Side Effects

So the side effects of Lupron have hit hard. Insomnia, night sweats, headache, nausea! Oh well, I have to keep my eyes on the prize! Lupron shot #4 tomorrow morning!

Hopefully my body will follow the doctor's plan: my visitor should come on Monday, 5/3 and I will go in to the doc's office for blood work on 5/5 and I should start the Follistim and Menapour that evening....if my body decides to cooperate. :)

As for now, I am just rolling with the headaches and nausea. I am so lucky to have a numb belly (My lucky side effect of my salpingectomy!) Though I don't feel the needles entering my skin, I have started to feel some soreness.

I have been spending a lot of time reading other women's blogs to get a feel for how the experience of "stimming" goes. Through this reading I have had a definite "a ha" moment...I know what causes my infertility and I have (and can afford) a very viable solution. I feel blessed that I have this knowledge. So many women simply don't know why they can't have a child...for whatever reason, they just can't. They have to try many avenues before reaching a treatment that actually results in a healthy baby. My husband and I have been trying for two years, but we found out the problem about a year ago and knew the solution immediately. Granted, we fought with the insurance company for a year, and yeah, this all really sucks, but now our time has arrived. I am sure that this is our time and we will have a beautiful and healthy baby in February 2011!

My first shot!

So much has happened these last few weeks! I have been on BCP for 19 days now and today was my first shot of Lupron! I was so nervous about injecting myself (since J has to work late tonight). The shot was absolutely no big deal...the needle is so small and my skin is still numb below my belly button (side effect of the surgery).

Hooray! One shot down and about 50 more to go!

P.S. Is it too early to have a headache from the Lupron? About 2 hours after the injection, a horrible headache crept up.....psychosomatic??

Tubes...Begone!

Well, I had my bilateral salpingectomy on Monday. Dr. G tried to perform the surgery laprascopically, but the second she put the camera in, she said knew she had to open me up. The scar tissue was just too much to get through...she could not see anything. In fact, even with the large incision, she could not even see my uterus, tubes or bladder because of the enormous amounts of scar tissue. Yuck. Eventually, though, she was able to feel her way around to my tubes and they were both removed successfully. The pain, though... :(

She did not seem super optimistic about having a successful delivery (of a baby) in the future. She said the scar tissue was just so pervasive that it might make a c-section dangerous. I could deliver a baby naturally, but that might be dangerous because of my other abdominal surgeries. She did say that there is no way to know, and she sees no harm in J and I going through with IVF. We will just have to watch the (hopefully!) pregnancy carefully and be smart and careful about the delivery.

J and I decided to wait until my summer vacation to go forward with the IVF treatments...I just don't have any more time to take off from work, as I need to be at home for the next 6 weeks or so. It would have been much easier to do this the non-invasive way, but you've got to roll with the punches!

Hopefully my recovery will be a little less than 6 weeks and we continue on our fertility journey!

The Verdict...I am Infertile

That about sums it up. Shortly after the last post (um...7 months ago...) I went through all of the infertility testing, and the HSG, a wonderful, very comfortable test, showed that I have bilateral hydrosalpinx....that is, blocked tubes. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I was going to have some sort of trouble. In the summer of 2004, I had a major flare of my Crohn's disease and a subsequent perforation of my small bowel. The geniuses in the ER thought that my unbelievably horrible pain had nothing to do with my Crohn's; rather, I had a large, fluid filled mass in my pelvic region. So, I was admitted to the hospital and waited for three days while the docs decided what to do. All this time, sewage from my intestines were destroying my tubes.

Anyway, diagnosis: Blocked tubes. Treatment Plan: IVF. Tomorrow is my repeat Day 3 blood work, infectious disease testing and a baseline ultrasound. Now just waiting to hear about surgery...those gnarly tubes must come out!

At the beginning

I don't know what I am doing. I have never written a blog before...I have never even written in a journal or diary before, unless I was forced to in high school English. I just know that my emotions are so intense and so unprecedented, I need to DO something. I need an outlet...a catharsis. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for a year now, with (obviously) no success. I already have a daughter from a previous marriage, so when we started talking about having a baby, I figured it would be no problem at all. Yeah, right...

In my wildest dreams, I never imagined the intense emotional swings that come along with trying to conceive. And when it does not work right away and those swings happen month after month...I am so grateful I have the husband I do, to love me in spite of all of the mood swings and bitchiness. But I just feel so sad. At times, I find myself not wanting to do anything but get lost in a book so I can live someone else's life for just a little while. That sounds really bad, doesn't it? I have a wonderful husband and daughter, and a pretty amazing life, but I just don't feel complete. I keep waiting for a baby so that our life can really "start". I need to not look at it that way. As I've said, I do have a pretty amazing life, so our life obviously has "started". But I just keep waiting for my little Henry or Elizabeth to come into our lives.

We've only been at this for a year, so we are just beginning the fertility workup process. I have already started taking metformin for PCO (not really a syndrome for me, as I don't have enough of the symptoms to "qualify" for that...I just have the polycystic ovary part), although my periods have been pretty regular. So, after this cycle, I am off for the gamut of tests. We shall see...