Keeps Getting Better

My life just keeps getting better.  I had to drop my pants in the doctor's office so my husband could give me my first estrogen shot in the butt.  OMG!

It was quite embarrassing, but it didn't hurt at all.  He has to give me these lovely shots every three days for the next two weeks.  I feared I'd have to give myself at least one of the shots because I'm going out of town.  However, it works out that hubby can give me a shot right before I leave and I'll be due for another when I return.  THANK GOODNESS.  There's no way I could have handled that.
Ok...I guess I could handle that, but I don't want to. I admire the self-shooters.  They are a brave batch of women.  I am a chicken.

Debby Downer

I know this is the time to be all thankful and grateful, but whatever.  2013 has been a total bitch for me, so I'll be the Debby Downer that says 'eff' all this happy shiz.

1.  I hate my new job and I plan to quit it in six months.  That's if I'm lucky enough to find a new job, or they fire me so I can collect unemployment.  However, I am thankful that, at the moment, the insurance is paying for this FET.

2.  I hate IVF and infertility.   I would still be the sweet, optimistic person who found the positive in everything, had a never jumped into this mess.

3.  I wish there was a way to tell my mother that I'm not being mean or disrespectful when I don't take her calls.  She just happens to call when I am at my lowest moments.  I feel it's better not to share those moments with her.  You'd think since she knows I've had my ass kicked in every possible way this year, she'd figure it out.  Instead, she chooses to label me as being somehow rebellious, even though I'm 33.  What the hell do I have to rebel against?

4.  It was great to meet a woman who boasted about her ability to grow really big babies.  She went on to recommend that I smoke during my third trimester of pregnancy to make small ones.  HaHaHa!!  How funny, right?  EXCEPT I CAN'T GET PREGNANT.  HAHAHAHAHA!  If at some point IVF works for me, there's a large chance I'd have a premature child. HAHAHAHA!  I guess smoking would make that all better for me, right?  Oh fertile people...so funny.

Can't you tell I'm in a glorious mood for the holidays?  I'm so excited that I get to mix this attitude with a round of estrogen and progesterone shots.  2013 just keeps getting better.  Thank goodness there's only a month of it left.

In 2014, The new puppy, Wally, and I will waste as much time and money as possible learning agility.  That's if Roxie doesn't kill him first.  I am thankful for my very patient husband, my extended family and my precious, precious puppies.  I wouldn't have made it this far without Roxie.  And although Wally is loud and needs to sleep later in the morning, he is a great addition to our pack.

Game On

Soooo...It looks like this month I will be transferring the "Rotties."  However, after a lot of thinking, I've decided to name them TLC.  You know? After the girl group from the 90s... I figure those girls were just as wild and rotten as my remaining embryos.

I had my third HSG this week.  It was far better than the last one.  Even though I got it done outside the doctor's office, the Witch Doctor came to the hospital to perform it herself.  Thank Goodness.  You know I like to insult her, but I have to give credit where it is due.  She made the process a lot easier.  However, there was still drama in the radiology room.

Witch Doctor: "(to me) I'm sorry, I didn't warm up this instrument for you.  It's going to be a little cold. Ok?

Me: "Ok."

Other Doctor:  "Why don't you use a plastic one. It won't be cold?"

Witch Doctor:  "The plastic one hurts so much.  Metal is better for comfort."

Other Doctor:  "But you can do so much more with the plastic."

Witch Doctor:  "I'm okay with using the metal on my patients."

Uhhmmm...It felt like 'Other Doctor' didn't realize a real human being was on the table listening to all of this.  I was glad Witch Doctor stuck to her guns.  The insertion was no problem.  Of course when that dye went through my nether regions, there was a painful amount of cramping.  It wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  Keep in mind, I didn't take any meds.  I forgot to bring my ibuprofen along with me because I'm clearly a genius.

So now I'm waiting for the results from that.  As it stands my protocol will be different from the last transfer.  Witch doctor has prescribed estrogen shots.  She says, "they go in your tooshie.  you can totally handle it."  I'm glad she's all-knowing.  I haven't had to deal with any butt shots, so this is a new endeavor for me.  We shall see how it works out.

Once this transfer is over, I'll likely disappear from the TTC world.  I'll still blog and read blogs, but I won't undergo any procedures.  I need to save up for the next round of complete IVF.  My insurance covers a decent amount, but not all of it.  I'm NEVER taking out a loan for something like this again. Remember! No cash. No IVF.  Defeat is much easier when the impact of debt does NOT follow it.

Mini Updates

Random Conversation

Me: I really don't think the doctor is very invested in this transfer.  I had to ask her about vitamins and supplements

Hubby:  I think she's afraid of you.  You can use this to your advantage to get great care.

Although I like to call the RE witch doctor, I certainly hope she's not afraid of me.  I'm all bark and absolutely no bite.  I barely even bark.  It's more like a whimper.  I guess I shouldn't worry about supplements and such since I took everything under the sun last time, and still got a negative.

Random Crying

I cried when I read a blog about a woman having twins, after five IVFs.  I cried when I found out a woman I'd never met had her adoption cancelled at the last moment. The birth mother changed her mind.  Finally, I cried when I watched a YouTube video of a woman who had a healthy set of IUI triplets.  They actually started out as quintuplets.

Wally

The puppy comes home on Saturday.  I think we may have gone a little overboard in preparation for his arrival.  It's kind of exciting and sad.  I am pretty sure that instead of being a cat lady, I'll be the dog lady.  I'll have like five Australian Shepherds on a rundown piece of property in the back hills of some country town.

Roxie

She is queen of the castle and the car.  There's not much more to say than that.

Bad Breakup

I decided to dump my shrink.  That woman is costing me too much damn money.  I came up with a plan, practiced it in my mind, and prepared to execute it.  But things didn't work out that way.  WTF?!

Here's what happened...

I decided to move forward with my final transfer with my rotten embryos, dubbed "The Rotties."  I figured that I no longer needed the shrink because if I use The Rotties, that effectively ends this chapter of my life.  However, I hadn't found a way to talk to my Hubby about this.  Somehow with the help of the Shrink, I got it all out.

I said that I was ready to do this, but only because I want to be done.  I wanted it all over by December 31st. My husband...he's still very hopeful.  It's hard sometimes because I can't be like that anymore.  It cost me too much last time, but it's selfish to snuff out his joy, right?

The doctor reminded me...us...that nothing we feel is wrong and no ones feelings should be discounted.   She said my emotions will swell and I have to deal with that.

Damn!  With that, I couldn't dump her.  I realized I will need her guidance at least until this entire ordeal is over.  I just wish her services and trained wisdom were free.

So I emailed the witch doctor to get the party started.  She told me that if my cycle starts on time, the transfer and two week wait should be complete before the start of 2014.  I'd prefer to end 2013 with a negative, instead of starting the new year with such bad news.  I did that at the beginning of this year and it sucked.  Aside from my new job, this entire year sucked.

I didn't really know how I was going to pay for this, as my savings is depleted and I have a big loan to pay from the failed cycle.  Imagine my excitement when the doctor's office called to say that with my insurace, the bill for the transfer should be about $280.  Say what?  However, my insurance company could not say if the transfer would be counted as one of the three lifetime IVFs they help cover.

My doctor's office doesn't think it should, but of course, it's not their call.  Well, I can afford $280.  So yeah...All "Three Rotties" are going in and after December, I won't have to pay their rent anymore.  I'll be an empty-nester?  But I'll still make payments for that pesky loan that financed their creation.

Please remember that IVF is for suckers!

The Visit

At the risk of his own safety, the hubby woke me up at the crack of dawn (ok. it was 7:45am) and got me going to that dreaded RE appointment.  The bonus? He bought me a tasty latte:-)

The appointment was interesting.  I felt no emotions during it.  In fact, I fought the urge to sleep in the big, comfy chairs in the doctor's office.  I thought this appointment would be to start all over.  I was wrong.  It was kind of a postmortem for the failure.

The doctor told us that my negative came with a string of  other non-positives for her office and it shook her up.  She explained that she never questioned my tubes before the failure, but since the embryos didn't stick, despite being chromosomally normal, that was one of the variables that she figured could have gone wrong for us.

When I got my negative, I was very angry that she immediately referenced the Fallopian tube issue and questioned why she didn't throw out that scenario before the transfer.  Well as you can see, she explained away that problem.

She also told us that the two other folks who got negatives at the same time as me are now happily pregnant because they tried again.  Alright...I guess I felt some emotion at that point.  I kind of wanted to slap her.  Sorry that I'm not rich and I couldn't risk more of my hard-earned money on a chance.  But, the feeling wasn't really that strong.  I just figured my non-trying-non-pregnancy-non-luck is just par for the course with me.  

Anyway I digress.  She went on to say that two of my three remaining embryos are really good.  If we did a transfer, she'd want to put all three in.  Something about that angered me, which is funny because I've always said that if I did another transfer, I'd just put them all in to get it over with.

I left feeling like she really didn't care and I didn't really care.  But upon speaking with my husband, I realized that he really does care.  So no matter what, I will take this next step for him.  I don't know when I'll begin a protocol, but I'll do it.

Gosh, my blog is really depressing, right?  Ugh!

I promise that it will become more light-hearted soon.  In just two weeks, my beloved puppy will be coming home.  I'm sure I will have plenty of posts about him driving me nuts because as the breeder's daughter told us, he's a whiner:-)  He confirmed the assessment during our visit last weekend.  I'm just hoping Roxie is nice to him.

Reckoning

My day of reckoning is a day away.  I have an appointment with my RE to possibly jump start this little infertility battle once again on Tuesday.

I've thought about canceling it because all of the signs seem to be telling me to run. Here's a prime example:  last week I was supposed to go in for a Dye test.  Well, I woke up that morning to no running water!  What?!  There was trouble with the water line running through the complex, so water had to be shut off for the repairs.  That's fine. I just wish someone had notified folks that this was going to happen.  We were all knocking on each others doors trying to figure out what happened.

It took three hours to repair the water line.  Well, that wasn't early enough to prepare for my doctor's visit.  I know many of you will say, "so."  To that I say, the hubby and I had a romantic rump the night before. There was no way in hell I was going in to have my legs spread wide for dye, without washing the lady parts thoroughly.

Since all I could do was boil water and take a pot bath ( or a HOE bath, as my mother called it), thorough wasn't happening.  I just kept thinking, this must be a message from the universe.  I mean the dye test can only be taken on certain days of your cycle and the facility only had one appointment that fit my schedule.  How is it that on that single day, there's no running water at my place?  Whatever!

I explained my rationale to my husband.  Of course, he didn't buy it.  I talked to the expensive-ass shrink about it.  She said it's time to go.  It's time to explain to my doctor where I think she went wrong and move on with treatment, or find someone else.

Since the shrink pretty much challenged me to act like an adult, I'm putting on my biggest big girl panties and I'm going.

I figure if the aftermath of the meeting doesn't include me in a puddle of tears, all will be well.