Sunday, April 21, 2013

Updates!

I have heaps of things to update so I'll try to be brief.

I've been absent for quite a while due to family drama. In my post Constant Change I told you that my Grandpa was diagnosed with cancer. We did everything medically possible for him. Radiation took care of the tumor coming out of his cheek. However, the radiation caused a wound to open directly behind where the tumor had been, back behind his right ear. My Grandmother did the best she could to heal it, but it became quite clear after a while that it was never going to get better. He continued to grow weaker, stopped eating, and the wound got worse and worse. We were able to make his wish of never having to live in a nursing home come true. After a stroke late in the evening on March 30th, my beloved 93 year old Grandpa passed away at 5 in the morning, March 31st 2013.

It's been a struggle, getting used to a life without him. He was such a sweet, kind, gentle, wonderful man, and I will miss him all the rest of my days. My Grandmother is doing well, considering. He just happened to pass away on Easter Sunday, and my grandparents were married on Easter Sunday (April 5th) 1953. We buried him the day before their 60th wedding anniversary. Grandma said that Easter Sunday counted, and that it was their proper anniversary.

Anyway, the days since have been spent packing up the apartment my grandparents shared and preparing my own home for my Grandma to move in with me. It will be an adjustment for sure but I think it's the best thing for all of us.

Okay: back to TTC. It's resolve.org's Infertility Awareness Week. Since my last update, I have stopped charting my BBT because my numbers were coming out as complete non-sense and it's not going to work for me. I have started using O.P.K's and haven't had a single positive one even thought I continue to have a regular cycle.
Also,I had the worst period that I've ever had. On January 4th, my dear husband's birthday, I had started my period the day before and everything seemed normal.  I got up at my normal time for work and stood up from out of my bed. I had the sensation that I had bled out of my tampon but then it got scary. I bled and bled and bled, it went all the way down my legs, down to my feet, and kept going. I had never had anything even comparable to the amount of blood loss I was experiencing. I tried to wait it out, sat on the toilet for about 30 minuets but it wasn't stopping. I woke my husband, he didn't know what to do anymore than I did. I waited some more, I called my mom, called my best friend, they didn't know what to do either. Two more hours passed and I called my Doctor's office when they opened. I spoke to my gynecologist's nurse and she immediately suggested emergency room.

I got to the emergency room, with my husband and mother about 10 in the morning. I got my own room about 1:30.  They did lots of exams, tests, ultrasounds. The answer they gave me was that it was just a freak symptom of PCOS and they were "surprised it hadn't even happened" to me before. I felt like an idiot going to the E.R. for heavy bleeding but it really was an EXTREME, FREAKISH, CRAZY amount of blood. I did get some great news from the E.R. visit. The transvaginal ultrasound showed that my left ovary is in really good shape, especially for a woman with PCOS.

When I went back to work the next day, the word had gotten around what had happened to me. Also, my manager's wife had had her baby on the 4th, and a coworker's granddaughter had been born on the 4th. So I would get e-mails that went along the lines of "Hey, did you see how many babies were born yesterday? Aren't they the cutest? B.T.W: sorry about what happened to you yesterday, did you have a miscarriage?" 
Not cool. Absolutely, not cool.

In the middle of January, Jon finally went for a Semen Analysis. Which was exactly zero percent fun according to him.  Long story short: the nurse practitioner who was in that day had to idea how to interpret the results as they came back from the lab.  So I have a print-out from the lab and I'm going to take it with me to my next gyno-saur appointment.

So that should get us caught up now. It's CD1 of Cycle 34 (pretty sure it's 34 now). We're actively cleaning, repairing, updating our home to prepare for a home appraisal. We're going to get a new home loan before we make any drastic changes in our TTC journey.

Best Wishes

Infertility Awareness Week

According to Resolve.org this week is Infertility Awareness Week. This post will be short and sweet. I just wanted to announce that I'm going to try to come back to blogging. It's important that we all get our stories out there. There might be a woman out there right now google-ing her symptoms and looking for someone else in her shoes.