shishnit.org

On my blog I haven’t talked about infertility or anything female related since December of last year.  I then briefly spoke about being on Yasmin briefly.  Yasmin sucked for me.  I took it for less than one packet…meaning I never finished the pack.  It was the worst, made me sick and I began to bleed with pill #1.  In fact I bled the entire time I took 7 pills and then for ten days following it.  For me it was the “make thee bleed” pill. 

In the following months I ditched my former OB/GYN (could NOT handle sitting in a waiting room full of pregnant teenagers holding 3 kids.)  I went to a fertility clinic because at least there I would not be sitting with pregnant women and oddly even if I saw a pregnant woman there I would be ok with it because that pregnant woman would have earned that pregnancy in my mind.  At the fertility clinic they are maxed out on the latest technology and they are able to do trans-vaginals in less then five minutes flat in their own offices.  This is very convenient for me and my wonky working uterus.  Thing is even if no more babies ever occupy my uterus I still need to concern myself with it’s ongoing health because that’s what PCOS does to you.  It makes you fear cancer for life in a big way.

In the month of December and January I was put on two medications.  One to decrease the high blood pressure that Yasmin also gave me immediately and another to fake my body into having a period every month because I don’t ovulate and therefore there is no period unless we medically make one.

In the past few months I’ve had amazingly perfect periods and have felt better than I have in ten years about my female health.

I have also moved away from all the sadness and mind numbing pain of not being able to reproduce.  But…every so often something triggers that feeling and it’s like a knife through me.  But even those triggers are fewer and farther between.

The things I have learned to avoid are

Blogs whereby the mother’s bitch about their wonderful children doing nothing but being children.

Women at work who bitch about their children yet keep popping more out.

Pregnant women in grocery stores, bookstores, any public places where I must sit or be for long periods of time.  I do not want to hear them complain about pregnancy woes at all!!

Not spending the majority of my time at doctor’s officers and hospitals having my nether regions poked prodded, etc.

Having done this…I am sane.  I am ok. I have mostly moved on and forgotten that we ever went down the hell path of infertility treatments at all.  The one thing I can’t avoid…..the occasional moments when I say something about “my” son and my husband responds by saying, “yes I know I don’t have any.”  I assumed he was ok and beyond things too…but those times show me that he still has moments where it’s hard.

Together as a couple we are better in this place.  We can come and go as we please, we’re not struggling to pay for diapers and we’re not emotionally ripped apart taking fertility drugs, etc.  That was a nightmare situation. 

I’m really ok, minus the fact that I will always have an inability to watch “Baby Story” again.

But every month I happily swallow ten pills for ten days, wait for five days and insert a tampon.  That’s a major improvement health wise and I’m happy with it.

2007 is basically over. While reviewing this year in my mind the only things that come to mind are the highlights.

The house, Infertility, College, Work

The year started off with Math, the end of Math.

The end of one position at work and the movement into another and then midyear yet another…two bosses this year and more to come in the next. Expansion is like that.

The year my son turned 15.

This year marked not as much blog writing as I ventured away from the computer as much as possible. Work and school require being stuck to a computer. I wanted life to be stuck in the living.

This is the year that I had every single girly part tested and scanned and looked at. Every single one. $38,000 worth of medical bills. Thank goodness for Health Insurance.

This is the year I got angry with my husband for his problems, yet this is also the year I realized that I love him despite his problems.

This is the year I learned that talking about, writing about or even speaking out loud of infertility makes infertility much more difficult to cope with, yet I have no regrets.

This is the year of two offices.

The year of Clomid.

The year of new spaces, new houses and new fenced yards.

The year of marked up calendars and counting days and planning sex.

This was the year of “extract” medicine and social fires.

Another year of writing papers, reading coursework and getting more A’s.

This year marked our second year of wedded togetherness

This year I didn’t blog as much. Nor did I feel obligated as much. Obligated to do anything simply out of obligation. I find that obligations lead to ill feelings.

This year I read a lot of Buddhism books. I also read a lot of self help books. I read and read and mostly read nonfiction and religion and psychology books. I entered the joyful electives in college and earned straight A’s in my core courses. I also gained a library and more space. I also gained a better outlook on life. I also started to have more faith in myself.

In 2008 I want to write more for fun. I want to write more from the gut about everything. I want to fear less what others might say to me about what I write and what I truly feel. I want to go back to not censoring myself because it’s healthier. I want simple things.]

My ABC’s of 2008

Authenticity – I want to be true to myself.

Artistic outlet – I want to write by hand, write poetry, type up my book to date

Books and Blogs – I want to continue to find time to “read”. Simply “read”. I want to continue to cut back on the blogs I read, reading only those that enrich me, empower me and make me learn something more.

Chloe – I want to hug her, kiss her, love her, keep her…forever.

Dawns, I want to watch the sun come up more often. Perhaps a few beach hours early in the morning.

Early morning breakfasts before work. I want to eat better.

Food, that is healthy.

Growth, I want to grow as a person and never forget how joyous learning is.

History, I want to let go of more emotional baggage this year.

Icing. I want to always remember to ice every cake, the best of anything without the icing is not the best that it can be.

Joking around. I love a good joke and want to find more of them this year.

Keith. I want to be closer to him this year. Teenage years suck!

Love. I want to give more away than I can possible gain for myself. I want to love without abandon.

Money. I want to save more, earn more, give more, and worry less.

Neverland. I want to remember my little girl side. I want to read more children’s books I loved as a child. I want to play more, dream more, make shapes out of clouds and let go of adult worries more often.

Open. I want to be open to new experiences, better relationships, deeper friendships.

PCOS. I want to conquer it. I want to rule it. I want to beat it.

Queen. I want to be the queen of my world every day. Imagining I have a crown and I can rule only my world.

Rick. I want to be closer, hug more, enjoy more, spend more time and do more without a heavy heart or fear or resentments.

Sex. More more more please. Happy joyful loving…

Time. I want more time to enjoy, more time to relax. More time to simply be.

Understanding. I want to find peace with my religious and spiritual path. I want to finally say “ah ha” and be one with it all.

Variety. I want to build new traditions and find a variety of ways to have fun. Fun, more fun please. Bubble baths and movie nights and more things together.

Without worrying. I want to explore without fear, do without worry and breath deeply instead of clenching my teeth with worry. Worry never mends a bridge, nor does it stop a flood. I want to build boats with my hope and paddle with my grief and make good use of the bad turning it into only good.

X. I want to truly 100% forgive my ex-husband. I say I have, I try to. I still get angry at him, against him, etc. I want to be able to tell him I’ve forgiven him once and for all.

Yoyo. I want to stop the yo yo dieting the yo yo changing. I want to accept that I will have to do certain things to have certain outcomes. I want to make small changes that equal bigger changes. I want to find peace in who I am while still being strong enough to change into something better. I want to stop going up and down in determining what it is that I truly want to be and just let it be. I just want to “be”.

Zealous. I want to be intense, passionate and enthusiastic about all the things I love to do in life. I want to adore, enjoy and be truly involved in the activities that I choose to take part of. I want to enjoy 100% of every single day.

I also have a few projects I want to work on this year.

1. Organize and publish a cookbook with my grandmother’s recipes in it
2. Find proper storage for my CD’s and catalog my collection
3. Put together that “Things that I love” poster/frame

Special thanks to Michelle, Kristyk, Siobhan, Jenniy, and Lori for being strong woman who have said the right things at imperative moments throughout 2007. You have made me a better me.

So I went and picked up the birth control. My doctor put me on Yasmin. I was rather shocked when the pharmacist told me the price. It was $35 total for both the provera to start a period and the Yasmin to continue them. When you have serious PCOS you need this combination if you want to cook up a nice healthy period….or a period at all for that matter.

I ripped apart my prescriptions quickly to look at the cost breakdown. I think I was shocked because I’ve taken every medication known to the uteruses and the like over the last 3 years and this was alarming.

My prescription for Provera was $10 and I saved a big whopping $1.10 via my insurance. Now, my insurance is good and I know they gave me a generic for the drug and I’m ok with that. I don’t need any fancy name on my pills. I just need them to work.

Then I looked at the Yasmin bag. It says “$25.00 was my cost.” And this for 28 pills. One months supply!! And to add insult to injury it further says, “Your insurance saved you $32.99” on the bag.

Ok so you mean to tell me that Yasmin’s normal cost is $57.99?? For 28 pills? Are they serious? That would be $695.88 per year to prevent pregnancy for a woman with no health insurance. With my insurance it will cost me $300 a year to prevent pregnancy when I can’t get pregnant and just need a drug that makes me have a period?

Fucking insane. Sorry but that’s so crazy to me because if I took Clomid every single month it would not add up to $300 a year. Also, I can opt to take Megace every day for the rest of my life. That drug is a total cost to me of $10 a month or $120 a year. I chose to forgo Megace because it makes you hungry, or so they say. I never felt that side affect.

On Megace there is no nasty bleeding, no need for tampons, no periods, just a daily cleansing of all body parts for any cells that should not be within the body. In other words it cleanses your uterus so it stays clean and healthy.

So Yasmin as an ongoing option for me means $25 per month plus the $5 for tampons. So $30 times 12 is $360 a year out of pocket expense or no periods, no tampons, no cramps and $120 a year. I’m going to have to consider this one. For the time being…but get this…

The day after I went to Dr. OB/GYN and he make me give blood for a pregnancy test (one that I will have to pay $11 out of pocket expense for even though I said I wasn’t pregnant and didn’t want the test and he convinced me that perhaps I was…) …well the very day after that…I got my period. However, now I have to wait for it to stop…take the Provera…and wait for it to come back….and then begin taking a birth control pill.

The pack of pills looks like it’s marketed to a teenager. It’s purple and has a big hefty book of directions…all about what to do if you miss a pill and think you might get pregnant (hahahahaha….please god let that happen to me) and it comes complete with a set of stickers one is meant to place on the pack..how I haven’t quite figured out yet.

The last time I took the pill was 1991 and it came in a circular pack with Day 1, 2, 3, 4 etc on it. There were pink and green pills in it and not all white. And it didn’t come in a fancy fuzzy purple pouch packet.

Oh and it was $11 a month and I had no insurance!!!

So far, Yasmin, I am not impressed by your fancy packaging alone. For the simple fact of not having to go back to the doctor for the next three months I will be ingesting this crap and finding out. What I truly do not understand is that I have to do this to cleanse my PCOS ridden body of excess estrogen and keep my uterus healthy.

Someone recommended a birth control to me, I believe it was Yaz…which is a form of Yasmin. I think they said it was good. We shall see. I can say that if I feel better hormonally etc. I will pay any price.

negative results

I cannot say I am surprised.  But it’s rather like being teased for 24 plus hours just to sigh and say “well ok…moving on..”

I think I knew all along since I dropped off my birth control script this morning for afternoon pick up (after work). 

Yesterday I had a Christmas work party.  Another one in a different location today. My boss gave me a great insulated cup from Starbucks with a $25 gift certificate.  Nice…very nice of her.  I bought her a bottle of wine because I believe in medicating the boss.

And the oddest thing, I got my period 2 hours ago.  What unnecessary emotional turmoil that was.

So sometime in the last cycle of fertility drugs (after all drugs were already ingested) we decided in sheer frustration and stress to just quit. We were both emotionally drained; our marriage was suffering under the weight of the stress and sex schedules. It was more trying than I could even manage to write about. At that time to even write about it was to admit that it was defeating me and beating my mind and soul and heart into a bloody pulp.

The drugs make you crazy, you want to kill yourself just to get away from yourself and then you combine that with the normal irrational infertility thoughts. I mean to this day, I read about Britney Spears sister getting knocked up and Hanna Montana chick being with child and I want to rip apart a big big book and trample it’s pages until all the bloody words are scattered across the floor. I cannot even think of a way to acknowledge the sheer anger that an infertile woman is capable of feeling when someone else is pregnant. To this day I cannot watch “A Baby Story” and I avoid any magazine that has a baby on the cover. The only child that’s even managed to capture me, is Matthew. I have sometimes rubbed his little baby head and said a million silent prayers without even admitting it to myself.

After that last cycle I avoided the doctor with the plague. I knew that it was wrong to do and unhealthy to do but I was fed up, and sick of Dr. Can’t Get Me Pregnant. I had also had a few incidents whereby his office screwed things up, sending me for procedures without having a negative pregnancy test on file for clearance for the test, setting appointments and then when I would walk into his office, asking ME why I was there or worse yet telling me that test results from 23 days ago weren’t in the office. I was doctor’s office drained.

However, I finally set an appointment two days ago with the intent to go and get on the pill and remain physically healthy. The prospects for a baby well buried along with my former dreams for an expanded family. In the midst of all of this there have been issues with my son, things that have kept me awake at night with worry for him. Those two combinations, the letting go of what might have been and trying to deal with what is present and needs immediate attention as a mother, well they combined to make me absolutely loony when it came to baby talk or the like.

Some “very” well meaning person in my Internet friends list contacted me once saying something along the lines of “I know you said you were done, but being done doesn’t happen that suddenly or quickly, let me know if you need to talk” Now those words are not verbatim because at the time I was struck by just how truthful her acknowledgement was. I said, “hey I turned left” but my heart didn’t entirely follow.

You decide in life to just turn left and try to be happy about your choice to turn left and yet you still turn your head slightly to the right from time to time as if to just feel the pain of it might make it possible again. I have a hard time putting it all into words, truly I do. Wanting and envisioning and not knowing why you can’t when other’s simply can….

Today’s doctor appointment was a “consult” only. So just like the first time I entered the Dr’s office, I sat across from him in a chair and discussed our decision to stop trying. His response, “Yes, perhaps taking a break is in order, if we get your cycle regulated on birth control drugs, your body is more likely to respond to fertility drugs later. Lets do this but discuss your decision 3 months from now when we do a full physical and pap test again. I started to utter, “No you don’t get it…we’re done…we don’t want a baby.” But there’s that seed of hope somewhere deep within the soil of my being that saw light…saw light to breathe and heal and perhaps…hope later..maybe later we can try again. His words uttered through my hollow heart ping ponging against the empty room called “what if” that I built around my heart to protect it from truly feeling the vast disappointment.

And then he asked, “After the last round, when did you bleed?” I was astonished and said, “But I have PCOS and I don’t get periods, remember doc?” To which he said, “everyone bleeds after Clomid, even when it doesn’t work….unless…. ok I want my nurses to do a pregnancy test today…call tomorrow to get the results prior to taking the Provera to start on birth control.

And then I sat fighting back the tears of confusion…while the nurse jabbed my arm repeatedly looking for a vein. I wanted to say, “it’s ok that your jabbing me…physical pain is easier than the hollow wanting.” I said nothing. I left his office with scripts for Provera and birth control talking myself down from hoping. I drove across the street to get munchies for a Christmas party taking place at work today.

I went into Publix and within minutes some lady runs down the isle and says “ma’am…you drive that red SUV?” I said, “yes” She said, “I think you forgot to put it into park..it rolled straight across the lot and stopped at the cart collector thing!” I went out and looked and indeed my car was wedged diagonally against the cart collector that was thankfully empty. No one got hit by my car and I had no damage.

My mind…was …is…elsewhere. The sweetest thing is…at this moment…I ache for Rick….. I’ve called him a few times but he probably doesn’t have his phone with him, he’s working.