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Our Struggle For HerOct 05 '03 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Sometimes things happen for a reason. It's hard not to dwell on them, but know that you are loved. Love of yourself will get you through most anything. I was a little bit leery of sharing this extremely personal information, but I figured I am not the only one who had to go through this type of situation. I personally had NOBODY to talk to about this stuff that had been through it. Mom was a regular fertile Myrtle. My sister wasn’t interested in having kids, then. I know there are support groups but when you drive an hour to work and an hour back and top it off with a small town that has absolutely NO resources.... things get tough. If I can a shed a light on something that hasn’t occurred to someone in this predicament, or make another person understand what it feels like, then I feel it will be worth extracting this secret from my soul for all of you. So let’s start from the beginning. Get comfortable. Let me insert here. I am not a doctor, and this is not to be substituted for medical advice. Nor do I consider myself an expert on this subject. If any of this relates to you please talk to your doctor. Email me only for questions concerning this article. This is listed here ONLY to share with others what I have experienced and learned. I have always loved kids. Knew I’d have them someday. When I married in November 1999, after being together for 3 years, we had decided to wait a year before we started trying. It was a year and a half before we both felt comfortable about the whole idea. Scared to death, but it just seemed like the next step for us. March 2001 we had our first go at it. Nothing. April, May, June, and July still nothing. I had tried the ovulation kits and the charting, but the results were always inconclusive or just erratic. I went to visit my OB/GYN. It was time for my yearly anyway. He said he didn’t see any problems and I should wait for a year before I start to speculate anything. Tell a woman who has serious baby fever and a bull-headed determination to wait?!? I think not. I found another OB/GYN in July. I wanted answers. I went to the 2nd OB/GYN and he looked at the charts I had kept and decided since my cycles were irregular that he should put me on Clomiphene Citrate (AKA Clomid), a fertility drug. The idea was being able to regulate my cycle. I would take one pill a day for 5 days starting on the 3rd day of my cycle. These pills were not covered on our insurance. Five pills of the generic brand came to about $40-$45. He did take my blood to see if I had ovulated but that was it (and no I hadn’t). That was it. That was exactly how the examination went. No internal checks, aside from the regular physical. No sonograms, or anything of that nature. I called my husband on my cell phone and told him about it. I told him it felt kind of weird that he just prescribed this drug to take. At the time we thought well, we can try and just see. This drug is not to be taken lightly. There are many side effects such as hot flashes, headache, nausea, vomiting and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) just to name a few. Look it up on webmd.com for further information. I didn’t think I needed that much help. Now you would think that I was probably at least statistically old enough to be having problems for the doctor to so calmly give me the prescription right? WRONG, I was 21. Yes, 21. To make it even better I looked about 17 or 18. I took it for one cycle. A week or two later I was having abdominal pains. They got worse. The doctor had me come in for a sonogram. The drug had caused my right ovary to hyperstimulate and caused a previously harmless cyst on my ovary to rupture. There’s really nothing they can do about this, other than to just let it take it’s coarse. When he finally told me this over the phone another week later he said, “I guess the prescription was a little strong, why don’t you come back in and we can see what we can do about this?” Ummm NO, click, dial tone. Next doctor! I thought this time no fooling around with local, small time hospitals. Nothing personal, but I wanted specialist. I went to the biggest, baddest hospital in Dallas. I found a fertility specialist in my insurance book that was also listed under the OB/GYN section. When the nurse asked me what I would be coming in for I replied fertility treatment. She said bring your husband in for the consultation. We went and met him. He sat us in an office and asked us to tell him ... well everything. I mean everything. Besides all the stuff I have mentioned, he wanted to know how often we tried, out habits, what we did for a living, entire medical history – everything. He couldn’t believe the previous doctor was so blasé about the fertility drug. He did say that he did use fertility drugs, but only as a last resort before getting into IVF and things of that nature. He gave me an exam and took my blood. Later he came back and said that my progesterone levels were extremely low and that there was countless reason why it could be like that. He suggested I try taking some progesterone pills. He explained that they were natural and that there were little to no side effects other than it might make me a little sleepy; so I should take them at night. The only reason someone would not be able to take them was if they were allergic to peanuts. Weird huh? I was to come back in a month for him to examine me and test my cervical mucus to see if I was showing signs of ovulating. ONLY if I was showing signs of ovulating would he then do a sonogram to look for an egg. About three months into this, there was only one time when an egg was ovulated. He sat me down when I was almost in tears and said these are your options. We can keep going like this and hope it works. We can have your husband checked to see if it’s a combination situation. Or he could do surgery and check out my reproductive areas visually. I had a previous abdominal surgery that left a normal appendectomy scar and a 12”X1” scar from an inch below my chest wall to my waistline and he was worried about scar tissue. We opted for getting my husband getting checked. I don’t enjoy being hacked up, conscious or not. Reluctantly we went. I mean seriously how much worse can it get for a man when he has to walk into a building and the people in the office KNOW you are about to go and satisfy yourself. That’s the thing they do in private and hope they don’t get caught. Hopefully. The result came back a little less than mediocre. He had swimmers they were just all sticking together in a clump. Why? We don’t know but my doctor said that sometime those kinds of tests that the men do take 2-3 times to get a good and accurate reading. At $150.00 a shot...no pun intended we just couldn’t afford it. Back to the drawing board. Either I continue to take pills or I have an out patient surgery. My doctor said that out of the two choices left he preferred I take the surgery option, but it was up to me. I thought I could keep taking the pills, they didn’t do any harm. On the other hand my odds haven’t been very good with pills, but if it still doesn’t work then the surgery option will still be there. I would still be paying $20.00 copay per visit and $20.00 copay on progesterone pills every month. It would rack up. I thought about the surgery and how if they did find something it would be a lot cheaper than to take all these pills. Especially if the pills never worked and I ultimately ended up having the stinkin’ surgery anyway. The thought of waking up from anesthesia made me sick. So I stuck with the pills. In October of 2001 a normal day I got myself ready for work. At about 10:00 o’clock in the morning I was itching around my lower back here and there. By lunchtime I couldn’t stop itching. I went to a doctor’s office close to work. I had never been there before but it was closer than my general doctor was. She said it was just a skin infection. Gave me some cream and I went back to work. By 3:00 PM I was feeling drained and sore all over. Maybe I was coming down with the flu or better yet pregnant. It wouldn’t explain the itching but I would have believed anything. I went home. The itching on my back was driving me crazy. I stripped when I got home and saw small red dots on my torso. Thought to myself that’s not chiken pox is it? Nah had them already. The next morning I was covered in red dots. I went to MY general doctor’s office and could only see the assistant. He said it was an allergic reaction to something. Gave me a shot of cortisone and more cream. By time my husband came home I was in a full-blown panic. The bumps were coming to a head and spreading down my tongue and throat. Furthermore my joints were so stiff I couldn’t move without being in pain. By 7:00 that night I decided I needed to go to the hospital. I went to the Emergency Room and they had several doctors around me with books open. I had them so bad none of the other doctors were sure if it was chicken pox or something else. Yes, they were that bad. The ‘Elder’ doctor as I like to call him came in and sniffed me. He replied to the other doctors. “She has Chicken Pox.” Then left the room. Apparently chicken pox has a smell to it, and once I was starting to heal I could smell it. It has a stink all it’s own. My initial nurse and doctor promptly began treatment. Lucky for me I wasn’t pregnant. Adults, babies in utero and kids under the age of two can DIE from the chicken pox. I am sure it wasn’t luck that I wasn’t pregnant. After that we took a break and I stayed home recovering for more than a month. I had to quit because the job I was at needed to have the position filled. I had been there for less than a year so I really didn’t have any job security. I did consult a lawyer to make sure. Family/Medical Leave Act can only be used if you have been at a job for a year. After a full recovery we both had a renewed spirit about the whole pregnancy thing. After all, no wonder I didn’t get pregnant, it just wasn’t time. Divine intervention had stepped in and made sure that I didn’t get pregnant because I was going to get chicken pox. Made sense to us. Maybe I was supposed to stay home. Maybe everything was really working the way it was supposed to just not the way we wanted it to. By December we had started trying again and were on the progesterone pills again. After another 5 months of not ovulating we were getting desperate. Why us? We were good, honest people. We would have days when the subject would come up and we would both just hold each other crying. I brought up the “What if I never get pregnant” discussion. He would tell me “Then we just won’t have kids or maybe we could adopt”. Outside I accepted what he said and acted like I believed him. Inside I didn’t believe him. I asked myself what would I do in the same situation as my hubby. The answer is not the same as what he gave me. Talk about secret guilt and shame, shame, shame. The weird thing was, I wasn’t against adoption. I researched it a bit, but I just wasn’t ready to give up yet. Just about every emotion swirls around in your heart and in your head when going through these type situations. Confide in someone that you know can make you feel better. My sister would let me cry and b*tch and complain. Then she would hug me and tell me it will happen when God wants it to. Then take me to lunch or buy me something like the good kind of make up or lotion that I could never afford. Not that she was buying me off, but you know ..... don’t make me explain we’ll be here for hours. We would talk of other things and before I knew it I felt like a regular person again, not a defected outcast. One time my sister was out of pocket and I needed to talk to a female. I called on a fair weather friend for support. She, being a mother of one and pregnant with number two at the time said “I know exactly how you feel, when I didn’t get pregnant in the first two months of trying I panicked too.” I could only respond with silence and had never been so appalled in all my life. My chest felt hollow, like it was filled with air. There was a long silence. She asked me “What?” I said “Are you f’ing kidding me?” The phone line fell silent and for the first time in years I felt mad enough to physically hit someone. Repeatedly. I finally said “I gotta go” and she stuttered, “OK” in confusion. This woman was not raised to count on herself but to count on a man, and or lack of better words, was ignorant and very self absorbed. I do not say that because of this situation, but because this is truly her personality. We all know someone like that. She was not so much a friend, as she was a wife of one of my hubby’s friends. My mistake to confide in her, but she was the only one I could think of at the time. My husband came home to find me fit to be tied. He did comfort me and made fun of the other woman. Right or wrong he made me laugh and let me cry. It had been a year and two months since we had started trying. I was tired. I wanted to give up. I didn’t want to take any more pills. Not even Tylenol. Before I decided on surgery he had me go have a test done where a radiologist shoots a type of medical ink or into the uterus and then takes a picture to check for blockages. The radiologist said that the dye didn’t seem to be going past the cervix very well. I though OK what does that mean? My doctor explained that this could be the very reason surgery was needed. He feared it was the scar tissue causing the blockage from my previous surgeries. You may be asking what could the surgery do to help me ovulate? The answer is nothing, but if there were blockages, then ovulating would be useless. Clear the path then get things working. In May of 2002 I opted for the surgery. Yes he was qualified – He actually taught this surgery 2-3 times a week at the college affiliated with the hospital. Remember this doctor was not JUST an OB/GYN, he was also a fertility specialist. It was supposed to take an hour. It ended up taking two hours. The surgery consisted of cutting a few pencil size holes into my abdomen to allow for a camera and a laser. The camera to see obviously, and the laser to melt away unwanted scar tissue. There ended up being four holes. One extra because the original entrance was to thick with scar tissue, and I’m not quite sure why there was a fourth one, it was a while ago. I have so many battle wounds it’s just silly. He did tell me I just don’t remember. When I woke up the first thing I asked was “Did you find anything?” My doctor explained that from my previous abdominal surgery there was so much scar tissue that even if an egg was released it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Nor would hardly any sperm make it through the cervix. Scar tissue was inside and outside of everything. My cervix was almost completely closed due to the scar tissue. The scar tissue spreads like cobwebs, making it very difficult for anything to pass through. He assured me that he got everything he could lasered out and the dye test he performed at the end of surgery was successful. I hugged him and cried. He patted me on my leg and left. I went home and recovered. FYI – I would have gone through this surgery 20 times before I went through chicken pox once more. Renewed with hope again I started to take the progesterone pills. I started working again. Didn’t seem right to stay home for no reason. I got a job at a local grocery store. I knew the manager and he agreed to let me have off whatever days I needed for doctor appointments as long as I gave plenty of notice and there was someone else available to work. Still no luck. I started thinking about adoption. When I researched it – I was amazed at how expensive and extensive the whole procedure was. So much money, lawyers, fees. Forget it. Two months later in August 2002, I decided to let go of my hopes. I wasn’t going to take anymore pills. I wasn’t going to go to the doctor. I was just going to accept that it wasn’t going to happen to me. It was almost a relief, still I was sad but no longer upset. Acceptance. No more fighting. Just moving on. Besides I was working and talking to all of the customers, it’s a small town, and was starting to enjoy life again. I figured just let it all go. It was just no use. Then I was late. I reluctantly went out and bought a pregnancy test. We decided to wait until Friday just to be sure, it gave us a couple of more days to be sure. Nothing was more frustrating than starting WHILE taking the pregnancy test. So on August 23 2002 I took the test after we had gone out to eat. There was a faint 2nd line. It was an Answer test. They are cheap, so I thought well maybe, but I’m not sure. I called my husband into the bathroom. I ask him what he thought. He said, “I don’t know it is awfully faint.” We were both in such shock that I guess it was just too hard to believe. The rest of the evening was spent in silence, neither one of us wanting to believe it; just in case is was false. We both had to work the next morning. He had to leave at 5am and I didn’t have to leave until 5 till 7. I got up early went to Wal-Mart and bought a Clear Blue Easy test (2 pack). Came home and did the test with the morning first trip to the bathroom, like you’re supposed to. The second blue like was brighter that the test line. I couldn’t believe it, so I took the other test too. My OB/GYN office didn’t do pregnancy test until you thought you were 6-8 weeks along. I needed a doctor to tell me for sure. I went to my general doctor’s office the following Monday. His test was positive too. I understood I had all of these ‘yeses’ pointed straight at me but it was just too hard to believe. The first or second week of September my husband and I went to the OB/GYN office. He had me lay on the table and just unbutton my pants and raise my shirt. He pushed on my belly while I was on the exam table gave me a hand up and said come on lets go to the sonogram room. You could feel the excitement in the air. Even from the doctor. The sonogram showed us I was 6 weeks along. It was still hard to believe. We knew it was true now. There was just this blankness that occurred in my head when I thought about the whole idea. Our prayers had been answered. A state of complete disbelief. Unreal really. Nine/Ten months later I gave birth to an 8lb 7 ˝ oz girl – Lillian. I am now 24 and she is 5 months and 15 lbs. We have never been happier or sleepier in our lives. Coincidental that conception took place around the time I gave up and let it go? I wonder. For those of you still struggling with it, remember that maybe something is down your path yet that you need to experience before you get pregnant. I believe there are higher powers at work here and that they do not work around your convenience. Go to the doctor. Get checked out and you must feel comfortable with the doctor. Most of all I hope you have a marriage that has the strength to outlast this process. It is very consuming in every physical and emotional way possible. If you make it through, the bond with your mate will be beyond anything you could have every imagined. Not to mention the bond you will have with your little gift from God. Regardless if you actually give birth to the child or adopt, I believe that the children pick you. You are blessed either way.  |
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