but that was it and I was not going to work with her on this. We could each do our part with my mom at the lead.

Then I reread my sister's email. It was an entire page about details, details, details, like should we put a photo on the cake? what kind of cake? etc. Trivia game, family photo collage, favors etc OMG My parents are very simple folk and would be happy with a backyard BBQ. So all of this is so crazy.

Then she had a line in there about if she does the video then we can both have a creative project. Really??? I don't feel that sending out invites is all that creative. I was just going to send something out and now I am thinking that I have to make something fancy?? Most people these days get lazy and just send out evites, so I thought sending out cards was good enough.

After rereading her email it reminded me that she is a neurotic control freak. She wants to take over this whole thing and make it a major drama. She asked me a million questions.

So I thought and thought. Then I wrote the following. Short and to the point.

Hi ________,

I think it's great that you want to honor dad by doing all this stuff. Thanks for asking for my input on the video. I'll be happy to send photos. When I get the final info from mom, I'll be sending the invitations out. I spoke to mom today, so it's all set.

Simone

Need Advice About Sister Drama

I need some advice bc I am about to blow my top. I guess it does not help that last night I kept waking up with hot flashes so I did not sleep well. Today is  p+12 and I got a bfn. I know it is still early but ugh anway. Today is not starting off well.

If you have been following me for awhile you are well aware of my sister drama. If not, you can search my blog with the handy search box. She has ignored me for awhile now. I lost track but I think it has been 3-4 years.

Well this morning I checked my email and was surprised to see one from my sister's husband. It had a whole page of information about my father's upcoming b-day party in Sept. Basically he just starts writing about how he spoke to my mom and then tells me how we are going to split things up etc. I had suggested to my mom last month that I would send out the invites. Now he wants his contact info on it too. He wants to make a video etc.

Sounds great right? WRONG. at the end SHE signed it. So WTH does that mean?  It was so cold and callous. It was all facts. It just starts out like we are doing business. Now I am not sure who wrote it. Maybe it was both of them?

I am not sure what to do. I am really angry that she feels it is ok to ignore me and treat me like crap for years and then contact me when she wants something. She is a perfectionist and I am sure that she wants to control this too.

If she had given me one ounce of sympathy like, hey I know we have not gotten along but maybe we could do this together for dad...... then I would be ok bc I would think that this could be the start of a truce.
I know for a fact that she told my dad that she would never make up with me. So again WTH? It sounded like I was reading a contract and I had to agree to the terms.

I have tried to suppress my anger with my mom. I know that she does not have control over my sister, but I feel that she allows her to get away with it. My father has expressed that he is afraid that if he stands up to her that she will take his two and only grand kids away from him. OMG so I do not want to push it with them. But I feel that this has to stop. Why should she be allowed to ignore me? I have dealt with it for years, and I am afraid that I cannot hold it in anymore. I am about to go postal on someone about it.

Of course I don't need this extra stress in my life.  I don't want to deal with them. I just want to do my part under my mom's leadership.

I told my dh about the email and then he had to leave for work.. UGH what should I do?

Treatment Options

The next day dh was feeling more rational. He was just overwhelmed by everything. Even though the look on his face still haunts me, at least we got the discussion going. After the way he reacted, I started to doubt whether or not I should give up. I told him that we need to have a serious plan.

We spoke about treatment options. LIT seems promising but it is not a guarantee. We would have to travel to Mexico to get it. DH was all on board to do it until we starting checking prices. It would be a few thousand to get plane tickets, hotel rooms, treatment etc. From what I read most people get it done twice. We could do it if it were a sure thing. But the thought of gambling all that money is tough when adoption is so expensive. We are not risk takers in general.

Then there is IVIG which is given in the USA but it is very expensive. I am not sure if my insurance will cover it. I  could try and see. But again we would be gambling a few thousand dollars. This also requires a blood transfusion which make me uncomfortable.

Then I went back to research LDN. It seems that IVIG and LDN treat 8 of the same diseases. In fact, based on my google research, LDN seems to treat more things than IVIG . LDN also treat endo and some GI issues, which I have. It started to give me back some hope that the LDN could be the trick. Here are the diseases. Please let me know if there are any to add. I hoping that if there is some mystery disease that I have but do not know that it will be covered.

Today is P+7 so I have one more week to go.

IVIG

Alzheimer's Disease

Dermatomyositis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Myasthenia Gravis(MG

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)

Sjogren’s Syndrome

Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS)

Systenic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)

Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP))
Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS)
Autoimmune Diabetic Neuropathy
Polymyositis
Multifocal Motor Neuropathy (MMN)
Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID)
Hypogammaglobulinemia
Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID)
Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome (WAS)
X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia (XLA)
other connective tissue disorders

 

LDN

Alzheimer's Disease
Dermatomyositis
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Myasthenia Gravis (MG)
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Sjogren’s Syndrome
Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS)
Systemic Lupus (SLE)

ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Behcet's Disease
Celiac Disease
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
CREST syndrome
Crohn's Disease
Endometriosis
Fibromyalgia
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Parkinson's Disease
Pemphigoid
Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS)
Psoriasis
Transverse Myelitis
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Sarcoidosis
Scleroderma
Ulcerative Colitis
Wegener's Granulomatosis