-
-
The Groups
THE WINNER!
Photo Friday
Originally uploaded by Jennimac.
So sorry for the delay! Charlotte & I both had busy weekends. (check out her blog for her awesome almost news)
We didn’t get to do any serious judging. It actually was down to comments you guys left within flickr.
Honorable mention goes to Ms. Bri, Art-Sweet & Trista for having boots that I would like to have. (but I sincerely doubt any of them have size 12 hoofs like me.)
So Jenny, dear, what will the theme for this week be? Make it good. Charlotte, as acting vice-regent of Photo Friday, has a veto and I know she would use it. bwah ha ha!
Karma Points
Not to give anything away, but last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy skated around the issue of karma. Specifically, how it was so “unfair” that good people got sick or had shitty things happen to them.
I was intrigued by this as just last week my very own RE alluded to how much it sucked that I, a “good person”, was not getting pregnant.
In a way it is comforting to know that I am not the only patient or person walking around calculating points of the universe. I’ve been doing it since forever. From big things: It’s so unfair that my Mom is not like other Moms. To little things: It’s so unfair that I have a zit on picture day.
But I’ve always been aware of when things were either fair or unfair. There are few occasions when things seem just. But not everyone recognizes them as such. Yesterday I was in the front of a grocery store check out line. There were three people behind me. I overheard the third person, who was only holding a carton of eggs say, “I’m in the middle of making my son’s birthday cake.” She seemed rushed. So I motioned for her to jump ahead in line in front of me. To me, it seemed just. The woman was in a hurry, she only had one item, no biggie. & I even gave myself a pat on the back for being such a gosh darn nice person.
But the gal that was #2 in line behind me did not see this as being fair. To her, it was unfair. & Under her breath I could make out just how much she thought it sucked. And are you ready for the horrible confession I am about to make?
I let gal #2 go ahead of me.
Yes. It’s true, in the name of being good, and trying to wrack up karma points, I was a pushover.
The woman didn’t even thank me. I could tell she felt very entitled to go ahead of me. After all I was the evil bitch that let that other woman jump.
Throughout the course of a week I probably do at least 5-7 “nice girl” moves.
And what is a Nice Girl Move? Well it is anytime that I am fully aware that I am being such a nice girl. Here are some examples:
Letting people go ahead of me at the grocery store (um, I do it pretty often)
Allow people to merge into my lane
Help short people reach things in stores
You get the idea, it’s a Pollyanna thing
And then there is just the general game face of Nice Girl that I put forward when out in public. That face is what attracts strangers to ask for help or directions. It smiles or winks at children that are being brats to try to cheer them up. It is the face of All American Girl.
The truth is that while most of the time all of this forced benevolence is genuine, there is a good percentage that is not. But I feel like I must do good, be good, look good in order to receive good things. I am playing a video arcade game with karma points hoping that if I wrack up enough of them I will make it to the bonus round and…you guessed it…get pregnant.
But all of that has gotten me nowhere except a trip to sympathy-ville. Poor me, such a good girl and she can’t get pregnant.
My Ugliest Shoes
Sure. They may be ugly. But I so wear them when the mood hits me.
& of course they have a story.
See, I’ve always thought bowling shoes were groovy. I’ve always wanted to own a pair. But I didn’t like the idea of buying my own, nor did I like the idea of swiping a pair that were USED.
One day, after a long 48 hour stint at work, a group of us decided to unwind at a Studio City bowling alley called Pinz. I was last in line to get the loaner shoes & when the guy couldn’t find any more size 10’s (ahem…that would be men sized) he went to a storage room and came back with a brand new pair of shoes. I watched him remove them from the box. They were beautiful.
I knew that as I handed over my grungy nikes that it would be the last time I ever saw them. Because those bowling shoes were coming home with me.
Stealing them from the bowling alley was freakishly easy. I’m still amazed at how little guilt I felt about it at the time. Of course it caught up with me & I didn’t feel like I could ever wear the shoes unless I paid for them. So I went back and tried to explain that I had stolen some shoes and that I wanted to pay for them. The guy behind the counter thought I was a riot. He said everyone steals shoes from them & then went back to disinfecting. He wouldn’t take my money and so I left. But I could never go back. I even stopped shopping at the Bed, Bath & Beyond next door for shame.
But they have made great disco dancing shoes.
Letter from the R.E. (part 2)
So I wrote back to my R.E. basically saying that I would be ready to try again in March. Here is what he said:
[Calliope],
If you are ready to pick up the ball and run with it, then we are
behind you all the way!! [two exclamation points? over kill, dude.]
I reviewed your stimulation cycle again today. I would like to do two
things. First, after your baseline ultrasound, you will start on 75IU
of Repronex for d3,4,5, and come in on d6 for sono/E2. This is half the
dose you were on in the first cycle. I cut it down because your ovaries
responded well and would like to get you to d10 before you get HCG. [I always thought getting an IUI on cd 10 was wicked early.]
I would also like to check the “overnight motility” with a drop of sperm
from your next sperm prep prior to the IUI. [um, huh? que es?] This will give us some
indication of how viable the sperm are after we inseminate them. [oh...answering the age old message board question of, "just how long does frozen sperm last.] In the
process of learning more and more about your reproductive capacity with
each cycle, hopefully we will pop up with a pregnancy! [again with the exclamation point. & seriously, I'm tired of learning about my "reproductive capacity". get me knocked up already.]
Give [Nurse] a call when your cycle starts and we’ll give it a go,
Dr. [R.E.]
I should probably disclose the fact that my R.E. is only seeing two other patients. Remember how I have mentioned that I go to a learning clinic? (think Grey’s anatomy with stirrups & no Dr. McDreamy) Well my R.E. is actually still doing rotations. I have been at the clinic for so fucking long that he has MOVED ON from clinical to a research rotation. I’m like baggage that he can’t shake. So I don’t want you guys to think I am some sort of groovy patient (well no more than you all are). I just have an R.E. that is trying to get rid of me.
But have you guys heard of this “overnight motility” testing?
A little something New:
In case you didn’t know, tomorrow’s photo friday theme is: your ugly or funky or memorable footwear.
The twist, because now there are so many of you playing along, is that Charlotte & I will be “judging”. I say “judging”, but I don’t really mean “judging”. More like commenting & giving silly gold stars for effort & the such.
We’ll give you until Sunday early morning to upload & then we will have a blogging blue ribbon for somebody Sunday evening. The reason you want to “win” is that the “winner” gets to select the theme for the next week.
oh! Snap!
_____________
I think those of you that said the R.E. left out some words in his e-mail to me were correct. & I think I am ok with that. You can’t be an expert at everything. A little, “whoops I forgot a word!” is fine as long as you have your repro mojo in order.
Break Dancing
Astounding confession to make:
I do not know what fucking cycle day I am on!
Seriously.
I think I may be near an ovulation day, but I couldn’t swear to it at all. Like if you held a gun to my head & said, “How many days until you expect to get your period??!!” I would have to say, “shoot me. I don’t know.”
How nuts is that? X days since my self imposed break from trying to get knocked up and I feel so distanced from the ttc world. But now that I am aware of that I am trying to figure out how much longer I should be break dancing.
To be honest I probably would have sailed through at least two months on a break. But then something happened that has stirred the fighter in me. I got an e-mail from my RE.
Very odd thing to see, nestled within an inbox of e-mails from Mother, friends, itunes and spam - your RE’s name. At first I had this moment of dread. I honestly freaked for a nanosecond with the fear that he had stumbled across my blog or something. Maybe he was commenting on the post where I discussed how I farted in his face. Maybe he was e-mailing to tell me that there had been a HUGE mixup in the lab & that all those IUI’s where I thought I was getting sperm I was actually getting chicken soup.
But it was actually a kind e-mail. Except for the last sentence which I don’t understand at all. So please help me out here, what is he trying to say?
_[Calliope]______,
I hope you don’t mind that [Nurse] forwarded your email to me [the one where I said that I needed to take a break]. I
wanted to let you know that we share in your frustration. All of your
cycles have been optimized, yet no pregnancy has occurred.
Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common and what happens is
patients continue to elevate the amount of intervention (time and cost
and risk) until pregnancy is either achieved or they have come to the
resolution that they may need to seek other options (adoption,
child-free living, etc.). Only you can make these kinds of decisions. [am I wrong for kind of wanting to smack him for saying that?]
We are in this with you and will support whatever decisions you make.
You are one of our favorite patients [only because I tell dirty jokes] and therefore one of the most difficult ones to get pregnant [now what the fuck does that mean?]. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.
[the RE]
So like I said now I feel a bit challenged. Like maybe I need to get back in the game next month. & next month could be good. It would mean a possible Capricorn baby. & we all know that Capricorns rule.
So let’s say I have about two weeks to decide. Two weeks of mulling.
cripes.
In the meantime, & this is WAY off topic, if you have not discovered a little band called The 88, then you should be ashamed of yourself. Please download them immediately & rock out. Their song, ‘Everybody loves me but me’ is a bit of an anthem these days.
Protected: I am a Failure.
I spent the better half of my morning rekindling my relationship with the shrink. I hadn’t seen her since my lap, the holidays, and two more failed cycles. So we had just oodles to catch up on. I have evolved from being tense around Shrink, to feeling guarded, to embracing her. She has awesome insights, sure. But I’ve seen her about 5 times now & each time she has brought up a story or quote by Madonna. & no, not the Surrogate Mother to Jesus. I’m talking about the other gal that feels like a virgin. It was when she began a paragraph about how she always wished that she could be a back up singer for Madonna that my mind just went, “Oh Shrink, you are on par with me for dorkiness.” I guess it makes me feel less like being analyzed and more like I am just telling my life story to a woman that has the key to a new perspective.
One of the things that we do in session is mind wandering. I’m sure there is a very scientific term for it, but whatever. What I do is close my eyes & let my mind wander. Well it is a bit of specific wandering. For instance this morning she says, “Close your eyes and think about the day in January when you got your period. The moment that you knew that you were not pregnant.”
So I thought back & immediately remembered the sobbing, the snot, the screaming into my pillow. Still with my eyes closed Shrink told me to start talking about what I was feeeeeeeeeeling at that moment. The words that came to mind were loss, emptiness, doom, fear, sorrow and failure.
She then asked me to think back to when I had ever felt that mix of emotions before. Immediately I thought of my Grandfather’s funeral. I thought of how I had to put myself together because the newspaper people would be at the funeral. How my Aunt (the one I don’t talk to anymore) told me to be “gracious” and not “overly dramatic” at the service. How I had to stand there with his dead body in a box behind me and shake the hands of hundreds of people and keep it together. I couldn’t do it. After the bazillionth person told me how sorry they were for my loss I just lost it and began to cry in a very, very inappropriate way. I had to be taken to the car by a stranger and I curled up in the backseat and wailed.
I felt like a failure even within my own grief.
When I said that to Shrink she stopped me and we talked about failures in my life. I have wracked up a few. We talked about my getting kicked out of schools, about not getting into Julliard, about dropping out of NYU…within all of that there is that theme of “failure”. But the emotional tags that I have attached to failure are the same no matter what I am, er, failing. & with each failure I pick away at myself like a kid picking a scab. I am brutal.
Next week we are going to dive into the EMDR process. I am going to work on reprogramming my responses. I’m not quite sure how it will work, if will work or when it will work. But I am drawn to the idea of it.
In writing about my session it seems a bit all over. I guess it is hard to replay something so mental. The truth is that I am scared of therapy. About what it will reveal about me. But I have come to the point in my life where I know that I do not have the tools to keep going. Depression, in many forms, runs in my family and I have hopes that by facing this shit now it won’t ruin my life later on.
P.S. Shrink asked me why I wear a ring on my left hand. I told her that it just feels weird to have it on my right — off balance or something. She says, “Well I wonder how many men don’t approach you because it looks like you are already taken?” SHUT UP! She wants me to switch my ring to the right hand & just SEE if more guys approach me. I am going to humor her because it makes me laugh.
I Love You.
Sure, I could join the huddled masses of singles crying out how evil St. Valentine’s day is. But why be a joiner? The truth is I am, to the core, a mushy-gushy sap of a romantic. I love the idea of love. & some day I hope to hear somebody say and show how much they love me.
Boomerang of Denial
This weekend was a full one. Alert the media: I was social!
But it didn’t start off on such a great note. Saturday morning I woke up around 4am, and for whatever reason, I tasted metal in my mouth. It was if I had slept all night sucking on a penny. So even though I was still suffering from cramps there was this new voice in my head that said, “Oh! metal taste! Isn’t that a pregnancy symptom???” It is seriously a new level of denial when you are changing a tampon and convincing yourself that maybe you ought to go out & buy another pregnancy test. I had at least a good thirty minutes of crazy where I thought I was one of those women that get their periods but are really pregnant.
So did I take (another) pregnancy test?
Oh you know I did. & guess what, people?
I’m not pregnant.
So then I had to beat myself up a bit. Even as I was counting down the minutes before I would allow myself to look at the test I started smacking my forehead with the palm of my hand. I’m such an idiot! The very idea that I could sustain this deranged hour of denial is maddening. This break is very much necessary. But I won’t be on it alone - you will be relieved to know that the Shrink is making a comeback. Clearly I have some issues.
Reminder of my request for snow photos!! I know all of you foxies in the North East are swimming in the powder. Hook a girl up with some snow pictures.
My Bookcases
A bit messier than they should be & you can’t really see the bottom shelves. But those are crammed with photo albums, software books and the books my Grandfather wrote.
Next week’s theme: Your hands
-
-
Great Hosting By:
