Hatefulness and Ignorance

The other day while talking to a girl that used to work with my husband, I was painfully reminded of just how ugly people can be on the inside even when their exterior is beautiful. After being nosy and flat out asking "where were our kids" and "shouldn't you have a couple by now?" this girl tells me that the reason people are infertile is because God is angry with them and that they must have done something wrong to deserve infertility. By this time my mouth is hanging open, astonished and blood boiling. D quickly took hold of the situation by saying something like "look, you need a refill on your wine" and quickly whisked me away, and then he promptly praised me for not hitting that bitch.

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Just something that has to come out

I don't know what was harder

My brother telling me that him and his fiance were pregnant
(we still haven't told them about our infertility)

or

My brother telling us that they had lost the baby and me and J holding our brother while we all cried and he begged for his baby back.

I have never been so raw

The pain was tangible

Now I have to go buy flowers to take to my soon to be sister-in-law who had her d&c today

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Just a Rant

I am so not looking forward to our appointment with the RE. It seems like every time we go to a doctor, our prognosis gets worse and worse. You just mention IF and this is what happens to our bank account:

It's like little bombs explode and rain shit down on us every time we step through a doctors door.

The first one wasn't that shocking to us, we already knew we were screwed on the insurance end. I mean you even mutter infertility under your breath and insurance companies laugh and hang up in your face.

I'm sorry we found no sperm

I can't seem to locate the vas deferens

Your only chance of getting pregnant is IVF with ICSI but since CBAVD is mostly caused by CF you will want to have PGD testing done. Your other option is using DS and trying IUI and then IVF if that doesn't work and OMG

I am just waiting for them to tell me that I have no viable eggs.

::this rant now over::

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Curtains for Protection of Infertiles

This is a picture of my front door taken from my desk at work. I usually like being able to see everyone walking by, exchanging waves of hello with all of the people that work in the lawyers office next door as they scurry back and forth between their main office which is to the right of me and a secondary office/storage that is all the way at the end of the hall to the left of my office. However, lately I have been having issues with my windows. See, there is a VERY pregnant woman that works over there, and I swear to you that she walks up and down the hall in front of my office 20 effing times a day, and always, when I am actually up at my desk. And every time she passes her huge pregnant belly mocks me. seriously.it.mocks.me. So as she is preparing to welcome her bundle of joy (I hate that expression btw) my husband and I are preparing to go see the RE and talk about just how much more it's going to put us into debt just for the chance to get pregnant with a baby that may or may not be able to be 100% biologically ours.

I NEED CURTAINS, is all I'm saying

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St. Patricks Day 2010

St. Patricks Day in 5 points is a must go for us every year
Listening to great bands and partying with 30,000 people?
We're so down
we always see people we haven't seen in years and catch up
the people watching is awesome!

Here is how we started our day:

See... we are cheap
I don't want to pay "festival" prices to be able to get our drink on
So we got crafty
SShhhh don't tell

if you are thinking that those look like mini travel shampoo bottles.... you would be correct
at 3 0z each they hold 2 shots of beam a piece
and all 6 are in his left cargo pocket in the picture above

And this:

well that my friends is a bag of wine in his right cargo pocket

::pauses for you to look again::

It was chardonnay to be exact. After starting with a 3 liter bag and pouring half into an empty 2 liter bottle for later consumption by this wino wine lover
we were left with 1.5 liters (2 bottles)

It took several tries and several bouts of laughter to get the whole bag in there
and we tucked the spout back in the pocket to get through the gate cuz festival regulators
don't appreciate people who try to screw them out of their high priced drinks by bringing their own bar

My boys got photobombed
but didn't seem to mind

Sadly this is the only picture of my full outfit, which i lurved!
St. Patricks Day is like a second Halloween to me. Why not have fun with it!
How boring would it be to just wear a green shirt and jeans?

I don't know what the hell happened to his tie, it suddenly got baby sized

We had a blast, can't wait till St. Pat's 2011!
The husband and I were talking and we have decided that next year I need to at least be pregnant so we don't have to walk around admiring other peoples babies all day...
Damn don't you wish it was that easy?
yeah, me too.

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The End of an Era: A Locks of Love Photo Journal

This is my brother-in-law
He's a tattooed, pierced, crazy, bad ass bassist, and an all around awesome guy.
He has had beautiful long curly hair for as long as I have had him in my life, which would be at least 10 years. So you can imagine his brothers and my shock when he called us up and told us he had decided to cut all his hair off.
This is obviously a huge deal, so we decided that it would be great to be there with him for support and to document the event.

This is what we started with:
we had to find a cut that wouldn't make him look like some kind of douchebag preppy guy
you don't get more badass than Johnny Depp

Here we go

The first cut, there was breath holding throughout the room

Examining the damage so far
Notice the beer, it was after hours and she is the owner of the salon and a friend
so we all had a drink to ease the nerves

WOW

The final major cut for what was being sent to Locks of Love.

and just like that it was gone

looking like he's still not so sure how this is gonna turn out, but I do remember him saying how much lighter his head felt without all that hair weighing him down

all done, and it looks great!

I think it took years off his face

you can't help but feel good that this is going to be a part of making a beautiful hairpiece for a needy child

Brotherly love
so glad we were able to be there to be a part of this!
I still see an awesome rockin guy there, lack of hair doesn't change that!

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Where I show a dirty secret

So this post is going to be really embarrassing, but my thoughts were to publish it and maybe it would encourage me to never let it happen again. And I thought somebody might have a little chuckle at my expense.

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?
I cleaned out my car on Saturday and OMG it was incredibly, terribly bad.
It was by far the worst any car of mine has ever been.
Let me break it down for you.

This is just the recycling. It appears that I read a lot of papers.

The trash was just a little out of control!

Here are some fun numbers:
7 plastic bags
4 unopened bags of chips
1 x-mas bag

7 magazines and countless papers

41, yes, 41 receipts
maybe I'll do a post sometime on why exactly we keep all of our receipts
there is a purpose to this, I promise.

An air mattress and sheets/comforter
3 pairs of shoes
5 coats
4 books
1 case of water

So that was how I spent my Saturday afternoon. Hope everybody had a nice weekend!

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The Road to Hell Part 2

If you are just tuning in, you should read Part 1 "The Bitch is Back" first.

So, steroid cream in tow I head home, slather myself, and go about my business. This is a Friday. I should tell you that I had had a little sore throat/tickle that was making me cough for a couple of days. Nothing that couldn't be taken care of with advil. BUT. Sometime Saturday night somebody came over and hit me in the face with a brick cause Sunday, full on sinus infection complete with a cough that hit about twice a minute from all the damn nasal drip.

The day the shit hit the fan

No sleep, and with a head that was falling off, I go to the doctor Monday and he prescribes me an antibiotic. I get it filled. I take one and as I always do I read the side effects. I made a huge mistake here. I GOOGLE a couple of the big words I don't understand. and OMG this shit can cause 2 blood diseases that can be fatal. and something called Steven Johnson Syndrome (resist the urge to look this up, trust me) This shit is going to kill me.

Now, I dont know how much you know about people that have severe anxiety and or panic attacks but lets see if I can explain what this is like.


Off of the medicine I seemed to be doing ok, but in actuality it looks more like that. Hanging on by a thread and it only takes a couple of things to bust that last intact line.
So, my line in effect snapped and I was thrown full force back into being anxious and literally thinking I was going to die. The problem with anxiety is it literally causes physical symptoms, so not only is your brain messing with you, but so is your body.


I didn't want to be alone. I was anxious all day and night and throw the actual attacks in there and let me just tell u that I was a crazy person. I couldn't cook/clean house/fix my hair/get online, nothing. The only thing that made it better was a bottle of wine and ativan. (healthy!)

I made it a couple of days on the antibiotic and I had to go back to the doctor. It was just too much. My mom went with me, and after they took my bp etc (which was way high..those physical symptoms) I sat and cried and told my doctor what happened. and that this antibiotic was going to kill me and OMG ya'll it was a MESS. He ordered me back on my zoloft after a lengthy discussion about health of me and pregnancy etc. He also told me that I could stop the antibiotic, which I did the next day.

The Recovery

I started back on the Zoloft the next day. Not being new to the drug, I knew I had a small journey ahead of me before I started feeling better. Zoloft affects everybody differently but for some people, me included, it makes them more anxious before it levels them out and starts to help. ::see me hitting my head against the wall:: For me it also causes severe headaches for about a week. Which of course makes the anxiety convince you that you have a brain tumer or an anyerism, cause anxiety is your friend like that.

About 12-14 days after starting back I started to feel better. The adjustment was small, just a little better everyday. Lately, I feel almost completely myself. Which is a wonderful feeling. I lost time in those few weeks. I can't get those days back. I neglected my friends, myself, my home, my IF boards, my blog.

Through out this time my mom, bless her, came everyday and took me to lunch and stayed so that I wouldn't have to be home alone until the hubbs got home. She lives 25 minutes away and completely rearranged her schedule to take care of me until the "crazies" went away. She really means everything to me. I couldn't have gotten through this without her.

And I am now under strict rules to not look up any medical shit on the internet.

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The Bitch is Back!

or more appropriately titled:

Why the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

So my dear friends it has been a while hasn't it? I do apologize for the lengthy absence. Things have been interesting (read: effing nuts) around here in bitter land. Let's just jump right in shall we?

About 5 months ago I decided that it would be a good idea (do you see where this is going?) to wean myself off of zoloft. My intentions were for the best, I didn't want to be on it when we finally got pregnant. I wanted to be as natural as I could be etc. My heart was in the right place and for several months my body seemed to agree.

Let's jump to January, when all of a sudden several things happened in rapid succession. A promotion we were counting on heavily for career advancement aka (huge raise with tons of benefits) falls through. Baby dreams start falling apart, cause I don't know if you are aware, but this infertility shit aint no joke financially.

I find out my dad who is one of the most healthy people I know, has to have a procedure done on his heart, cue me freaking out.

Then one day I wake up to red whelps on my right side. 48 hours later I have whelps on my right side, left side, up and down my spine, my neck, around my hips and breasts, and starting on my face and OMG the ITCHING people!! I make an emergency appointment with the Dermatologist, and after 50 questions "have you changed detergent?" "have you bought any new clothing?" and answering no to everything they asked, it was determined that I had a full on flare of hives all over my body and severe dry skin. BTW, this was after I had to tell the 3 doctors crowded around me examining and touching all the whelps, all about our infertility, because they had to know if there was ANY way I could be pregnant and "when did you ovulate?" and omg make it stop!
::deep breath::
No, I responded, we have severe infertility issues, my husband has azoospermia/I do not ovulate properly etc.
I'll give you 3 guesses what the head doctor told me.
I bet you only needed one guess... With a smile on her face she so graciously bestowed upon me the famous "Miracles Happen!" line followed by a story of someone she knew who's husband had azoo and they got pregnant because he had 1 sperm.

So, I graciously bestowed upon her the fact that it wouldn't matter if he had 16 million because he's still missing the tubes to get them to where they need to go, but thanks for ruining my day, I bet you got three kids at home, all accidents.
Ok, ok so I didn't really say that last part, at least not out loud.

Well, this is starting to look like a small novel so I think I should probably break it into 2 parts.

Stay tuned for Part 2: The day the shit hit the fan, and the recovery that followed.

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Love

You know you have a wonderful mom, when she pays for one of your RE visits as one of your Christmas presents.

What better gift could she give to us when we are OOP and struggling to make it all work.

I pink puffy heart my MOM!

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