A Quick Note

It's been a really long time, but I thought I would post a quick note to say that yes, I'm still alive.

School is going really well, I'm almost done for this semester. Just one more final to take.

I'll be sure to post a better update in the coming days.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Not Meant To Be

It's only been 2 weeks but it seems like an eternity.

I was pregnant.

Again.

Now, I'm not.

I don't even know what to say anymore. It's so easy to pretend to be happy on Facebook. But here I can be completely honest. I don't have to hide. I don't have to pretend.

I didn't even cry. I feel dead inside.

I guess some things just aren't meant to be.

Waiting out the hours

Tomorrow is my last day at work. This week has been dragging because I have nothing to do. I would say I should just go home and be done with it, but at least I'm getting paid to do nothing so I might as well take the money while I can. My desk is all cleaned out, I just need to wait out the hours.

Today is day 27. I'm guessing that since I didn't get the LH surge until day 18 that it's still too early to test. I think I'll wait until Sunday. I hope I'm pregnant, but I hope even more that if I am that it will stick. I can't very well stand on my head so I'll just keep my fingers (and legs!) crossed.

Spirits are UP!

Monday I was all emotional and weepy after talking to my manager. I'm thinking now that it was weird hormones. We're still trying to get pregnant so as part of that regiment I've been doing the ovulation predictor kits and I got my LH surge yesterday. This just further confirms my luteal phase defect (LPD) issue. If I get the LH surge on the 18th day of my cycle that just means I'm about to ovulate in the next couple days, so say I don't ovulate until the 20th day, and then I have a pretty regular cycle 28-30 days. That's only 8-10 days for the embryo to haul cells down the tube and grab on. Actually less than that because the natural progesterone levels drop a couple days before menstruation beings. That totally spells out LPD!

Way back in the day (late summer/fall 2006) when we first started trying I did all the charting of basal body temperatures and suspected then that I had LPD. My doctor brushed it off. I somehow managed to get pregnant with Isabella anyway. Same thing with Sean, I guess it's a hit or miss situation. Although with Sean I took clomid so maybe that helped.

That's the thing with miscarriages. There are so many variables and even when it does work out and you stay pregnant you don't know if it's because of something you did to help it along or if it would have worked out anyway if you did nothing. It's so frustrating!

So anyway... LH surge yesterday, going to start taking progesterone on Friday (day 21). I had been taking the prometrium, but my RE in Boston said to go back to the suppositories - yuck. I can get on board with that though, because looking back it seemed like the prometrium didn't seem to be as effective/strong as taking the suppositories because bleeding wouldn't begin until 3 days after I stopped taking the suppositories, but it didn't matter for the prometrium.

And then I'll test around day 30. If I get a positive I'll start taking the blood thinner injections to head off the crappy APS. Who knows about PAI 1, but the blood thinners are suppose to take care of that too.

Sounds like all the bases are covered, right? Sounds like a slam dunk, right?

I bet I will get pregnant this month. I just won't bet money that it will stick.

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As for school etc, I'm getting really excited. My schedule is all set, I'm down for 3 classes. We're also going on a mini vacation to Martha's Vineyard before classes start, I can't wait! We had so much fun there last year! My spirits are already up just knowing that I'll be done working soon, on the ferry to MV and then classes shortly after. Hurray!

Two Week Notice

I gave my two week notice this past Friday. My manager was on vacation, due back today so I didn't tell anyone until I talked to her.

It's weird because I should be really happy, but I guess I'm just scared for what the future holds.

All I know is that I can't be here anymore.

School

I registered for a couple classes yesterday. Biology 1 and Chemistry 1. I'm waiting to find out if I need to take classes like English composition or statistics so I might be registering for those as well. If I can work it right all my classes will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, not that I could really laze around on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'd have to do some serious studying.

Either way I'm going to quit my job pretty soon. That will be amazing! If I don't take those other classes then I will look into getting some work or volunteering in a patient care setting to get some of the hours in that I need to apply to a physician assistant program.

By the way... I decided not to go for the full monty and go to medical school. Physician assistants are almost doctors and it takes a lot less time to get there.

In my head I'm thinking that if I do get pregnant sometime in the next school year (before I apply to a PA program) that I will still do the stay-at-home-mom thing. The local community college is pretty cheap for state residents so even after taking 2 semesters of classes it's not really that much money. Then if I had a baby I could do that for a bit and then apply the next year or reconsider the whole thing. I'm not going to count on any babies coming along though. It hasn't worked so far so there's no point in continuing to think baby plans will come through.

I'm excited and nervous about starting this new phase of my life. It will be strange to be at school and not working. I will miss some of the people I've worked with in the past and the familiarity of this place (after all I've been here for 8 years!) but it will be so good to wake up in the morning and not dread the coming day.

What would that even feel like?

It's Time

The full moon shines from behind the mountain
It rises over the trees
It marks the end of a month
It marks the beginning of a month

The wind is cool on my face
A change is coming
It marks the end of a journey
It marks the beginning of a journey

I stand at the crossroads
A new path before me
Can I take that first step?
How can I not

I say goodbye to the past
It's time.

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.