Monday, April 27, 2015

Green Light!

So I'm not real sure why I get excited at this point, but I am.  Here we officially have another chance of achieving a dream, or despairing for a couple of months/forever.  The first couple of weeks is always super easy...take meds, have blood drawn.  I'm usually very successful at this part.  It's the whole implantation part that I've not had much fortune with.

I have no clue how this is going to go...I know things are different.  I know I should have eggs that have successfully morphed into human beings of the cute and tiny variety with a little help from an embryologist and some swimmers.  I also have a pretty durn good-looking embryo left from my first donor attempt.  

Anyway, I put on my brave face and let Dr. Donesky draw my blood.  Apparently the Knoxville campus medical assistant is human and is allowed to take a day off.  I almost offered to try to get it myself, but he told me he had done it once before at the VA...or something like that... It went fine.  I mean it could have been a lot worse...I mean with surgical precision, he finally found that little vein and eventually had enough blood to run some labs. :)

I learned 2 things from my bloodwork.
1. I do not have a teratoma.  I mean for what other reason they would perform a bHCG test on me? I cannot fathom... But nevertheless, I do not have an HCG-producing tumor.  Nor am I pregnant...
2.  My estrogen level is high for me.  It was 88.  The last couple of beginning of cycle levels I've have been on the low side.  My last one was 9 coming off the same type of birth control I was on now. For a reference, after menopause they like to keep you above 40. Anyhow, I've been wondering why it felt like my boobs are on fire for an entire month. I'm guessing that since my estrogen level got pretty high for the ERA cycle, and I immediately started taking my strong birth control pills it has taken this long to fall this far...OR my ovaries did something...but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

My ultrasound went well, too.  My ovaries were being good soldiers and not trying to produce too many follicles.  In fact, even I could tell they were being quiet. No large follicles, no cysts, no teratoma...

I got the greenlight to start taking my delestrogen shots.  No rest for my weary pin cushion of an arse. It's not quite over last cycle. Although my Isaac Mizrahi band-aids do help...And Lucifer...he's always eager for blood...


Peace, Love, and Pretty band-aids!

Mary Katherine


Thursday, April 9, 2015

Really???!!!

Ok, so when you have a 1% risk of having a disease, and you actually have it...every other medical statistic is pretty much lost on you.  May the odds be never in your favor...


So after waiting for results that take 7-10 business days, and on day 11 you've heard nothing... the number 1 and I got very acquainted.

One percent of women who have the endometrial receptivity assay are found to have a uterus that is incompatible with implantation.  That's it.  Game over on carrying a pregnancy.  At this point in time they have "no therapeutic solutions" to offer.

The fear of this may have attributed to my lack of sleeping. Also I can tell you more about bovine implantation failure, because infertile cows are a serious problem, apparently.  I know that mouse studies do not accurately reflect human endometrial studies (we thought this?). Also we share an equal receptivity window with the rhesus monkey...

So none of my extracurricular reading did anything to help me fight off the growing realization that I had a post-nuclear apocolyptic uterine environment incompatible with life.  I mean, I kept checking my patient portal for my fertility clinic and...nothing.

So being the ever practical person that I am, I quickly realized that they are putting off telling me that my uterus was comparable to the Sistan Basin for supporting life.  I mean that's not just something you just want to hear over the interwebs...



I texted my embryologist, trying to fish for answers...and they really didn't have my results back...

So a couple more days I finally get brave and ask my doctor's medical assistant if she had heard anything....

NOPE...

'Oh, God...My uterus IS Chernobyl.'

I walk around work the last few days contemplating which gynecologic oncologist I want to perform my hysterectomy, and if they'll have to wear hazmat suits while doing it...

So while, I'm getting to the point of despair, I get an innocent email asking me to inventory what meds I have left so she can order what I need for the next cycle...

'What's the point?'

Buried in that email was just an innocuous line of "your results came back and everything is normal...would do same protocol for transfer".

What?  Who me???  Normal???  Fertile???  Compatible with life???  I could get pregnant???

It takes several moments to process this.  I've read the short email at least 30 times...

It is literally the best news related to my fertility I have received.

It's been very strange today trying to wrap my mind around being normal.  Not only did this imply that my uterus was compatible life, but that it's not even really special and require a day more or less of medication to become receptive...I'm just standard, normal, run-of-the-mill receptive.

This could work!!!?

Peace, Love,  and Normal is the New Mindblowing,

Mary Katherine, Owner of Uterus InCompatible With Life





   


Thursday, April 2, 2015

Damn Rabbits

Random history lesson...




So in this light, me hating Easter bunnies right now has nothing to do with Jesus...that's just a random name we stole to take attention away from the Pagans...Not having copyright laws at the time...

For all the people who like to tell others struggling with fertility to "just relax", "get drunk", "lose/gain weight", "go on vacation". I'd like to share this quote from a study...


Now I realize Dr. Domar is only a psych professor at Harvard, who also works at a fertility clinic in Boston, and just happened to write this quote in an academic study she performed, but that does not make it less true.  No, infertility can't kill me like cancer, but my chances of getting a reproductive cancer are statistically much higher with or without fertility treatments.  I'm probably not going to drop dead of infertility as would be a risk with heart disease, but if I was told I would never have a child through any means possible, dropping dead would be the least of my concerns.  The only terminal disease I have been diagnosed with thus far, is life.  But I'll tell you after nearly 5 years of living with a chronic disease in which I cannot bring life to the next generation, a disease that causes great emotional pain and turmoil, a disease which stems from other physically painful diseases, anything terminal would at least give me an idea as to when the pain would be over.

If you are not in my shoes, I know you are saying, "But you have so much to be thankful for."  That's easy for you to sit at home and say as you dye Easter eggs and try to remember where you put your children's baskets from last year.  I don't want cancer, heart disease, or HIV.  But I want you to stop belittling my pain or anyone else you know struggling with infertility because we don't have one of "those" diseases.

I have not lost my hair, but that doesn't mean I don't regularly have to take medicine that makes me feel awful.  I promise, the only thing worse than my cramps from endometriosis, are the ones I experience after a treatment cycle. I don't have to be pregnant or on chemo to suffer from nausea, I just need to go from less than normal hormone levels to higher than normal for a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy and back to less than normal in a matter of a month.  So while you may understand how we suffer from endless anguish, we physically hurt, too.  



We experience the same level of distress with the least amount of compassion from others.  I don't ask that you do my share of the work.  I don't ask that you make excuses for me.  I just ask that you treat me and others struggling with infertility with the same amount of deference you would if we told you we had cancer.  We face enough obstacles like no insurance coverage, difficulty accomodating work schedules to treatment cycles, enormous financial tolls, that remind us that no one really understands that infertility is a disease.  So next time you want to tell someone, "Just quit thinking about it," ask yourself  'Is this what I would tell someone with cancer?'

Peace, love, and ignoring the bunnies,

MK