Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Ho hum...

Today is one of those days.  No, it's not because His Royal Highness was born.  I'm very happy for future King Henry the IX (that's my vote, anyway...) It's just that our summer semester is winding down.  I have my last clinical of the summer semester this weekend.  The bubble of nursing school is about to erode and before I know it, Christmas and graduation will be here.  I have a lot to accomplish, still. But the time is coming sooner to hopping back into the world of fertility treatments.

I've taken my last dose of depo provera.  I'm 90% gluten free, 100% soy free, and struggling with where dairy and I will stand this time around. I'm trying to get down to my fighting weight.  Drinking up the last of my coffee.  As much as I looked forward to making these changes and wanting to start down this road, again, I didn't think I'd be so scared.  But it is scarier, because you know exactly how much pain you are going to face.

No amount of sacrifice, dedication, compliance, struggle, turmoil, fear, panic, anxiety, or pain guarantees success.  That's the pill I keep having to ready myself to swallow.  In the big picture, I don't matter.  So, am I ready to fail again?  Am I ready to be ridiculed for my efforts?  Am I ready to suffer a loss in a battle I chose to engage in?  Am I ready to play the only game in my life where the results don't consider how hard I work, how much I want it, or well I play it?  Yes...because I don't matter...but...

Not as ready as I hoped.  I keep trying to tell myself that I'm going to go into treatment with an attitude of gratitude that I have an opportunity to try at all.  That doesn't mean that a negative result is going to be any less crushing.  I am not looking forward to being beaten down, to feeling like a disappointment to my husband, or to the emotional pain.  But, I am grateful for the changes infertility has made in my life.  Patience, perseverance, learning to lose, and learning who I truly want to be.

Am I ready to face an unhappy ending?  I would be lying if I could say I can accept being childless.  I would be lying if I said I can live peacefully without ever experiencing a term pregnancy.  If I could, I wouldn't go through treatments, because it wouldn't be worth it. But I do know, that life will go on, with or without me, and with or without my children.  

I don't think anyone is ever totally ready for this journey they never wanted to take.  I just have to keep reminding myself, that I am alive, I have a family who loves me, a golden retriever that adores me because I say her name, and friends that have stood by me, when I was at my lowest. I have people that I do matter to who will be by my side if my fairy tale ending never comes true.  My fairy tale ending may never come true.  How do you accept that?  How do you live, and not?


"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." ~Margaret Thatcher

It's not fair, but the only thing I can do is choose to engage in another fight.  Challenge my body that has betrayed me when I needed it most to give it another go.  When the dust settles this time, however, I'll know I can survive.

Peace, Love, and Preparing for Battle,
Mary Katherine