Insanity

I had a fun weekend. My husband and I went to a BBQ/party on the other side of the state where he played beer pong for the first time in his life. I don't know how he got through college not playing it. I think it might be because he was more into shots of whiskey than drinking beer and also figured what's the point of drinking games when he was just going to drink whatever it was anyway.

I played horseshoes for the first time in years. My husband's buddy was on my team and we played against two of the buddy's friends. I scored all 21 points to their 5 points. It was pretty cool.

I fully realize that I'm not in college anymore and I'm in fact now 31 years old. But we stayed up until 2am and I really should have gotten in a nap yesterday. Good thing there's caffeine.

My period started on Saturday. I never use to be so regular, but like clockwork 28 days post latest miscarriage.

My local OBGYN is has me in a communications blackout but my RE in Boston emailed me about PAI 1, apparently it doesn't matter if I have it or not because I would take the lovenox anyway because of APS. So we have nothing new to go by for this month. Just do the same thing I did last month even though that didn't work out.

Einstein states: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Results

I heard from my doctor's office. He isn't in today, so I got the call from the craptastic nurse or whatever that I can't stand. I must reiterate that she should not be allowed to have contact with patients like me (the babylost).

The biopsy came back "benign". That means there's nothing wrong with me that they've found yet. So why the fuck is this happening OVER AND OVER AGAIN??

Sorry about that.

I'm so frustrated with my body. I don't consider this good news. It's just another opportunity for invalidation because apparently there are no answers.

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My therapist emailed me earlier today about something called PAI 1. He sent me a link to a medical blog or something:

http://www.healthline.com/blogs/pregnancy_childbirth/2007/09/pai-1-polymorphisms-and-recurrent.html

This is the original post that received all the comments from the woman with recurrent pregnancy loss:

http://www.healthline.com/blogs/pregnancy_childbirth/2007/04/recurrent-early-pregnancy-loss-7.html

And a subsequent post following up on the first link:

http://www.healthline.com/blogs/pregnancy_childbirth/2007/10/plasminogen-activator-inhibitor-1-pai-1.html

I don't know if I've been tested for that or not.

I'll have to wait until at least Monday to hear from my doctor to find out what this all means and what to do next.

Should I even bother anymore?

The Good That Will Come

My doctor responded to my email:

Hi Shannon—

I was serious about what I said in the office. The road to medicine is best paved with meaningful life experiences—those are what make doctors more than just number/data crunchers. You’ve been through a lot, and your first-hand experiences would add something to your ability to care for patients that getting a 4.0 at RPI never could, and I think that admissions committees for medical schools know that. That’s not to say that you don’t have to work hard and master unbelievable amounts of material in order to get through medical school—but you take it one day at a time and just do it. It’s obviously not a decision to make on the spur of the moment, but none of the challenges of getting into and finishing medical school are insurmountable or there wouldn’t be any doctors. It’s also not all a bed of roses when you’re done—it’s a lifetime of hard work and demands, but many, many women do it and have families at the same time, so it’s possible, and it’s also a very rewarding career. I wouldn’t worry about the feeling faint around injuries—that’s common and basically you just get used to it.

Hang in there—the future holds good things for you.

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Even though I sent that email to him saying I thought it wasn't a great idea I've still been playing around with it in my head. The comments I got helped too. :) I'm looking into my options and what I would need to do so we'll see where this leads me. (I need to sing the "Confidence" song from "The Sound of Music"!)

Last night when I was getting ready to go to sleep I was talking to my husband about all this stuff and a scene from a movie popped into my head. It's sort of a stretch to apply it to my situation but I thought it was interesting. It's from the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" staring Diane Lane. Just for some background (bear with me, I'm going from memory) she's an author who finds out her husband has been cheating on her, she gets divorced and then friends put her on a bus tour of Tuscany, while she's there she buys a house and starts fixing it up. She meets this eccentric (English speaking) woman there and in one scene this crazy lady gives her some advice about meeting a man (since she hadn't been with anyone since her divorce). She said "when I was a little girl I use to run in the fields to try to catch ladybugs and I never could catch any so I would lie down in the grass and fall asleep. When I woke up I was covered in ladybugs." Of course the author woman had no idea what she was talking about so the crazy lady yells at her "just go write your book and forget about it!" (Forget about getting laid, that is.) So of course later she finds this hot Italian guy and they make passionate love and the author woman is glad she's still "got it". She finds the crazy lady in a piazza eating ice cream with a table full of nuns and says to her "lots and lots of ladybugs" then walks off with a big smile.

Applying that to me, I've been so focused on monthly cycles and tracking symptoms and I haven't had anything to focus on or put my energy toward aside from baby making (I use to be involved in lots of church stuff and diabetes fund-raising walks). Not that I think med school would be an easy distraction, but I feel like I've been putting a lot of stuff on hold waiting for a baby to pop out of me. My husband's always said I should work as if I would never go on maternity leave. Unfortunately (fortunately?) engineering doesn't seem the place for me to do that. I've been thinking for a while what else I could do and school was always an option but now I think I'm at a place where I can act like I have all the time in the world to pursue a new path. Not that I'm giving up on having a baby. But I can't stand still anymore or like Heather said in her comment "tread water". And if I do get pregnant and it sticks and a baby comes along 9 months later I can reevaluate at that time. But right now it's time for a fresh start.

Lots of people say "things happen for a reason" and I like to think about different crossroads in my life and how things could be so different if I hadn't made the choices I've made. So while I think it's great that I started working at my current job because otherwise I would never have met my husband, I might not have ever gone into engineering if it wasn't for my cheating high school boyfriend. So even though it sucked that he cheated and we broke up, down the line something good came of it. So like I said yesterday to my therapist maybe this is the good that will come of Isabella's death.

I think that would be an amazing tribute to her.

Waiting for Answers

It's been a rough week or so. I had my biopsy on Saturday. Margaret was right, that was horrible. I didn't think it would be so painful but it was. The 4 Advil I took an hour before might as well have been M&M's. After it was over, for the walk to the car and drive home (my husband drove) I was ok, but once at home I was cramping and having weird pains no matter what I did, how I positioned myself or moved or even if I just lay still. Saturday turned out to be a super nice day out and I spent it on my back. I felt like it was a big waste of sunshine. I should be getting the results in the next day or so. As crappy as it would be to have something wrong and have to take insane amounts of antibiotics, I think it would be even crappier if nothing was wrong because then I would have no answers, no reason for all my miscarriages. And then where would that leave me?

It was strange being at the doctor's office on a Saturday. The place was empty. Just my doctor, a receptionist and a nurse (who has to watch everything going on down there, thanks for that). The woman who had her appointment before me didn't appear to be pregnant and as she left I was nice enough to inform her that her zipper was down, so she was happy that she didn't go about her day like that. I had the usual stuff done also while I was there and oddly enough my doctor had quite the conversation with me while he went through the motions. It was a little awkward but I tried to not think about what his hands were doing and just focused on the conversation. He's known for sometime that I haven't been enjoying my job and asked if that was still the case. Umm, yup. So he suggested that I go back to school and become an OBGYN. All I need to take are 4 classes (biology, organic chemistry, ...) to apply and then it's 4 years of school, and 4 years of residency. Easy, right? I'd be 40 by the time I'm done. I don't know if I'm flattered that he suggested it, or think he was just joking with me. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it since the appointment and I emailed him last night about it:

"I've been thinking a lot about what you said about going back to school to be an OBGYN. Part of me is really interested, but then the other part of me (the practical side) thinks it's a bad idea. Considering I want to have kids and be able to spend time with them, being in school and working crazy hours doesn't seem like the way to do that. It may be impressive to a lot of people that I have a degree in electrical engineering from RPI, but I didn't have a great GPA. It was a 2.4, and I think that one of the big reasons why I got into RPI and later got a job was because I'm female. Overall I think I'm a pretty lazy person, but that could just be because the last 3 years have really beat me down. If things had gone as planned I would have a daughter (Isabella) who would be almost 2 years old now. Maybe she would have a sibling already or on the way. Instead I've been pregnant about 7 times and my whole world has been turned upside down. I converted to Catholicism before (my husband) and I got married 5 years ago, now I don't think I should be Catholic anymore. I can't stand my in-laws, especially my mother-in-law who doesn't have an empathetic bone in her body. Aside from all that I've nearly passed out several times from seeing injuries or being injured and did pass out twice. There's also the small problem that there aren't any medical school around here, so I would either have to commute or move, and I still have $43,000 in student loans from RPI.

"So aside from my own personal experience being pregnant and being female in general, it seems pretty far fetched. I partially wonder how serious you were when you suggested it. I don't expect you to try to sell me on this, I just wanted you to know that I thought about what you said and appreciated that you thought it might be something good for me to do. Unfortunately I feel like I'm so unhappy with everything in my life that I can't make any decisions so I just stay stuck. And sometimes with the way things are going with my husband I wonder if we should even bother having kids or even stay married at all."

He hasn't responded yet, but he's not the quickest with email. At the appointment he was using a new electronic records tablet computer and said that he has such a hard time with it he's at work until 3am filling in charts. So I'm sure emails to his crazy patient fall low in priority. Besides, he's not a therapist.

So my husband decided we needed to have a long talk last night. He wants to decide what we're going to do with regard to the impending test results. If they come back normal or not. He thinks that if they're normal that we should still keep trying although he worries about me going through further disappointments. If they come back saying I have an infection/inflammation, then I would take the antibiotics, next month would be out, and we'd get back on the horse the next cycle. It's that easy. You just make a plan and then follow through with it. What could go wrong? Oh wait... never mind.

Later my mom called, she just got back from a trip out west the day before so we chatted for a little bit. She asked me how I was doing and I'm sure the tone of my voice when I said "fine" told her that I wasn't really fine. So I told her what was going on and about the biopsy and she asked the same old questions and said the same old things: "why are you testing so early", "have you gotten a second opinion on this blood clotting stuff?" "I think you're too stressed out", "just relax and it will happen". It makes me wonder why I even bother. Back in May when I made the video for Isabella and Sean she sent me an email saying I need to get over it and move on and that I was too obsessed. So I stopped talking to her about it. That crap doesn't help. I told her last night that I've been getting weekly massages, and I've been doing yoga, I've been trying to relax. Apparently that doesn't help either.

I thought I did everything right last month. Clomid and ovulation strips. Prometrium 3 days after LH surge, all kinds of sex, home pregnancy test on day 30, positive, again on day 33, still positive, but not darker, blood test - 19, repeated blood test on day 36 dropped to 4. So much for doing everything "right".

I'm so frustrated right now. I'm so frustrated with life.

Other People

All alone again. My husband went away for a guys' weekend. He left Thursday afternoon and came back late Sunday afternoon. He left again this morning, this time for work. He'll be back Thursday evening.

I don't mind really. It's nice to have the house to myself.

My biopsy is scheduled for Saturday. It's a little odd to have a Saturday appointment but my doctor said he would be out on Friday so I could do it either Thursday or Saturday. I chose Saturday so I wouldn't have to take time off from work. I'm waiting to hear back if I can get my yearly stuff done at the same time. I've been avoiding going to the office and cancelled my appointment I had scheduled back in February so I wouldn't have to sit in that waiting room with the pregnant women and huge bellies. I hope the waiting room on Saturday will be big-belly free.

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how last year this time I was not going to work and was being medicated for depression. I don't think the meds helped at all. I've been feeling so miserable lately it's like I'm in the same place I was last year. Truthfully, I've discussed this with my therapist and feel like I didn't really need to be on short term disability for depression and not working for nearly 2 months. That may be the case, but I think it really opened my husband's eyes to the pain I was (still am) in. I sort of feel like I'm on the verge of another break down. It's all hinging on this biopsy. I might just flip out if they can't find anything wrong. I have to believe with every ounce of my being that there has to be something abnormal going on with my body (aside from APS). Especially after this last loss (Septimus - my 7th pregnancy) when I thought I had done everything right.

Parts of me still can't believe this is my life. This shit happens to "other people". But to other people I'm one of those "other people".

Pancakes

Regarding the grieving father, he said to me "at least I had 11 years with the most wonderful daughter a father could ask for". I thought to myself it sucks that it was only 11 years. I told my therapist about this and he said "do you think that he would have rather not had his daughter at all?" Of course I don't think that he would have rather not have had his daughter for those 11 years, just that there should have been so many more years from here on out. I've read and heard of many women/couples say that they are glad they had those few hours with their still born baby or the few hours before their baby died in their arms. But for me I had none of that and on top of it a lot of invalidation for my feelings so a part of me can wish that I was never pregnant those times to have those losses because in the end I really had nothing. I never felt Isabella move, I never held her, I never got to see what she looked like, if she would have looked like me or like my husband. And I lost my idyllic perception of my husband's family due to their insensitivity to these losses. The poems I've written (Isabella, Each Day) have multiple meanings as poems like to do. Obviously I can't recapture my innocence, I can't bring Isabella back to life, but I also can't recapture how I use to feel about my husband's family. That has been changed forever. And of course I made a point of referring to myself as Isabella's mother in her poem since my husband's parents made such a point of denying me that title.

A "normal" grieving process supposedly takes a year. I don't think a year of grieving will cover it when your child dies. As long as you live you will constantly be reminded that they aren't there with you, birthdays, holidays, and all the milestones that they should have reached, first day at school, graduations, their wedding day. Your future is irrevocably changed, the road has split to a cruel alternate reality, a living nightmare.

I really wish none of this had ever happened. And when I think that it makes me even more sad that it did. And then I wish I was dead so I wouldn't have to feel this way anymore.

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"Realize that the answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes."
Dustin Hoffman as Dr. Jules Hilbert in "Stranger Than Fiction"

Injustice

I'm in a serious funk today. I stayed up too late last night talking on the phone with a friend about all my pregnancy issues and then didn't sleep well and had to get up too early. I'll have to make sure I go home and go straight to bed after my massage tonight. I think looking forward to that is the only thing getting me through this day.

A month ago I posted a comment to a post Carol wrote. I mentioned about a memorial service for an 11 year old girl who died. Yesterday I decided to email her father because I saw something in Dear Annie about Compassionate Friends and wanted to let him know about it if he hadn't heard about that support group. I said that I went to a meeting last year, but felt out of place because the people there had older children who had died (children who were generally 5 years old or older, I think there were a few who died in their 20's). I mentioned about my losses and specifically about Isabella and Sean, but mostly just wanted to tell him I had been thinking about him and his daughter a lot and offered an ear if he needed it.

I got a response back and have emailed a bit back and forth today. I'm feeling so sad and I don't know if it's because of our email conversation or something else or weird hormones but I feel really down in the dumps today.

I guess I'm just railing against the injustice of it all. How can the sun shine and the sky be so blue and yet so many babies and children die.

I wish I could bring them back.

Birthdays and Biopsies

Friday was my husband's 30th birthday. We threw a big party and had 18 people (including us) come and it was a lot of fun. It wasn't a surprise because my husband doesn't like surprises and it made it easy for me because I could just ask him what kind of stuff he wanted and where it should be, etc. The most interesting part of the party was the crazy cross section of our lives in attendance. We had a college buddy of my husband's and his wife, two co-workers and their wives, our next door neighbors who are elderly, his grandparents and parents, my mom and her husband, and my sister and her boyfriend. (His spoiled brat sister who says family comes first was too busy to come, but I'm glad because I think she's annoying.) Everyone had heard and seen pictures of everyone else but it was the first time most of them met so it was cool. I was really glad when it was over because I was stressing out a bit and running around crazy most of Friday before the party. Saturday everyone left by noon and then I crashed and took a 3-4 hour nap. I was exhausted.

Now that that is over I'm thinking about this biospy I'm going to have done of my uterus. It's suppose to be scheduled for next Friday, the 24th. I'm getting a little nervous about it and wondering what it will be like. If it's like the HSG then that's not too bad. I can deal with that. I have no idea what the results will be, but I can't help but hope they find something, anything to explain why this keeps happening. Why I can't stay pregnant longer than a week anymore. After Isabella died I use to think "if I can just make it to 20 weeks, then I'll be ok", then Sean was miscarried at 9 weeks. Then I had miscarriage after miscarriage and now I wish I could just get to that ultrasound at 6-7 weeks where you see and hear the heartbeat. Hell, I wish I could do a second pregnancy test and see a darker line rather than a lighter one than the previous test.

The passage of time really sucks. We've been trying to get pregnant for almost 3 years now. I wish I could fast forward to being 25 weeks pregnant, but who knows when that will be, for all I know it could be years from now.

That's what scares the shit out of me.

In Real Life

I've been getting friendly with the fiancée of a friend of my husband's from his home town in PA. It's a bummer that she's far away, but we've been emailing back and forth a bunch and it's been really nice to get to know her better. She's a very good influence on my husband's friend, so it makes hanging out with him better than how he use to be.

So a few weeks ago we were in PA for my husband's sister's bridal shower and Friday night we got together with Alice and Craig and also another guy from my husband's childhood and his wife, Peter and Jane. (These are fake names by the way, but it's easier for referencing.) We went to a local bar for some drinks and munchies and at one point in the night, the guys decided to play some songs on the jukebox, and while they were up there Jane asked me if we were still trying to have kids. I sort of shrugged, nodded and said "yeah". It was so out of the blue and I always feel so caught off guard when people bring up pregnancy and babies. So that was it and we either talked about other stuff or the guys came back to the table. (Just for some back story on Jane, I've never gotten good vibes from her, although Peter is really nice. I don't know what I ever did to her, but she always seems really pissy and isn't very friendly.)

So yesterday Alice emailed me and said there was something she has been wondering about and asked if she heard right, that Jane asked if we were trying to have kids. And that if she did ask that it was really insensitive of her.

This is what I emailed back to her:

Jane asked if we were *still* trying to have kids. I don't know if Craig ever knew, but Peter and Jane did, I was pregnant a little over 2 years ago and she ended up dying. It's a long story which I can tell you more about later, but I got to 19 weeks so a lot of people knew I was pregnant. Her name is Isabella, she died in May 2007. I got pregnant again last year, but had a miscarriage at 9 weeks (April 2008), it was a boy and we (I) named him Sean. I don't think Jane or too many other people knew about that pregnancy. And not too many people know that I have been pregnant 5 times since then. I've had tons of tests done and I'm due to have another in a couple more weeks. I hope we finally get some answers. These last 5 are considered "chemical pregnancies" where if you didn't test you would think you were just having a late period. And while my mom and sister have admonished me for testing "early", I really have no choice. I learned after Isabella died that the reason why is because I have a blood clotting problem, so I have to find out as soon as possible (plus I really want to know!) so that I can take blood thinner injections (lovenox). Besides, testing on day 28 is not testing early. I don't know if you've looked at my Facebook stuff very much, but I posted a video that I put together of ultrasound pictures and other things from Isabella and Sean's short lives. My not so happy status posts of late is because I was pregnant last week and then found out the same thing was happening all over again. So I'm currently having a miscarriage, although it seems like a normal (but late) period, I know it's not.

So I can really relate to your feelings about unhealthy people, I feel that way about people who easily get pregnant and complain about being pregnant and then take their precious children for granted. I vow that when/if I ever have kids that I will never complain, not about poopy diapers, teething babies or any of it! I would love to have morning sickness, tons of stretch marks and c-section after c-section as well as being covered in drool, not knowing when my last shower was and my sole purpose in life to be a milk factory on demand day and night. That would be heaven for me.

That's probably a lot more information than you thought you would get. I feel sometimes like I want to tattoo these things across my face and shove it in everyone else's face, but I know that's a little crazy. As sad as this all is, I'm glad you asked and that I could share Isabella and Sean with one more person. It makes me a little bit happy to know that other people know their names.

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Alice is such a nice person and I'm so glad that we're becoming friends and I could share all this with her. It's nice to have a sympathetic ear in real life.

My Uterus...

is where babies go to die.

I got a positive pregnancy test on June 27th, I did another on June 30th, about the same darkness of line (medium). I went for a blood test on the 30th - 19 mIU/ml. Repeated on July 3rd - 4 mIU/ml.

Woke up just now in a pool of blood.

Why, why, why???