Smack!

I wasn't terribly impressed with the urologist this morning. I wanted thorough, I got quick.

There was nothing wrong with Jakobe's hormones, testicles, vas defrens, or prostate.

He's 90% sure that Jakobe has Retrograde Ejaculation - but he's not going to do anything to confirm that.

He had absolutely nothing to say about morphology or motility.

He did say that we wouldn't be able to conceive naturally, we would need either IUI or IVF.

When I said I was concerned about not having enough for IUI, he basically agreed.

Other than that - he said that there's one fertility doctor in Spokane, but he recommends that we go to Seattle instead.  (5 hours or so away)  He said we could try the Spokane Doc for a consultation, but that we should really think about it before actually doing any treatment here.

When I asked if there was anything he could do to confirm the retrograde, he said that we'd have to talk to the fertility specialist about that.  It seems he's washed his hands of us.

Anyway - I figured all of that out using "Dr. Google" months ago.  (okay, except for the first line...)

I was doing okay at the doctor's office, and basically until I was away from Jakobe.  He was having a hard time, and I guess subconsciously, I didn't want to add to it.  I started to fall apart a little while I was driving to work - and it's gotten worse since then.  It news wasn't worse than I had expected, but it wasn't what we wanted to here.

Good News:  I actually avoided the whole emotional eating thing when I got to work.  I got here, and there was a whole plate of muffins free for the taking, as well as a sausage/egg/potato thing.  I took some of the sausage stuff to eat for lunch, but did not give in to the temptation to eat one of those huge muffins...  I think I get a gold star.

Here we go.

I'm still working on what to title this post.  I've got a variety of random thoughts jumbled around in my head.  Part of which is feeling a little bit nervous about the urology appointment tomorrow.  Yikes.  It's here. 

In other news:

• My uncle has a 3 week old oops baby we're just finding out about now.  In the Phillipenes.  For a little perspective - his other two daughters are 28 and 26, and his granddaughters are 7, 5, and 3...  OOPS.
• My mom is moving in with her boyfriend.  She'll be moving about an hour away (not too bad) but since in the nearly 3 years they've been dating he still hasn't managed to divorce his wife.  I'm not sure how good of an idea moving in together really is.
• It's raining.

Anyway, I wrote this last night, and didn't  post.  It's morning, and we're off to see the urologist.

Pesimmism

 So it's not really funny, but it seems that the closer we get to Jakobe's appointment on Friday, the  more I feel like it's not really going to do anything for us.  It took quite some time to get the appointment, and we've been patiently waiting for it.  At the same time, I don't know what the urologist is going to be able to tell us other than "We need more tests."

Jakobe hates the doctor - nothing good ever happens to him there.  And I certainly haven't helped with that feeling.  I made him go in for a physical last fall (after more than a year of nagging, sorry honey - I love you) and what happened?  He was diagnosed with insulin dependent diabetes.

I didn't make him go in for the SA, but it *was* my idea, since I'm the one who wanted kids more, and I wanted to know if I should go ahead and have another laparoscopy (it would be my 4th).  And we all know what happened there, and it wasn't good. (If you don't know - the results are over on the timeline)

In any case, I'm less and less sure what this appointment is going to do for us, other than being a stepping-stone toward having a plan. Don't get me wrong - I want a plan.  I just feel like the whole thing is glacial right now.

What If?

What if implies possibilities, hopes, fears, what might be, the end that we don’t know yet, or even a stop along the way.  What if invites us to explore the land of the unknown, to stand up and look our fears and hopes straight in the face.  What if is scary.

My life is full of What if’s.  I share most of them with other people waiting, wondering, hoping - what if this is our month, cycle, whatever?  What if the option we tried this time is the right one?  What if it works?

Honestly though, these are the happy, hopeful, positive what ifs.  They’re few and far between, and there’s a whole room full of the dark, scary, unpleasant what ifs.  The ones that make us wonder if we’re worth it, the ones that make us feel like terrible people, the ones that we can’t even bear to say because just saying it admits that it might be true.  Today, I’m going to pick one, take it by the hand, and walk a mile in its shoes.

What if I have to learn how to live childfree with a smile…forever?

{Fast-Forward 10 years}

It starts when the phone rings,  it’s my youngest sister, calling to say “It’s Time!” and she’s scared and excited all at once, and you can hear every emotion in the world flow through her voice with those two words.  I feel them all too, overwhelmed for a moment, by the vastness of all of the different things that I’m feeling. 

At 14 years my junior, she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a child of my own.  I got to answer the teenage questions about sex, and give her advice and lectures she really didn’t want to hear.  For a couple of years, while my mom was gone, my other sisters and I stepped in and did the best we could, We did it again when my parents split. It’s not the same, but it’s as close as I got.  Jakobe and I tried, hard, in our thirties to have children of our own, but it wasn’t meant to be.

In this moment, the whole family is preparing to descend upon the local hospital, to wait in the waiting room, to wander in and out of the delivery room, and to generally be there for her.  It’s what we do.  We did it when my first nephew was born 16 years ago, and have done it from time to time, for cousins and friends in the meanwhile, but it’s the first time we’ve been able to do it for a sister since then.  It’s been a long wait. 

I think that we’re all excited.  Not everyone arrives at the same time; I’m one of the first.  Jakobe even comes with me, he’s been there giving lectures and advice since she was 14, and it’s a big day for him too.  Her hospital room fills up with family, and we’re all there with advice and smiles: The three of us older girls, and my mom - the people who were there in the room when she herself was born.   After a while Meg catches my eye and we share a little wry smile – the only indication of that lingering bit of sadness we both feel, the moment when we acknowledge that we both wished to experience what Ro is experiencing, but didn’t get that lucky.  Then we move on.

The rest of the day is nothing but smiles, congratulations, and visible happiness.  My niece it the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen, and Ro came through the whole thing like a trooper.  All of the cooing, and snuggling, and “Can I hold the baby” draws to an end and we all head back to our homes so that Ro can rest and recover.

Once we get home, I let go a little bit, and Jakobe holds me while I let out the tears that even I forgot I was holding back.  It doesn’t take long, I mostly gave up feeling sorry for myself when I finally accepted that it wasn’t ever going to happen for us, but it’s still there sometimes.  I make dinner, and decide that maybe it’s time for us to go on another awesome trip.

{Return to the present}

When I started to write that, I didn’t really understand how hard it was going to be to actually imagine myself in that situation.  I knew that I didn’t really want to think about it – and the pile of Kleenex next to me attests that it was a painful experience.  Now I get to move on o the fun side of the What ifs:

What if we go to Jakobe’s urologist appointment on Friday and discover that things aren’t as bad as they initially seemed?  What if it means that we get pregnant this year, and our dream of becoming parents comes true without needing to dig ourselves a hole of debt?  What if we don’t have to wait for a year to be able to afford to attempt it?

And one for my sister Meg:  What if they can figure out why their beans don’t stick, and fix it?

This post brought to you by the letters N, I, A, & W.  National Infertility Awareness Week.
Check out Project IF here.

For more information about NIAW please visit: http://www.resolve.org/takecharge

For more information about Infertility in general:  http://www.resolve.org/infertility101

Updated to add:  My positive what if's (for me at least) were a pipe dream.  The urologist said we wouldn't be conceiving naturally and IUI was unlikely as well.

No Change

It's funny, because I don't really have much of an update, but at the same time I feel guilty for not writing anything new.  Beginning in January, I promised that I would post at least once a week, and I thought it was going to be hard.  Instead, I've found that it has been incredibly good for me.  Having an outlet for all of my feelings, and knowing that someone is probably out there who understands helps me make it through the rough days.  Knowing that maybe my struggles will help someone else helps too.

Also, I signed up for International Comment Leaving Week (IComLeavWe or ICLW) and I feel like I need to do some sort of an introduction, so I guess that these needs coincide.  

Our Current News:  

• We're still waiting.  
• We're still not sure exactly what/how were going to tell Jakobe's parents about our infertility.  I just know that hearing "You know, if you and Jakobe decide never to have children, we'll love you anyway." again is going to result in me saying something I will regret, and/or making a scene.
• I double checked with our benefits person yesterday and verified that none of our 8 options for health insurance plans have *any* infertility coverage at all.  
• My head nearly exploded earlier this week when two of the people who were supposed to be in the office while we were at the urologist appointment decided to take that day off, meaning that we have almost no coverage if something goes wrong.  As bad as I feel about leaving one person to manage everything the morning of the 30th, I put my request in first, and if my two bosses think it's okay to take the day off and leave the office almost empty for half the day, then that's their call, not mine.  My personal life has to come before work sometimes.

And a welcome to ICLW visitors:

{Stepping up to the podium}

Thank you for stopping by.  I'm Jenni, and my husband and I are infertile.  I have endometriosis, which may or may not be impairing our ability to reproduce because my husband has crappy sperm so we've never really tested it.  I have always wanted children, in fact my initial plan was to get married at 19, and have 4 kids by about age 27.  That unrealistic plan was completely blown out of the water by that fact that I didn't even meet my husband until I was 27, and got married at 29.  

We spent most of the first year TTC hoping that we'd have good luck and assuming it was my fault that we weren't successful.  I had most of the testing right as we started, so the next step was a repeat laparoscopy for me.  I thought we should make sure that we had taken care of any possible issues on his side before I had surgery, and to our shock all of the news on his side was bad.  

Now I don't get a laparoscopy right away, which you might think of as a good thing, but I'm one of the lucky ones for whom endometriosis is not a silent problem, instead it's more of a screaming, tearing, ball of pain in my abdomen for a couple of days a month, and a gnawing, dull pain the rest of the time.

We're waiting to go see a urologist, and find out if there's a possibility that his crap sperm is caused by retrograde ejaculation (a complication of diabetes) or possibly some sort of ejaculatory duct obstruction, or even something we haven't thought of yet.  If so, maybe there's something we can do.  If not, we feel like we're most likely looking at IVF.

{stepping away, and finding my seat}

Good News!!!

Okay - I wrote this post once already, and then I lost it.  GRR!

I finally got Jakobe's login information for his health insurance web portal.  I say finally because I've been wanting to do it for a long time, but hadn't yet acted on that desire, and not because Jakobe was holding out on me.  In any case, I logged in today to check his Infertility coverage - just to double check my belief that he didn't have any, and discovered that I was wrong.  This is what I found:

Infertility Services

Diagnosis and Treatment of underlying medical condition covered (e.g. endometriosis). 

Other examples in my book would also include: ejaculatory duct obstruction, retrograde ejaculation, other things I can't think of, but I'm sure are out there....  I'm pretty certain that this means that our upcoming urology appointments and follow up appointments will be covered under his insurance.  I expect we can probably get coverage for SAs needed as part of the diagnosis or treatment of the "Underlying condition" whatever that is.  This is a good thing, and it changes the picture for us somewhat.  It certainly may open up some options that we may not have been able to explore before.

Thoughts from Limbo

I'm more than willing to admit that I'm at the beginning of this journey, but it seems like it's one of the challenges that comes to be part of your personal definition either as an individual, or as a couple.  Infertility is seeping into all the different parts of our life, and coloring the way we look at and interact with the world.  

It's changing how I look at everyday things, how I interact with other people, mostly right now it's changing how much I interact with other people's kids.  I keep trying, but as much as I like them, and as much fun as it is, it hurts.  While driving to Easter breakfast at my aunt's house on Sunday, Jakobe and I chose a code phrase in case it got to be too much and one or the other of us just had to get out of there.  Thankfully, we didn't need it.  How long will we be able to keep that up? How long will I feel guilty about planning to go on vacation (which I know that we need) because we could be saving that money to pay for possible treatments?  How long will the pain of this keep us from the intimacy we were just starting to get on level ground with?  How much is too much?  How will we know when it's time to stop?  Haw will we be able to keep it from tearing us apart in the meanwhile?

There's a part of me that feels like I need to accept that it might never happen.  Even now, there's a part of me that feels like we shouldn't try too hard, because this is hurting us as individuals, and as a couple. At the same time, the idea of not trying is like looking out into a future that looks like I imagine Mars is: beautiful in its way, but empty at the same time.

That and just thinking about not trying makes me want to cry - So I'm sure we're not even close to there yet.  I just don't want to let this take over all of the good things we do have.

We still have 3 1/2 weeks before we see the urologist, and we can't expect him to have answers, just a new set of questions.

Writing on the chalkboard

One of the most unfortunate things that go along with stress and depression is sleep disturbances.  I don’t want to get out of bed, and I can’t fall asleep or stay asleep.  I toss and turn from about 4 am on, and when I make it to bed at midnight, and take an hour or more to fall asleep, it doesn’t make for a restful experience.

This week has been full of both positives and negatives.  We did get a referral from Jakobe’s endocrinologist to see a urologist, and they called us to make an appointment.  But – the appointment isn’t until April 30^th.  His endocrinologist also said that given the fact that his SA was so terrible, and that his hormone levels are normal, he thinks we’ll need to go the IVF route.

I emailed my primary care doctor to let her know where things are right now, and she’ll be happy to help me find a specialist when it’s time to treat my endometriosis again.  Part of me is not happy about putting off my treatment, because it means that I get to live with the effects of endo in the meanwhile. 

Anyway, the thoughts and feelings that have been swirling through my head haven’t been helping my sleep problem.  Neither has the fact that it’s finals week, and I procrastinated writing a paper that is due today.  I crawled into bed last night after taking 2 Advil PM, and 2 melatonin.  Laying in bed and waiting to fall asleep, I started to use one of my usual make-me-fall-asleep techniques: count backwards from 1000.   Instead of just counting I pictured myself writing each number on a chalkboard followed by the phrase:  Everything will turn out as it should.  You know  - just like “I will not kick boys at recess.”  Following the same line of thought, that we can change thoughts and behavior by repeating a phrase to remind us, I’m using my mental chalkboard.  Maybe, just maybe it will cause me to feel more optimistic.  Now all I have to do is remember to do the same thing tonight.