Smiling Through the Rain

I guess my week wasn't bad enough and I still had most of my dignity (score: one pelvic exam and no rectals ), so I decided to torture myself tonight by doing the most self-deprecating thing in the world: shopping for swimsuits. The fun starts when you finally find a suit worth trying on and realize that they don't have your size. I do appreciate that they sell tops and bottoms separately now (my booty is a little larger than my top) but I always find myself thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can fit my curvier half into a size small. I seem to have a slightly contorted self-image and a knack for making myself look ridiculous. After I've finally collected the best choices in mostly appropriate sizes, I head for the dressing room. I feel like they purposely installed the most unflattering lighting available for this occasion. Even though I'm usually pale when trying on swimsuits, the lighting makes it even more so and suddenly I'm a little jaundiced. Making the sit...

As everyone knows, I ovulated this month which is super exciting! I have to throw an except in here, because surprisingly I started my period on Sunday which was only 8 days post-ovulation. For those who have no idea why that's important, you should typically start about 14 days after you ovulate. It's just the way it should work. When you start too early, they call it a luteal phase defect meaning one of two things: my eggs are crappy quality and/or my progesterone is too low to support a pregnancy. We know my progesterone is always a little low, but we don't know about my eggs. I'm not even sure how we find out about that. (My guess is by doing some unpleasant and expensive test). It's incredibly frustrating because you feel like you cross one finish line just to start a whole new race. One obstacle overcome, a million more still in your way. These are the times I feel like throwing in the towel and deciding that it was never meant to be. So I called Dr. Haas thi...

Dr. Haas just called to tell me that my progesterone level was 7.5 which means I definitely ovulated on my own!!! We want it above 10 but he said it may have decreased since I ovulated about 6 days ago. And I actually ovulated from both ovaries this month which is strange since I'm not on fertility drugs right now. I guess my ovaries just got really excited and forgot to take turns. Crazy how you literally burn multiple holes through an ovary and then they decide to work. No one is certain about the whole process behind it, but I'm sure glad I decided to do it. Maybe we're actually getting somewhere. And the even better news is that I won't have to take provera (aka: "my crazy pills") this month!!! Well, I've got patients to see who think that they have problems worth hearing, so I better go! Keep the prayers coming, I think it must be working!!!

So, I had my 3 week post-op appointment with Dr. Haas today. I expected the same ol' thing as usual: "Well, you still haven't started behaving as a female should, so we're moving on to ____"). However, I did have a tiny bit of hope going into the appointment today because my temp chart had a decent temp increase over the past 5 days (aka: a good sign- I won't bore you with details). So he was excited about that, and decided to do an ultrasound to check for ovulation. He thinks I have a corpeus luteum (egg remnant) on my right ovary which means I probably ovulated on my own about 6 days ago!!! He checked my progesterone level today so I'll find out about it tomorrow. I want it to be at least 10, so we'll see. The only other time I ovulated it was only 4, so that's a poor ovulation. Let's hope for much better... Game plan from here: We see what the test says tomorrow but if I did indeed ovulate, we wait for my period to start on its own. ...

Bills, bills, bills. It's what my life has become. Sure, we had bills before- gas, electric, cable, etc. and it was always a bummer to have to spend all of your paycheck on those. But I was just dipping my feet into the pool of bills that I have now belly-flopped into. Seeing a repro doc isn't for the faint of heart when it comes to prices. Especially since a lot of insurances don't cover much if any of it. Mine covers 50% which still leaves me with a hefty portion. Well, we were managing that okay until the surgery and hospital stay. Now it's yet to be known what my insurance will decide to pay and what I will pay but let's just say that the bills for surgery and my luxury 3 day stay add up to over $17,000. Crazy!!! I know insurance will deduct a bunch, pay some, and then charge me a little (That's me hoping). I'm definitely making money off my insurance finally. One point for me... It all boils down to me not knowing how much more I can take. Financially, ...

So, having lived most of my life as a female who isn't incredibly emotional about much of anything, I'm a little confused by some recent feelings I've been having. Usually I can watch the saddest movie on the planet and make fun of it or feel annoyed by those crying around me (Ex: The Notebook). In my profession, I deal with sad things all day that I mostly handle just fine. If someone falls down, I'm more likely to laugh than to be sympathetic. But over the past couple of days, I've felt like I was on the verge of tears several times. Not sure why... I hope this isn't all leading up to me becoming this prissy, emotional, shower-loving, mary-kay selling girl. But what I am hoping is that maybe I'm having a shift in my hormones again. And that this time the estrogen is beating out the testosterone. Sure, at some point it would be awesome to grow myself a goatee and run away with the circus/fair, but right now I just want a baby. Although I LOVE the fair! I...

So I just got to go on a wonderful 2 night, 3 day excursion to St. Anthony's due to endometritis (uterine infection). I was feeling so much better on Friday morning, but as the day went on I started to feel short of breath and my stomach started hurting more. We were to check my temp several times a day and I started to run a fever around 4 p.m. which continued to get higher, so my doc wanted to do some labwork in the ER. Plus, my heart rate was around 130 which is not good when you aren't moving... Friday evenings in the ER are interesting . We had a fat man wearing only underwear roaming around, a very drunk man cursing and yelling, and an inmate who was probably the best behaved of the group. I actually considered vaccinating myself for a variety of diseases after just 10 minutes in the ER and probably still should. So, they started two IV's on me, drew lots of labwork, checked my urine (including a pregnancy test- aren't they funny?) and did a CT scan of my a...