Yesterday saw me back at old Dr IVF for a proper girlie swot check up after my recent trip to the ER.  He is one of the best doctors with the most accomplished bed side manner I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve met more than my fair share of quacks).  Even though I haven’t seen him in years he enquired about Mr K, BigSal and my Dad – he remembered nearly everything about me which is amazing considering how many patients he must have had in the interim.  Predictably there was an enquiry as to what my intentions are for the ten little embryos that I have in the freezer.  Every six months I have been getting a letter which asks me if I want to

A) continue storage (for a fee of course)
B) arrange an appointment to use the embryos
C) dispose of them thoughtfully or
D) donate them to another infertile couple

And every time I get one of those letters I find myself getting dredging up all the pain, sorrow and angst that I went through during all those years on IVF.  That and the horrible feelings of failure that I continually endured while riding the IVF emotional roller coaster.  Oh and the overwhelming indecisiveness about what to do with them. I can’t bring myself to flush them and as much as intellectually I’d like to donate them to some one else… how would I feel if someone else had MY baby!!!  Oi 🙁  

I had my last FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer) I think in about Sept 2005 and I honestly can’t remember how many treatment cycles I went through in total.  We were going to discuss going back to use the remaining embryos after my father passed away in Jan 2007, but we never did and it has kinda become the elephant in the room that we don’t want to talk about.   Now my embryo dilemma has another element of difficulty thrown on top of it…. the state of my back is much much worse than it was in 2005.  If I were to opt to use the embryos and by some fucking miracle actually manage a viable pregnancy… how on earth will my back hold up to that?  Angel was born at 36 weeks because the back pain was unbearable and I can’t imagine what a viable pregnancy would do to my back now.

It’s an absolute minefield of a topic and time has not dulled it’s impact.
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After being recently admonished for having professed a preference for socially acceptable euphemisms that also manage to acknowledge one’s innate intelligence when it comes to dealing with bodily functions… I’ve decided to not go into the gory details of how my day has been today but rather shall just say that while the abdominal pain has (mostly) gone… the memory (and the corollary mess) remains.  Which whilst not being exactly fun hardly warrants mentioning compared to Friday night’s awful experience.

In spite of the back pain, in spite of the infertility, in spite of my sluggish metabolism, in spite of the carpal tunnel and even in spite of my unfortunate relations – though those I can hardly be blamed for. (Sorry got a bit JA there for a second).  In spite of all these… most of the time I don’t mind being me.  I guess I mean that even though I have had these horrid ongoing health problems for nigh on two decades now, I don’t dislike who I am for the majority of the time.

However…. this particular episode has had me really wishing that I could be someone else.  Even just for a little while would be nice.  It’d be kind of novel to throw someone else in this ridiculous pretense of a body of mine and see how they’d fare.  Would I find out that I’m just a lousy complaining bitch and it’s not that bad after all?  Or… (as I suspect)… would that person come away from the experience saying that they have no idea how I put up with it day after day? 

Like I’ve got a choice.  Who knows?

Okay so maybe my weird arse dream on Thursday night was trying to tell me something other than the fact that discussions about miscarriage seems entirely inappropriate amongst strangers….   😐

I have PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) and have had more than my share of girly swot problems over the years including insulin resistance, infertility and disastrous…. and I mean truly fucking painful and heinous… periods.  So I tend to ignore as much of it as I can.  Which is a policy that has NOT held me in good stead on this occasion.

Having not had a cycle since… ohh… February I think… I was not surprised when my next cycle did finally start in early July that it was not exactly "pleasant" MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT !!!   I should probably have investigated it earlier than August when it still hadn’t decided to stop, but like a silly little bint, I thought I knew what was going on so just asked my GP to start me back on the pill again.  Which I did… to no effect whatsoever… it just kept coming and going and going and coming… for about 8 weeks in total. 

Until yesterday afternoon about 4.30pm when I started to have abdominal pain.  Which is nothing new to me because of the aforementioned girly swot issues.  So I did my usual: take two Digesic, have a lie down.  No help there.  Grab a heat pack and a cuppa tea a bit later trying to ignore it.  Still no improvement.  Another couple of Digesics, reheat the heatpacks, a couple of Tramadol and a movie for distraction and by 9.30pm I was experiencing severe abdominal pain that was not abating and was fast reaching a point where it was beyond my ability to tolerate. 

This was without doubt the worst abdominal pain I have ever experienced… worse than post operative pain from two laparoscopies, worse than a golden staph infection in the umbillicus, worse than any of my 9 or 10 TVEPUs (Trans Vaginal Egg Pick Ups on IVF) worse than pain from having my ovaries drilled then electocauterized and definitely worse than the post operative pain from a c-section delivery which I once described as ‘a mild abdominal discomfort’.

By the time I agreed to be taken to the hospital at about 10pm, I was doubled over clutching my abdomen, grimacing and swearing constantly.  By the time I got to the hospital, I couldn’t sit or lay down in anyway that helped alleviate the pain, I was literally writing in pain on the hospital bed, sweating with the effort of trying not to scream and was gritting my teeth, trying not to cry (failed at that a bit I think).

The hospital admissions people rushed me in… thank God.  I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been left in the waiting room. They took as complete a medical history as I was able to offer in that state (no easy task given my convoluted gynaecological history) and did some blood tests, gave me some IV morphine that I initially resisted but eventually agreed to take in desperation.  The morphine worked quick and helped ease the pain considerably.  I got a second shot of morphine and the pain levels dropped from ‘unbearable’ to ‘what abdominal pain?’ in mere minutes.  (Strangely enough… the morphine kicked in and the abdominal pain disappeared but did nothing to dull my regular back pain which was still present… weird fucked up nervous system).  I had a pelvic exam (never fun) and then they wanted a urine sample so I went to the bathroom and (how do you put this delicately?!?!?) passed a largish amount of ‘endometrial tissue’…. which was probably the remains of a miscarriage that my body had been trying to expell for some weeks.  Not fun.

Almost immediately I felt better Yes I know. I know.  I shouldn’t have ignored the problem.  I should have gone off to see the OB/GYN weeks ago which would no doubt have resulted in a controlled and clinical D&C instead.  Sigh.

We live and learn…. or at least that’s the plan.
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Blame Earl Silas Tupper…. I was glad the invite was for a Linen Party cos I’m all stocked up on Tupperware and have more of the stuff than I can use.  As a favour to a Mom of the Small Child’s friends, I agree to host a Linen Party here…. and only really agreed to that because it wasn’t Tupperware.  Well the party rolled round (I’d largely forgotten about it) and I had about 12-15 ladies who had RSVPeed that they were coming.  Only it didn’t quite turn out like that.  Six ladies called or SMSed to say they suddenly couldn’t make it with a variety of creative reasons from ‘severe respiratory infection’ (which we don’t really want anyone bringing here anyway) to ‘son needs to go to the opthamologist’.  Whatever the reason, I was suddenly feeling bad for the Linen lady cos she was unlikely to hit her sales targets with so few people in the room.  Bizarre.

But that’s not what I started writing about.  The thing is at these ridiculous and particularly femine past times is that you usually find yourself with a bunch of strangers who have only an acquaintance with the host in common and this party was no exception.  Which is why I found it so strange to see an emotionally charged conversation spring up about miscarriage of all things.  It started with someone making a passing comment about a friend who is 15 weeks pregnant but there has been some cause for concern over her pregnancy as she is an older first time Mum at 42 whose health has always been a bit so-so.

Well one of the other ladies, assuming the worst, started extoling the virtues of an organization called Bonnie Babes who helped her a great deal when she had a miscarriage and then went on to say that with their counsel she realized that it had all worked out for the best and she didn’t really want a third child anyway!  Her disclosing such personal information to a room full of strangers had me totally bemused.  But then another lady (whose history was already known to me) offered up that she had had two miscarriages before having two naturally conceived children and that her attitude was likewise philosphical … that the babies were just not ‘meant to be’ but that she didn’t feel the need for counselling because it wasn’t at all traumatic for her.  And so on and so forth this conversation went until it seemed that those contributing to the conversation agreed that miscarriage is probably a positive thing after all as there was usually something wrong with the baby anyway.

How very accepting and fatalistic of them…..
How nice to be able to believe so firmly in destiny and fate…..
How inappropriate to discuss such a highly emotive, deeply personal topic with a room full of strangers!!!!

I’m not considered uptight nor prudish – in fact more than often am reputed to be quite the opposite.   I’ll sit and chat about furries, anal sex, teenage rainbow parties, bondage, recreational drugs… whatever pleases have you?!?!   But to discuss something like this… when you don’t know people well enough to guage their individual likely reactions?  It seems fraught with danger to even bring it up..  And even though I was the only person who knew everyone in the room…. there’s no way I was sharing my experiences with them.

I’m part way through watching a movie called ‘Then She Found Me’ with Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler in it.  It seems fairly run of the mill kinda drama that you just know is going to work out sweet for everyone – cos that sort of sappy movie always does.  I’m just over half way into the story and the main character is having an ultrasound at around 10 weeks of a much wanted pregnancy…. and I’m looking at the screen and even from just the quick glance they included in the shot I could tell that she was about to be told by the OB/GYN that the pregnancy had spontaneously aborted (miscarriage) and… well I had to turn it off.   😐

It seems like every time I think I’m over this shit and I push it to the back of my mind .. something comes along to throw it right up front and center again.  Am I EVER going to be able to be exposed to these sorts of things and not have an emotional reaction to it?  It’s been shit nearly two and a half years since I had my last IVF procedure and since the car accident last November I have had to come to confront the dreadful realization that I am in no physical condition (between the massive increase in daily pain and the ridiculous amounts of medication that I’m on) to be able to carry a baby to term even if I were to able to achieve a viable pregnancy.

This is fucked…. why won’t it just go away.
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