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Talk to me: cell phones, computer upgrades & recliners
So my cell phone sucks it raw. No kidding- it is the worst piece of junk ever. I can make two 5 minute calls, send 3 text messages and then I have to recharge it.
It is only 3 years old and when I got it I hated it instantly. I used to have this cool sprint phone. It was big and silver and had a speaker phone and was easy to dial. When I moved from the west coast to the south I discovered that sprint didn’t have great cell phone coverage. So I switched. And with the switch I got one of those rectangular cell phones. You know the kind every one and their mother had. And I was fine with that.
But then the carrier merged with another carrier and I got sucked into their advertising that promised me a life with fun, swank phones. So I got one of those flip phones with the camera built in. It was a pain to program and didn’t even have an option to switch my ringer to vibrate. And a girl’s got to have her vibrate.
However I started using my cell phone less and less. As my life became more shut in and less social I began leaving my phone in the car or in the kitchen. And the battery would die and it would be weeks before I even thought to recharge it. So clearly I wasn’t super involved with my phone.
This recent trip up North was pure hell with my cell phone. I literally traveled with both of my chargers- including the car charger. Every moment I was in a vehicle I was charging the phone. Even at the 2nd annual IVP convention I was chasing down bloggers asking if I could charge my phone in their car.
I started to realize that maybe if I had a better phone that maybe I would call people more and be better at that whole keeping in touch stuff. Plus- how fucking cool is texting? Not that I can really do it on my current phone without sucking two bars of battery juice…
So advice request #1: What cell phone should I get? I don’t care what carrier the phone is with as they all work the same around here. I am drawn to the smart phones but I do not want to pay extra monthly for something like a blackberry. I also won’t/can’t use anything that is window or pc based. What I really like is the new palm centro phone. But I think I like it because it is pretty and red. Do any of you guys LOVE your phone? Tell me all about it. Any phones I should run away from?
Advice request #2: Any mac users here? What are your thoughts on the leopard upgrade? Have any of you upgraded already? Was it worth it? Anyone refusing to upgrade? How come?
Advice request #3: There are 500 sales going on this weekend at local furniture stores. We have decided that we should take advantage of that and invest in a good (but not million dollared) recliner for GM. She spends, on average, around eight hours a day in her chair in the den. While it is a comfy chair it is not after 8 hours. She naps on and off through out the day and she likes to put her feet up on the seat of her walker, but then after a while her knees hurt. A recliner sounds like a good thing. But where to begin? Anyone have a recliner that they worship? Or maybe your parents or grandparents have one they could endorse?
And lastly, because this one post took me most of the day to compose, we have just had a series of trick or treaters. Only one child above the age of two. But FOUR families with babies in costumes. Nothing quite so lovely as answering your door to baby after baby after baby after baby. After I tossed the last twix bar at the last customer I felt like screaming, “ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING BABIES!” Must the Universe ring my door bell and flaunt my failures? Seriously- one more baby and I am just leaving the bowl of candy outside. Or maybe I will just leave the milky ways and keep the butterfingers and the twix…
ok- now tell me all about your cell phones, computer upgrades and recliners pretty please.
Blogging away November
No matter what next week’s tests reveal for me I have a feeling that I will need to vent and purge quite often. Luckily for you November is a good month for such a need. The lazy persons answer to NaNoWriMo is NaBloPoMo. While I am sure there are brilliant writers able to do both I am certain that I am not that kind of writer. In fact I was such a failure at novel writing last year that I have all kinds of new awe for those of you that are able to do it year after year.
But writing a blog post every day for the month of November? I can do that. Oh yes I can. And I want to. I am starting a list of things that I have always wanted to write about but never have. I also am open to suggestions and or requests. Maybe.
There is a swank site where you can register yourself and proclaim that you do have copious amounts of free time and that you will blog every day. I have also set up a group for the IVP. So once you register and set up your own page you can come join our group.
If anything this is just a fun way to discipline your writing. In the two plus years that I have been blogging I have felt my writing evolve and grow. Just by having something to come to every day, that structure, has helped. Plus it is always kind of amusing to go back into the archives and read with perspective.
Let me know if you are going to sign up. If you commit to it I will commit to commenting to every post you write.
Every cloud has one- The Pollyanna Post
It is kind of insane how my alter Pollyanna ego can surface in the midst of a cloud of shit. I am chalking it up to yesterday’s doctor appointment. Somehow it opened me back up to daydreaming about how things might get better.
So while I am having an obnoxiously perky day I figured I should document and share it. The following is a list of silver linings and things I am grateful for:
- I have health insurance. I can not imagine going through this without having it. The fact that I am only recently completely covered is a giant good thing. It would suck on the most vile level to be looking at Hep C in the face without insurance.
- I found a good and proactive doctor.
- I am thankful for all of the e-mails and phone calls from friends. No one has run away from me. I think that was a little fear of mine.
- I am especially grateful for the e-mail exchanges I have had with Sarah- who went through this months ago and has the most wonderful perspective.
- I am thankful for the friend that sent me the most charming and hopeful white daisies I have ever seen.
- I am thankful that GM has been so understanding and caring. She doesn’t really understand what is going on. We have explained that I might have a virus in my blood and that we are sad about that. She didn’t get why she needed to go to the blood lab yesterday. After her blood was taken I overheard her asking the tech if she would be giving the blood to me.
- I am thankful that Halloween is tomorrow and that my Mother bought enough candy for me to sample before the trick or treatness happens.
- I am glad that my crazy obsession with diet coke has subsided and that I am now down to one can a day. There are only 4 cans left in the house.
- I am thrilled that I mastered the art of making sage butter last night.
- I am loving that GM is hooked on The Price is Right right now. It is our first time watching it together in years and she is entranced.
- I am thankful that Charlie and Talula are underfoot and exuding animal love.
- I am happy that so many of my internet friends are on the verge of trying again. I am hopeful that the thwarted fertility mojo that I was sitting on is able to travel to the wombs that need it.
- I am excited about the lack of humidity in the air right now.
- I am thrilled that Ms D is finally back after spending time with her new grandbaby. She will be back to respite care with us starting this thursday.
- Other than my ongoing anxiety about being sick- I actually feel good for the first time in months. The painful bloat is gone and I don’t feel as irrationally hormonal as I usually do.
So what are you guys thankful for today?
Just what I wanted to hear.
(warning- totally drab, droll, play by play blog post with uninspired analogies and far reaching metaphors.)
Turns out my doctor isn’t exactly a Medusa type. I’m trying to figure out what celebrity she reminds me of. I enjoy casting these roles as it makes the visualizing of my life as a movie all the more thrilling. I had the shrink that looked like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the family doctor that looked like Michael J. Fox, and the dermatologist that looked like Uma Thurman (the fucking bitch). If pressed I might say that this new doc could be a sort of distant Greek cousin of Courteney Cox.
Here is the ultimate tell- I felt zero pressure to entertain her. Those of you that know me know that is beyond huge. She was very comfortable and soothing and a lover of plans. By the time I left we had walked through around 3 different scenarios. I had a plan, a back up plan and a back up the backup plan. Love that.
The first thing she said to me was something of enormous, giant, magnificent comfort. Turns out that you can test positive on the antibody test AND the RIBA test and still not have Hep C. In fact this doctor had two women patients (both trying to get pregnant, oddly enough) that had tested positive on both tests and ended up not having a lick of the virus.
I had 8 vials of blood drawn today. No sweat for a gal in the infertility world. Tests will be done to look at my liver levels and cholesterol. The Hep C tests were more advanced tests screening for the virus. That included the ultimate quantitative test and a genotyping test.
The doctor was really good at giving me hope and at the same time being pragmatic about what would happen if I am truly and without any doubt positive. She explained that if I am positive that I could never be a donor of any kind. This was a new sort of depressing as I have always prided myself on being able to check “organ donor” on my driver’s licence. Once you have Hep C you will always have it, it will never be cured.
However she did seem optimistic about my chances for being able to have IVF. If I can get the virus smacked into submission I should be just fine for all fertility procedures. I seized the hope and am going to carry that around on a string around my neck for a while.
She also made an appointment for me to meet with a gastroenterologist once my blood results are in. If I am not positive he will be able to help me reassure the IVF doctors that I am cleared for a take off. If I am positive he will be in charge of my treatment.
It will be about a week (a fucking WEEK!) before all of the labs get in. Oh the waiting. Another week where I convince myself that I don’t have it. It’s like poking yourself in the eye with a fork daily.
I have been shit at keeping up with all of you guys. I will be dipping my toe back into the fun, frisky world of blog comments tomorrow. I hope that all of you have been doing wild and crazy things as I will need some major distractions as I wait.
the unretrieval
So my answer to the universe when it gives me the middle finger: 400 cans of diet coke. Until Saturday I hadn’t had caffeine for nearly 5 months. And since I can’t drink alcohol (oh the injustice of having a liver virus) I turned to old faithful to satisfy my quench. I drank can after can as if I was dangerously dehydrated. I drank until fuzzy turtlenecks of diet coke residue knitted their way over my teeth. I drank until all I could taste in my mouth was the aftertaste of artificial sweetener.
But, and this should be a note for anyone else that finds themselves in a cancelled egg retrieval situation, drinking all of that diet coke gives you a lot of bloat and a lot of gas. Bloat and gas are something that does not go well with a body that is already ripe with medication and puffy ovaries. By sunday evening I was contorted on the floor in a sort of anti yoga position. Downward facing delirium of dire, devastating despondency.
I pushed through the pain and saddled myself with my laptop for an evening of googling. It suddenly became vitally important that I know what my doctor look like before I met with her. I sifted through 5 million or so image jpegs and found around 200 women with her name. All of them looked fabulously fit and put together. Their faces sort of blended together to form one giant imaginary doctor that had all of the charm of a medical Medusa.
Why is it comforting to think of this infectious disease doctor as someone that will hate me, judge me, point a finger at me and mock me? This might be where I now tell you that after nearly five days of realizing that I most certainly do have this shiteous virus I am now wallowing in the most fragrant scent of self pity you have ever whiffed. I feel dirty and gross and annoyingly deserving. I mean clearly I am a horrible, wretched person. Obviously I am a member of the walking damned society. And while I rationally know that I did nothing to merit such crappy events, it is somehow more palatable to turn myself into some sort of infertility martyr. Please avert your eyes as I attach opk’s to my shoelaces and thrash my injection bruises.
So doctor appointment is at 10:30 tomorrow followed by some quality time at a blood lab. I called Mother & GM’s doctor’s office and insisted that she order Hep C blood tests for the both of them. I waver between hoping that one of them has the virus (that will at least answer the “where the fuck did I get it” question) and then hoping like crazy that neither one has the virus (I will never forgive myself if I gave it to them). Out of everyone in the house I am the most fit to handle treatment. (although, oddly enough, one of the injection treatments mentioned is something that Mother once tried to help with her MS)
I want answers and I want action and I want explanations and I want resolution and I want to be coddled and I want to be told that everything will be ok and I want to quit beating myself up and I want to be able to sleep and I want to be able to stop entertaining fantasies that all of this is some horrible waking nightmare.
Oh, and I totally want another diet coke.
K.I.T. mode
Wednesday night I drove back to the clinic with a bag full of unused fertility medicine. I handed them off to a woman behind the desk and she, in turn, handed me a small envelope. I carried the envelope through the lobby as if it was all I needed. I was cool. I was calm. I had my envelope and all was right with the world.
Once I made it to the safety of M’s car in the parking lot I opened the envelope and realized that I was now the proud owner of two sets of lab results and a free packet of birth control pills. My consolation prize. How sweet. How not consoling.
Once back at M’s apartment I booked a flight back to Florida. Or maybe I booked it before I drove to the clinic, I honestly don’t remember. I just remember driving to the clinic and having a 3-way conversation on my cell phone with Bri and Charlotte. A conversation where I was so concerned with proving how fine I was that I was making jokes. Actual jokes about having hep C. You know- those wildly appropriate jokes where you tell someone that you are sure their baby will be fine as you didn’t give them a tattoo when you held them on Sunday.
But it is all about being in kit mode. Kit, of course, stands for keep it together. And that is all that I am able to do right now, but only just barely.
I flew home yesterday morning. Mother & GM were so glad to see me and I was not so glad to see them. Sure there is the bittersweetness of it all. The happy to be getting hugged by your family bit. But I wasn’t supposed to be home. I was supposed to be in the lobby of the clinic waiting for my name to be called for my final ultrasound. I was supposed to be getting instructions about giving myself the trigger shot and what to wear to my retrieval. Like I said- bittersweet, but with extra helpings of bitter. Tomorrow was supposed to be my retrieval.
I spent most of yesterday in a suspended state of kit. I was cool and calm as I called around town trying to find an infectious disease doctor that would not only take my insurance but also see me before December. And why are there 6 million doctors in my town with degrees from the Caribbean school of medicine? I am usually not a doctor snob. I have no qualms about my doctor speaking 15 languages and having a last name longer than my address. But for some reason I kept visualizing that particular med school as being on the 2nd level of a cruise ship. I am sure I am wrong, but I think now that I have this funky shit going on I get to be as picky as I want to be.
Of course what I really wanted was a Dr. House. There was a funny moment when I actually found a Dr. House in my insurance plan, but hopes were dashed when it was discovered that this particular Dr. House was an ear, nose, and throat guy.
I eventually found three doctors that looked aggressive enough and I called all three and secretly entered them into a contest. The first office that called me back won two points and the office that could see me the soonest won 500 points. No points where given for gender (usually something that gets oodles of points) and no points were given for distance (I would make the trip no matter how far). It was almost a two way tie, but the doctor that was able to see me on Monday morning won the game.
There is a giant part of me that is still in massive denial. I have entertained the following fantasy 6 million times: I go to the doctor’s office, they perform a series of tests, and it is ultimately realized that I do not have hep C, the lab in the northeast fucked up big time, and then Julia Sugarbaker opens up a can of whoop ass on the lab and they give us tons of money and then I set up a foundation and buy IVF’s for everyone.
I need to start realizing that I do have this. And I may never know how or why. But that just sucks ass. I want to BLAME someone or something. I want to have a specific thing upon which to unfurl my anger and rage. I am ready to be furious. I am seriously sitting on some major furious.
Now I am in some sort of trance. I have been sleeping and then waking and then roaming and then sleeping. And my gut hurts. And every time I go to the bathroom I see evidence of how many eggs I have. And I mourn them. Is that weird? I mean I have always been sad around ovulation when I know that nothing is going to happen. But here I am, ripe, with around 20 eggs, and there is not a damn fucking thing I can do about it. It is filling me with a sadnesss that is so deep that I worry that it might drown me.
bad
It’s positive.
I’m out.
I’ll be trying to figure out a way to get all of the donations back to everyone.
I just can not fucking believe this.
No News Yet
I am really shit at waiting and the unknown and not being in control. So I am guessing you can imagine the specific kind of hell that I am in right now.
I went to the clinic early hoping that someone in the donor wing would have results for me. No one was there except the woman that deals with the recipients, a woman that up until this morning I had never interacted with. But still she was fully capable of handing me wads of tissue and letting me cry in her office.
In all of this drama I have yet to encounter an asshole, and for that I am truly grateful. Sometimes you aren’t so lucky to be asshole free. We spoke about the almost recipient and I asked her to please pass on my apologies. It is almost easier for me to be concerned about her than myself right now. It gets me out of my head and focusing on the sorrow of another person. I can do that, I can empathize like crazy, but I really suck at being concerned for myself. I am last on the list. (I am also not so secretly in denial that anything can possibly be wrong with me.)
So the wonderful recipient coordinator made some calls and saw that my results were not yet posted. Off I went, across the quad, to the bloodwork room and then to the lobby to wait for the ultrasound.
By the way, the closer I get to my (possible) retrieval the more swank the ultrasound rooms get. It’s like graduating up a notch with each wanding. Today I felt like I was in the poshest ultrasound room ever. And there is sadness as the tech counts the follicles and I still find myself reflexively dividing the count by two.
After the wanding I went back to the donor offices and the two coordinators that have been with me the longest came over and gave me hugs and and expressed their upsettedness over all that has happened. But still no answers. It seems that my blood did not make some sort of noon cut off time and that I should be in the afternoon postings.
But I am sucking at the waiting. My skin is about to peel off and my gut will not stop churning. I am frozen.
The IVP’s IVF
For those of you that may not know, the IVP is the Internet Vagina Posse. It is a silly little sobriquet that I created in order to celebrate the power of our community in this little corner of the blogosphere. As a collective IVP we have all been there for celebrations and for times of mourning. We are especially powerful when asses need to be kicked or fists need to be shaken into the sky. We are a mighty force of women warriers that never leave a fellow fighter behind.
And maybe that is my comic book vision of us, but it is so fucking true. I feel like if I said that I was surprised by all of your support that you might bitch slap me and explain, “fool! What did you expect?!” But honestly, it is overwhelming. I feel like the forces of the universe ran me down yesterday morning with one phone call. And within hours you all had me scraped up, triaged, treated, and were feeding me soup.
There is some news. The financial people at the clinic have called me and offered me a very, very discounted rate to continue with treatment. It isn’t cheap, but with all of the help from you guys and my Mother it will be possible. So IF the test comes back negative then I will be able to afford to have retrieval and transfer.
I can not begin to tell you what a massive relief it is to know that IF I am all clear that I can push on. This will be the IVF that the IVP built. You all will become internet aunts to whatever is able to be created. You all are making my most precious dream happen. YOU.
I will never be able to thank you enough. For those of you that blogged on my behalf and sent readers and contributions my way, you healed me with your words and deeds- thank you. For those of you that don’t even know me and still were compelled to help- thank you.
Now all I can do is try to remain calm and pray that tomorrow will be a better day.
update from clinic
There is still so much up in the air, but it says a lot about this clinic that the donor coordinators are still trying to hold my hand. I just got a call from one of them who really went to bat for me. She has convinced my RE to allow me to continue stimming until we get my results back. And she has worked some kind of magic to get the results of the retest by wednesday morning.
If the results are positive then I will have to discontinue the stims and seek immediate treatment for hep C. If it is negative then I can proceed with the IVF and have a retrieval on Saturday.
We are still waiting to hear back from the clinic as far as how much a continued IVF will cost me. The clinic does not do financing so it will all just depend on how much of a discount/deal they can offer me. The coordinator, who we adore, basically told me that if I am negative she will move a mountain to make it happen for me.
I then asked how the potential recipient was doing, completely choking on the words. I was told that she was upset but more concerned about my health. Hearing that just made me so much sadder as I can see how well we would have been matched.
I am overwhelmed by the generosity of you guys. It is breathtaking to be this embraced. I am not bullshitting here, you guys are completely saving me. I feel like this is now everyone’s IVF, everyone is now a part of it.
Let’s just hope like fucking crazy that wednesday’s test is indeed negative.
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