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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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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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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It Hurts

D and I went to dinner last night with my mom and my sister. We were having a great time eating mexican food until my mom asked D what he wanted for christmas.

"a baby"

my heart hurts

it was the only thing he asked for.

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New findings with a dash of funny

written 10.2.2009

So when we went to the Urologist last week I asked that a few other things be looked at before/in conjunction with the biopsy. I just needed to make sure that everything was checked into, and we weren't just doing what was doctors protocol says to do. We ran into a little problem when the doc couldn't find DH's vas deferens. Yeah, those are kind of needed considering they carry the sperm from, well you can look at the picture and see, they meet with the seminal vesicle and make up the ejaculatory duct. So they are just a little on the important side if you are, you know, trying to have a baby and you need the sperm to be able to leave his body and get into mine.

Doc spent 15 mins trying and could only say that he definitely didn't think there were 2 and was not very confident that there was one at all, and if there was one it was very small. Fucking Yay! Could be CBAVD (congenital bilateral absence of the vas deferens) so we ran a blood panel looking for CF (cystic fibrosis) markers. Men who have CBAVD are usually carriers of CF even if they don't have the condition.

Fuck me sideways, are you serious? is all I could think as the doc is talking to me. DH got a little happy that there might be sperm and they just couldnt get out. I'm sitting in the chair ::head:wall:: and have to tell him that although that sounds great the problem with this new finding is that it brings on a whole new slew of issues about genetic testing and statistics of passing CF to our child if we were to use his sperm... (that is if this is the problem and there are actually sperm) the whole time the doctor is looking at me the way a dog does a weird sound. He makes some joke about how he's not even needed, and I seem to really know my stuff. to which I am thinking how can people really go into an office blindly knowing nothing and take a doctors word for everything just cause he has a little more education?..I am sure you see where I'm going with this. I kindly say something about "the more knowledge the better"

So in addition to blood work DH had an ultrasound yesterday. We are waiting on the results for both tests. If it is CBAVD I think that we will probably move directly to donor sperm, which is something we had already come to terms with. I will have to do some more research on all of this before we make any kind of decision.

At least we didnt have to talk too much about them doing a biopsy today, since we will want to find out if cbavd is the issue first..more tests and more waiting.

Oh I promised a funny didnt I?

So as it turns out the Doc was one of DH's recent customers. In fact both of the doctors in the practice were his customers. How do you have a business conversation and maintain your dignity with someone who just had their finger up your ass?

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I Can't Wait!

Two more days until DH and I get to sit in an office and talk to the urologist about cutting open my husbands balls. This is not something that either one of us is looking forward to, but I probably didn't need to tell you that did I? Luckily I have an amazing husband and he is willing to do whatever it takes for us to have a baby even if it means taking what the doctors say is only a "pea sized" amount of tissue out of both of his testicles. As if the fact that they aren't taking half the testicle but only a small amount is supposed to make my husband feel any better.

The point of this lovely procedure is to see if there is sperm being made and just not making its way out. The hope is that they are able to see sperm in the testicles and we will be able to just extract them with a needle "TESE" (which also sounds like boat loads of fun) when we do our IVF.

If there is no sperm seen then our only way of making a baby is going to be with donor sperm.
Don't they all just seem like great solutions/outcomes?

So as I drink my wine tonight I think I shall toast: "To finding sperm" and a big fat "FUIF"

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