Days 5 and 6 of stims

Yesterday, my E2 was a measly 194. I'm on track for my worst (least egg-ful) cycle ever.

My head is full of broken glass. I'm spending most of my time desperately trying not to think.

I didn't even know I was supposed to be worrying about that.

Turns out I have Asherman's Syndrome (a.k.a. intrauterine adhesions or scarring of the uterus.) Impossible to tell whether it was caused by the c-section and then went on to cause the miscarriage and subsequent D&C, or whether it was caused by the D&C.

There I was all worried about my estrogen and follicles, when I should have been worried about my uterus.

Well, fuck.

I'm not sure what comes next. The online Asherman's support group say that it's very important to be treated by an experienced surgeon. There's one a few states away, near where my sister lives. I could go up there, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I should do a freeze-all cycle first. I'm 38.5 and not getting any younger. I don't know. It's all so exhausting to think about.

I would just like one fucking thing to be easy, thanks.

Waiting.

The good news is that I finally, finally, finally got my period, a cool 65 days after the D&C.

The bad news is that my blood pressure has inexplicably gone crazy, and I can't start an IVF cycle until it's under control again. If my cycle goes back to being regular (please please) then that means probably another 32 days.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

On the interesting side, apparently two miscarriages and a chemical pregnancy adds up to "three losses", which won me a karotype and a recurrent loss panel.  I had about a pint of blood drawn; we shall see if anything turns up. I'll be surprised if it does. I honestly think it's just been a bit of bad luck. I mean, theoretically I know that for some people the ratio of positive pregnancy tests to babies is 1:1, but... it seems like a frankly ludicrous thing to expect.

I guess I'll spend this month, I dunno, inhaling lavender and doing yoga breathing and drinking pomegranate juice and stuff. I let a lot go by the wayside in order to survive the whole becoming-unpregnant thing:I guess this month is my chance to get as sane and healthy as possible before I get back on the crazytrain.

Errrrrrrrrrrrgh.

The good:
Meeting with Big Shiny Fertility Factory doctor went well. I can work with him. He had some good things to say and wasn't put off by my knowing a lot of doctor-words. Some doctors hate it when you use doctor-words.

Not so good:
My insurance has kicked me back as not having IVF coverage, because I am not married and am using donor sperm. Now, I did check with my Benefits department in 2008 to make sure that this insurance plan covered the same as my other insurance plan (i.e., without regard to marital status or donor sperm). I was told that they did, which is why I switched my insurance. Now I'm being told differently. This is, quite literally, the $20,000 question.

If I'm not covered then. Well. I can wait a year, and switch back to my old insurance, on which I have one cycle remaining. Waiting a year is not a great idea when you're 38, not if you actually want to have a baby.

We could take out loans and pay out of pocket.  This is, obviously, a major commitment, and not one that Her Indoors and I necessarily see eye-to-eye on.

We could try again at home, using sperm from a different donor. This would make me sad, because I'd love Small Boy to have a full genetic sibling.

I'm kind of in a blind panic about the insurance coverage, angry at myself for not double-triple-quadruple-checking, angry that this, this could be what determines our family size, angry that we are so dependent upon others, angry, angry, angry that the last pregnancy didn't stick around when maybe it was my last chance or close to it.

I've got an email out to the Head Benefits Muk-a-Muk. Until I hear back about that I'm going to be on the knife edge.

Did I mention angry?

CD 11, stims day 9

Not so great an appointment. My lining has somehow magically shrunk to 7.5. Where did it go? A few follicles around 14.

I don't understand why I'm getting the craptastic linings lately. I hate this. I hate the rollercoaster. I hate the endless appointments, waiting and waiting and waiting in the doctor's office (40 minutes this morning, an hour and a half on Monday) and then waiting and waiting at the lab, I hate waiting for the phone call to see what my lab results are, I hate slipping into work after unexplained disappearances and hoping that no one noticed, blood draw after blood draw, I hate this, I hate this.

sigh.

It's okay. I know I'm actually lucky, super lucky that this is a torture I can freely choose, and have chosen. I just wish it sucked less.

E2: 648
LH: 7.7 (elevated)

Aftermath

• It wasn't until after the birth that I found out that the jerking? while I was on the table? that was the doctor and nurse yanking trying to get our son out of me. See, apparently 2.5 hours of hard pushing was enough to wedge him in there really really well. They tried to push him back up. Didn't work. They tried to get some turn on him. Didn't work. As tension mounted in the OR, apparently my sweetie was afraid that they were going to have to break my pelvis to get him the heck out. They ended up with the nurse and doctor each with one knee up on the operating table for more leverage, heaving. I was so drugged I only vaguely noticed.

• Being in the hospital was pretty awesome. It was a safe, contained space for the three of us to concentrate on this new little creature and his requirements. I was not at all sorry to be there for the C-section mandated four days.

• Having said that, I was in pretty rough shape physically. I don't know if it was because of the long labor or what, but I was flattened. By the time I was discharged I was still only hobbling slowly. I had the poor example of my best friend, who is, unlike me, a) in good shape b) tough as nails. She was bopping around days after her C-section, and I expected to be doing the same. Noooooo. I also blew up until my ankles looked like a Cabbage Patch doll's. I didn't retain too much water during pregnancy, so I was surprised and displeased by my giant ankles.
  

All of this is preamble to the next big chapter of Aftermath.

I got home on a Thursday. Friday was okay. I woke up Saturday morning feeling awful in every way, short of breath, and with the strong feeling that I was going to die. That was actually my most bothersome symptom: I was terrified. I felt like there was a siren wailing in my head. Get help, you are not okay.

I tested my blood pressure and it was the highest I'd ever seen it, 180/103. My pulse, normally in the 90s, was in the 50s. Off to the hospital we went.

After a few hours of testing, they sent me home. By the time I was there, my blood pressure had gone down to 140s/90s. My bloodwork (testing my liver enzymes) was okay. I wanted to beg them to keep me. I just felt so wrong. I went home. I cried a lot. I couldn't sleep because lying down made me short of breath and, more, I was afraid that I'd die if I slept. It was totally irrational but just so strong.

I got through Sunday somehow, but by Monday I was back in the hospital. By then my stats were more alarming; my blood pressure was staying elevated, my liver function was declining, and there was some fluid (although not a lot) visible in my lungs on a chest x-ray. This time, they kept me. The doctor who told me that I was going to have to stay spoke gently, regretfully. I could have kissed her.

The blood pressure and liver function was a gimme; they see it all the time. What wasn't so obvious was why my heartbeat was so slow. It was in the 50s, then started dipping into the 40s and even the 30s a few times. Alarms kept going off on my monitors. They kept asking me if the rate was normal, did I work out a lot? And I'm all HAHAH do I look like I work out a lot? I had minor tachycardia all through my pregnancy, with my heartbeat well over 100 resting.

They set me up in a room in labor & delivery. They really had no idea where to put me; I was too sick for the postpartum unit, too baby-fresh (and with too many other things going on) for the regular cardiac unit. So labor & delivery it was. I sent my wife and our 9-day old baby home. That was hard enough for me; I can't really imagine what it was like for my darling to be home alone, suddenly a single parent to a brand new baby, worrying about me in the hospital.

They gave me an EEG and an EKG and I don't know which was which; one was a pretty quick monitoring onto a strip of paper, the other an extensive ultrasound of my heart. The person who did the ultrasound was a tech, not a doctor, so couldn't give me any answers. I kept hearing odd shlub-shlubs and wondering is it meant to sound like that? really?

It was a long, long night. They gave me a high dose of diuretic, which was meant to help my lungs and probably my blood pressure. Over the next 12 hours I peed out 6 liters of fluid. So I peed. I watched TV. A M*A*S*H marathon got me through 2-5 a.m. I cried. I thought about dying. I thought about how badly I didn't want to die just now. Every time I dozed off the monitors would start binging that my heart rate was too low. I pumped a few times with a breast pump: not enough, not nearly often enough, but I didn't know that at the time (see My Long Lactational Nightmare, coming soon). I snorted oxygen. At about 4 am a nurse came into check on me and found me crying; she asked me why and I told 'er. I'm scared that I'm going to die, I said.

Nonsense, she said, cheerily measuring my prodigious urine output. If they thought you were going to die they wouldn't have you on this unit.

That bit of logic made me feel infinitely better. It made sense. They didn't want patients falling over dead in Labor & Delivery. If they thought I was going to die they would've sent me somewhere else. It was just those damn binging monitors that made me think of too many medical dramas.

The long night finally ended. My liver function had gotten no worse during the night. A cardiologist swanned in for a consult and told me, in short, that my heart looked fine and he had no idea why my heartrate was so low. I wasn't comforted that he didn't know, but I was comforted that he didn't particularly seem to care. Pregnancy is weird, he said. It'll probably go away.

He was right. They discharged me that evening; I could've stayed, but I didn't want to. After losing all that water, I looked and felt a million times better. I could breathe, I could move, my ankles looked like my ankles, and my overwhelming sense of doom was receding. By the time I left the hospital my pulse was in the 60s.

My milk supply was also almost gone, but that's a story for another day.

CD20: No beginning in sight

I've had 5 blood draws so far this cycle. My estrogen is still low and no ovulation is in sight. My ovaries appear to have retreated into a defensive huddle.

Obama's polls are down and I'm not feeling that great either.

May there be new hope, new energy, and a shot of luck for both of us in the future.

#$^&^%$

Warning: it's Self-Pity Wednesday

It is now day twenty fucking five of this cycle and no sign of ovulation.

CD5: E2 33
CD18: E2 48 (LH 4.6)
CD24: E2 36 (LH 8.2)

That's right. It went DOWN. I'm waiting for it hit 100 before we can be reasonably sure that I'm on the path to ovulation. I had been encouraged by the fact that it rose a little between CD 5-18. But now it's practically down to the start. Those E2 levels are right about normal day 3 values. This means we are weeks and weeks from any action.

I just want to get started again. I just want to move on. I am unreasonably furious. I hate this. June, July, August. The world is speeding along and I'm waiting and waiting just to get another chance. Time moves differently for those who are pregnant, for those who have children. Time is not my friend.

I'm tired, I'm bored, I'm sad, I'm so, so angry. I guess the anger should be a clue that on some level I feel entitled, that I deserve this. Really I know that I don't, any more than I deserve my good health or ludicrous wealth. All the grazillions of people who conceived since I started trying, they don't deserve it, but neither do I. There is no desert, just dumb, dumb luck. Fertility rains on the just and unjust. I've been on the right side of dumb luck for health and wealth, so naturally I feel entitled to be on the right side of luck for this too.

Huh. I just looked up the "just and unjust" quote. It's originally from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, to wit:

...He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

I'm not Christian (nor well-read in such matters), so I wasn't familiar with the original source -- I knew it only from the Victorian jingle

The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella,
But more upon the just because
The unjust hath the just's umbrella.
(somewhat uncertainly attribute to Lord Bowen)

I'm pretty sure that the rain in the New Testament quote is meant to be a good thing, in a agricultural sort of way, whereas by Bowen's time it's clearly an urban annoyance.

There's some philosophical nutmeat there but durned if I can be bothered to pick it out.

In conclusion, I still don't like Wednesdays.