A note about finding the humor in mundane things ;)

Over the last few posts I realized how depressing my posts are. I know, I know. The subject is depressing… well not all of it was. Here are a few quick stories from our IVF experience. Please feel free to laugh.


For our first retrieval cycle we went to Las Vegas. Not to gamble but because that’s where the doctor’s office was. At this point I was feeling incredibly swollen and uncomfortable and we really hadn’t thought out our plan for the stay very well. The car we rented smelled like wet dog and cigarette smoke rolled up with some sort of air freshener. I actually got sick to my stomach every time I sat in the car. We decided to go cheap so we stayed at a little casino/hotel on the strip for everyday before retrieval and booked the remainder of the trip with our time share condo. Going into the O.R. for retrieval I was nervous as most people in that situation would be. Then my anesthesiologist came in and life was great. Turns out I had about 50 follicles. I didn’t feel the pain until about 2 hours after I left the doctor’s office. And boy did I feel uncomfortable. I felt as though I had swollen to twice my normal size. The road we had to take to get to the condo was under construction so we hit more potholes than I had ever seen put together. Every bump and jostle was exaggerated exponentially. (I was asked to let you all know that I was not actually writhing in pain I was actually still feeling ok from the drugs, I just felt huge.  I laughed so hard as my husband apologized for every bump we hit that I actually had tears streaming down my face.) My poor husband tried to do so much to make it more comfortable for me. It took us 20 minutes to navigate the driveway and parking lot and that’s before I even got out of the car. ;)

By day 2 I thought there was something wrong with me and called the doctor thinking I was going to die. When I saw him he did an ultrasound and asked me some questions and told me that my ovaries were “about this big” (putting his hands about 5 ½ “apart). Apparently poking at your ovaries causes them to swell. Who’d have thunk? Feeling emotionally relieved we went back to the condo and I drank lots of water and some Gatorade. The next day I felt worse yet and it wasn’t until I threw up that I felt better. Ahhh, peace at last.

Ok so maybe that wasn’t as funny as it could have been in the retelling of it but as I sit and think about all the things that happened on that trip, how naïve I was and how far I’ve come since I can’t help but laugh.

So here’s another I’ll never forget…

We were back in Las Vegas for a transfer. We finally figured out we could rent an efficiency apt. for lots less than a hotel room and hey there’s a kitchen so we can save on eating out. Two days after the transfer we were on our way to San Diego to visit some friends. While we were heading out of Vegas, I realized it was almost time for one of my shots. I told my husband and he pulled over at a Del Taco by the huge thermometer on the road out of town. We both go in to wash up, I go back to the car to find that he has a large cola, a quesadilla, and a taco. I thought maybe he’s just hungry. So I ask him how we are going to administer the shot (it was an intramuscular shot to the backside). He says “let’s ice it up while I get the shot prepped” and he hands me the cola. I looked at it and looked at him and thought hmm I guess that could work. I put the cup to my backside and after about 5 minutes noticed I was not getting numb just wet from the condensation. I let him know that it’s not working and he says “just put it between your pants and your behind that should make it numb.” I raise my eyebrows at him and roll my eyes but figure well I don’t have many options. So in the pants goes the soda. He then opens the back of the rental SUV and tells me to bend over and drop my pants. Let me remind you that we are in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant that overlooks interstate 15. I pull the soda out so I don’t wear it, put it back in the cup holder and bend over the back seat. I drop my pants a couple of inches trying desperately to cling to some bit of modesty. My husband grabs my pants and pulls them down farther so they almost fall off. He apparently could not reach the spot for the injection with my pants in the way. He wipes the spot with the alcohol prep, slaps the spot, and jabs me in the rear with the injection. Being the big baby I am I started crying and I’m embarrassed to say wailing. Meanwhile people are still pulling into the parking lot and getting their Mexican food and driving off again heedless of my screams. My husband pulls out the needle and slaps the quesadilla on my behind, then pulls up my pants to hold it in place. (I was wondering where he got the heating pad and why it was wrapped in paper.) When we got in the car and started to drive off I realized the quesadilla was in my pants and through sniffles and tears from what I deemed mistreatment of a daily ritual (my shots) I said, “I want a chai.” I sniffed some more and my husband denied me nothing. ;) chai lattes from Starbucks are my true beverage weakness. We laugh about that evening whenever we see a Del Taco, a quesadilla or think about Las Vegas. Hehe.. hugs to you all and hope enjoyed my stories. No matter how crazy things get we still find silly things to laugh about.

My story part 2 - Am I a failure?

Feeling as though I had failed in so many ways as a wife and woman I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse. In 2005 my mom called to tell me that my dad was not doing too well and that we should come out to NJ to spend time with him. This had been an ongoing struggle of my family wanting me to leave California and move back to New Jersey. With mom’s call I knew dad wasn’t going to live much longer. We packed up our belongings, rented our house and moved to New Jersey within 3 months of that call. Dad seemed to improve health wise, but for every step forward he took two steps back. It was tough to watch. About six months after we arrived in New Jersey, my grandmother started showing signs of worsening Alzheimer’s. She wound up living in my parents’ home and needed full time care. With all the stress of worry for my dad and Grammy I still couldn’t shift my focus away from wanting a baby. I felt that I was a failure because I couldn’t have the children that everyone around me seemed to just pop out at 10 month intervals. It was around December of 2006 when a doctor friend of ours from California came out to visit and suggested that we get in touch with a doctor who specializes in fertility struggles. I wasn’t sure I was ready to outwardly admit defeat and it took me about a month to call him. Doctor Sher is a force to be reckoned with. Once I called and made an appointment for a phone consult things started to move fairly quickly. We went into the NY office and had all kinds of testing done. Once the results were in he called us and went over all of it. He told us that it was unlikely for us to get pregnant without some form of intervention. See, I feel it’s all in the way you say it. He never told us it was impossible, he didn’t tell me I was infertile, he didn’t say I was a barren as the Sahara. He simply said it was unlikely. By not trying to take away my hope he boosted my spirits 60 times what they were simply by letting me feel that it was possible for me to get pregnant and have a baby. He explained that my ovaries were pretty much abusing the eggs I did produce and that it would be difficult to find healthy eggs to retrieve. I really don’t believe that I need to understand the clinical explanation of all that was going on with me as long as I have a way of understanding it that makes sense to me I’m ready to move on. So that March we travelled out to Las Vegas where he had an office and his lab at the time. We spent about 10 days there. Stress was high, we didn’t know exactly what to expect. Would it hurt? How would my body react? I was scared. My ovaries produced something around 50 eggs. Of those eggs only 25 made it through primary testing. Of the 25 only about 10 made it to secondary testing and of that only 3 made it to the 3rd stage of testing. We were on the road heading back to New Jersey, driving through Arizona I think when we got the call that none of the embryos were viable for transfer. I was devastated. I had failed again. The doctor called me a couple of days later and suggested that I take some time to relax de-stress and try again in a few months. I agreed and took off on a girl’s trip to get my mind in a better place. I had arrived in New Jersey, had time to unpack, do laundry and repack. 2 days after arriving I was in the van and on my way to meet a friend in San Antonio. She was house-sitting for her folks. We spent a few days in San Antonio, and then drove off to New Orleans. I guess I was looking for spiritual guidance, someone to tell me that things would happen, a way to keep the hope alive. I got that from a palm reader in the pedestrian mall. His words weather accurate or not helped me to continue to move on and move forward. He said I had the ability to have 6 children (we’ll see what that pans out to be in the future). In the meantime I could begin to feel that life wasn’t over and I was worthy of living life and enjoying myself.
In August of 2007 I went back to Las Vegas for another attempt at retrieval. This time we were successful. We had 3 embryos that were deemed healthy. We went back for the transfer in November and returned home to await the news. Two weeks later I had blood tests run and found that we were pregnant, most likely with twins. My husband was so nervous he was sick to his stomach. I was so thrilled nothing could bring me down. I knew we were not in the clear yet so I tried to maintain some perspective.

By the time I was 7 weeks pregnant I was as proud as a peacock. At eight weeks I miscarried and thought the world was ending. My husband and I cried and held each other. The doctor gave us some comforting words and still more hope. My dad was still with us then and he too was devastated as were the rest of the family. We took some time to go through a mourning period, unfortunately it coincided with Christmas. After what seemed like forever, drowning in a dark lake, I felt that my head was finally above water. That first cool breath of fresh air and rational thoughts had me thinking practically. What do I do now? Where do I go next? Is my husband ok? Am I ok? In those first few moments of taking stock of my current situation, I discovered that I had not actually done anything to help either myself or anyone else up until then. I had to be proactive and that was going to take a plan of some sort. I spoke to the doctor after discussing this with my husband and we decided to try again after a few months (in total – including the mourning time) of rest. I needed to get myself physically and psychologically ready to face whatever might come next. This I learned was me not failing. Failing would have been giving up and never trying again.  

    A note about failure: I still struggle with failure almost daily.  I question my worth in so many little ways.  Like so many others out there these days, I too and looking for employment.  I've been working on updating my resume and looking at job postings all over the web.  All day today I've been wondering how my resume can look so boring when I am so sure that I can succeed at almost any job given the opportunity.  I find myself continually returning to a book that really helps me to record over the negative voices in my head.  The book is John Maxwell's Failing Forward.  He taught me that just because I may fail at something once, twice or even 10 times, I'm not a failure until I give up hope and learn nothing from those failures.    Failure really is a state of mind. 

My Story - Part one

     Ever since I can remember I have wanted to have children. When I was 17 years old I was having some trouble with my monthly cycle or lack thereof. When I saw the doctor he said that it sometimes happens to people, but if it really bothered me he would either burn holes in my ovaries or cut slices of them out. He said that would regulate me for a short while but he didn’t think it would be an issue since I was too young to think about having a family. After a long period of thought (about 3 seconds) and some in depth questions to my doctor about the health of my ovaries (according to him there was no problem with my ovaries) I decided to decline any type of surgery. I opted instead to do what so many other girls with the same problems do; I went on birth control pills. Twelve years later, I was still on birth control and about to be married. I figured let’s get things rolling and see what happens without the pills. So about four months before the wedding, I stopped taking the pills, and wonder of wonders my period never came. I remember going to a new OB/GYN and telling him what had been happening with me on my road to happy family so far. I was in his office bawling my eyes out begging him for a plan of some sort to help me get pregnant. I asked him what I could do to help me get pregnant. Should I lose weight? If so, what should I do to lose it? Should I take some sort of medicine? Is there a pill I can take that will help the burning need to have children subside for just a little while so that I could focus on the things to make that happen. He consoled me and told me that he understood. He then suggested a few different pills specifically for diabetics (I was not diabetic) as those have had a history of helping women to conceive. I tried the pills and found that they were making me feel very off. I couldn’t focus, felt that I was truly out of control of my life and had many days of G.I. upset. My doctor insisted that I just wasn’t really trying and essentially that I was being a big baby. I took them for about two more weeks then decided to stop taking them all together. By this time a year had passed and we still hadn’t conceived I did however manage to have a period at some point in all of this. I went back to the doctor and he seemingly frustrated (what’s he got to be frustrated about?) suggested that I just have a hysterectomy to ease my symptoms. I was only 30 at the time. I finally decided to stop trying to push it and see what I could figure out on my own. “Maybe I should follow through with that diet” I thought.


     About six months later a friend of mine lent me a book called The South Beach Diet. As I read through this book I found a section that spoke about a syndrome X or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. The more I read about it the more I thought this is my problem. I started to do some research online and found that it is much more common than I thought. I quickly made an appointment with my OB/GYN and brought a photocopy of the pages with me as well as some printed information from the web. I asked the doctor point blank “is this what I have? Does this sound like what is causing me so many problems?” He looked at me and handed to papers to his nurse and had her look over them, while he excused himself and walked out presumably to work with other patients who must have been in much more need as he couldn’t bother to answer my questions or treat them seriously. His nurse looked them over and said there is a strong possibility that it could be what was causing all the disruptions in my period but she couldn’t be sure as I’d need special testing done by an endocrinologist. I asked for a referral and moved on yet again to someone else’s supposedly capable hands.

     At the endocrinologists office he drew blood and had some tests run and proceeded to tell me that I do, in fact, have PCOS. Okay I can deal with a problem that has a name and asked what the next step was. He suggested some of the same medications that were given to me before. When I told him of the prior results he suggested a time release version. We tried it again with poor results and I decided to continue to work on losing weight. I went bike riding and walking and tried to watch my diet. I was getting depressed and desperate. I am typically a stress eater and wanted to eat chocolate, ice cream all kinds of sugary goodness that would get me diagnosed as diabetic quicker than the doctors said.

     As it turns out I still was not diabetic, I did manage to lose a few pounds though not much. I felt as though I was falling into a deep dark pit with no way to stop or climb out. I wanted help but couldn’t find it. It seemed that no one knew what I was going through or how to truly console me.