Second Interview

I made it to Utah, and just had to pop on for a minute to share some exciting news. I got a call from the school I interviewed with last Monday--they want to see me again this coming Monday!!! That means I didn't totally blow it in my last interview, and that they're seriously considering me for the position!

Once again, any and all job dust would be much appreciated!

New E-mail

It's come to my attention (thanks Statcounter) that this site has been linked at at least one baby-TTC-fertility site, and I realized that my visitors don't have any way to get ahold of me if they want to chat about infertility or my experiences. This is also now linked in my profile, but I can be reached at thissortafairytale@yahoo.com. Please feel free to e-mail me anytime, though with my trip coming up tomorrow I'll be out of touch until this weekend/early next week.

Thanks for the link, whoever added it.

Job Dust Much Appreciated!

Well, the interview went pretty well. I met with the principal, vice principal, English department head, and another English teacher. I know I did well on nine out of the ten questions they asked (though I was really nervous at first and my hands were shaking) but kind of bombed the tenth. It was about lesson planning, and in spite of all the prep I did over the weekend, I could only think of lessons I'd done with younger kids back in college.

Ick. Even now I'm kicking myself over that.

Oh well, who knows what the other candidates did or said. Maybe they all bombed even worse than I did. I forgot to ask when I'll find out about the position, but if I don't hear anything by next Monday, I'll call them.

Job Dust Please

I have an interview at 10:30 tomorrow morning at a high school for an English position. I'm sooooooooooo nervous it's not funny, and after spending all weekend preparing, I feel completely inadequate and ignorant about what teachers actually do in terms of lesson plans, curriculum development, and standardized tests. I want this job so badly I can taste it, and have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be laughed out of the interview.

In other words, this is a shameless attempt for any and all positive thoughts you can send my way.

Wish me luck!

For this photo, he smiles

J got his new car today--he's a very happy guy tonight!

Like a double punch to the gut

As if the NBC story last week wasn't bad enough, this story ran today in the Washington Post.

Now, I don't have any experience with PGD. I've never done IVF, and if we do ever do it, there are no indications that we would need to use this procedure to screen for chromosomal abnormalities. Still, it doesn't take first-hand experience to know that this article embodies everything that's wrong with how the media handles infertility and fertility treatments.

The Stirrup Queen has written an excellent analysis of the article, and I'd encourage all of my readers to go read it.

For anyone who thinks that being a stay-at-home-something isn't chock full of excitement

Exhibit A (from my backyard):



That's my spade, that's my hand, and THAT is the gi-normous MILLIPEDE that I almost stepped on. So, um, yeah. I'm never going outside again.

All Better

Well, I feel almost completely back to normal now. My follow-up appointment with the doctor isn't until next Wednesday, but we sort of already know what he's going to say. The scar tissue is gone for now, but chances are that at least some of it is going to grow back within the next 4-5 months. That means that the cycles from now until Christmas may be our best (or only) chance to get pregnant without intervention.

Naturally, I'm itching to book an RE appointment now just so we have an IUI in the works for a couple cycles down the road in case we don't get pregnant by ourselves before then. Juan wants to wait. We'll see what my current doctor recommends and make our decision from there.

Overall though, I've got a lot of hope that we won't need any further medical help. It's a pretty great feeling.

Shut Up, NBC

I've written before about how frustrating being young and infertile can be. Doctors, fellow infertiles, and the general public seem very quick to dismiss fertility concerns in someone my age because I'm under 30. I have plenty of time to get pregnant before hitting menopause, so why am I so worried?

Given this, you can imagine how incensed I am by this report on NBC Nightly News. Go on, read it. I'll wait.

Apparently women in my generation are jumping into the fertility treatments game just because we want to be pregnant RIGHT NOW. We're alarmists who don't care that procedures like IVF cost tens of thousands of dollars. Reading between the lines, we're spoiled, impatient brats who just need to chill out. Maybe we should take a vacation or just get drunk and have sex with our husbands one night!

Gah. Aside from the fact that this article is demeaning to any twenty-something woman who has a legitimate fertility concern (which, hello, the woman in this story DOES IN FACT HAVE in spite of the fact that her anovulatory cycles are buried at the very end of the segment) it completely misses the fucking point. Do doctors bear absolutely no responsibility for "unnecessary" fertility treatments? Isn't it the job of the medical professional in these situations to be the voice of reason if a patient is jumping the infertility gun too soon? What kind of ethical doctor would perform IVF on a couple who doesn't need it?

Here's the thing--yes, I do think that there are a lot of women who get worried about infertility long before they should. I have no doubt that some of them seek out fertility treatments before they're appropriate. However, the burden is on the doctors in these situations to educate these couples about why they don't need ART yet. The doctor is the one who has the experience and expertise to know when fertility treatments are and aren't appropriate. If NBC's "one in four" women (and let me tell you, I'll believe that statistic when RESOLVE backs it up) my age are inappropriately seeking infertility treatments, where are the doctors who are performing these procedures? Why aren't they being accused of acting prematurely? Why don't they have a single interview with a patient who didn't need IVF or with the doctor who performed the procedure? I'll tell you why--blaming the young, scared couple who have understably bought into the millions of dollars worth of advertising hype that reproductive endocrinology clinics and fertility centers pay for every year is easier. It's more convenient. Blame the kids who have too much money and not enough patience.

I'm writing a letter to NBC. There is absolutely a story here, but it's not the one they've chosen to report.

***EDITED TO ADD*** So, I wrote an e-mail to the reporter who wrote this story, and she responded very quickly. I won't copy and paste the e-mail, but in a nutshell, she agreed that there's a story to be told about the doctors who are performing these unnecessary fertility treatments. Soooo... Okay then. I'm still not happy about tonight's story, but I'm encouraged that the person who was responsible for reporting it is willing to take constructive criticism and might be interested in doing a follow-up piece.

Some thoughts on where we go from here

Well, here we are. Scar tissue is gone. Spotting problem is solved. All of the pieces in our infertility puzzle seem to be coming together really quickly. To be honest, I'm still pinching myself occasionally. I still have trouble believing that I no longer have unexplained infertility. Still have trouble processing the fact that we're essentially starting this cycle with a blank slate. The last 17 cycles don't really count anymore because we know that my eggs weren't even reaching the fallopian tubes so there wasn't even a snowball's chance in hell of getting pregnant.

I'd be lying if I said that this hasn't thrown me for a bit of a loop.

Obviously, we're not going to go to the RE next month. Sure, we could spend money on IUIs, but why? Why go through more painful (and pricey) medical procedures when they're not needed? It doesn't make any sense.

For now we're going to keep trying and assume that our fertility problems have been solved. I'm not ready to declare myself fertile, but I'm not sure about whether or not I can (or should) identify myself as infertile anymore. It's an issue I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about over the next few weeks and months. Where do I go from here emotionally? How do I reconcile the hell of the last year and a half with the sudden (and honestly unexpected) news that my infertility is probably cured? I really don't know.

One day past surgery, feeling pretty good

After I posted last night, J helped me up to bed where I promptly fell asleep for almost 12 hours. It was seriously the best night's sleep I've had in months. Today has been spent mostly sitting on the couch in my PJs while my mom pampers me. She leaves for home tomorrow morning, though, and I know that I'll really miss having her around.

Physically, I feel pretty good, but I'm still very sore and a little afraid to take off my bandages tonight. I've never seen stitches on my own skin before! I can walk and bend over with very little pain, though, so I've got high hopes that I should be able to drive and do light housework before too long. From everything I've read, I should start feeling more like myself by the end of the week and be completely back to my old activity level in two weeks.

I've also received a TON of e-mails and well-wishes from friends over the last 24 hours, and I wanted to say a public THANK YOU to everyone who's reached out to me. You have no idea what it's meant to receive congratulatory e-mail after e-mail about the results of the surgery. I don't know how I would have made it through the last 17 months without all of you, and I do know that I wouldn't be feeling this great about the events of the last 24 hours if I hadn't received such an outpouring of support. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Explained

The lap went well. Really well. When they got inside, they found an enormous mass of scar tissue left over from an infection I had (and was hospitalized for) three years ago. Instead of a 25 minute procedure, it took my doctor over two hours to remove everything. He suspected that there could be some scarring when we first discussed the surgery, but from what J has told me about the report he and my mom got after the surgery was over, even the doctor was suprised at how much scarring there actually was.

When I was wheeled into recovery, still mostly asleep, I heard the doctor tell me that he had found "a ton" of scar tissue, removed it, and that we shouldn't have any problem getting pregnant now. Even though I was almost completely gorked out, I almost started crying. Now that I'm home and more awake, I still have to resist the urge to repeatedly ask Juan or my mom again if I'm just imagining this wonderful news. After pretty much resigning myself to being "unexplained", finding out that this was probably our biggest problem all along feels incredibly surreal.

I'll be recovering from the surgery for the next couple of weeks. We may or may not have to take this cycle off, depending on how I'm feeling. We'll obviously need to work up a completely new game plan for when (or if) I should make an appointment with the local RE. Since the scar tissue almost certainly prevented my eggs from even reaching my fallopian tubes during the last 17 cycles, we're effectively beginning again with a clean slate. Under the circumstances, I think it's unlikely that we'll attempt IUI or any other fertility treatment plan until we've tried on our own for at least a few months.

It's been an incredibly long day and I'm exhausted so I'll wrap this up now, but I just needed to share how well everything went today. While not finding anything would have been fine, knowing that there's an identifiable reason why we haven't gotten pregnant yet has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.

In Memory

Today is the fifth anniversary of September 11. Other bloggers will be writing far more eloquently than I can about what this day means, what happened to them on September 11, 2001, and where our country is heading. All I can say is that I'm thinking about those who lost their lives and their families today.

Lap tomorrow

I have to be at the hospital at 6:00 in the morning (blech) but it's anyone's guess as to when surgery will start since I'm the second procedure of the day. If everything looks good, it should only take the surgeon 20-25 minutes to finish everything. If there are problems, it could take a lot longer. I'm really not sure exactly what I'm hoping for, so for now I'm just going to wait and see what my doctor finds.

Cycle 17

Well, I tested. Negative. I expect to start cycle 18 later today or tomorrow.

I'm suprised at how not-upset I am about this. Sure, I'm disappointed, but I'm not heartbroken. This was a good cycle. This was the cycle when we learned that my spotting is a progesterone problem, in spite of the blood tests that have continued to come back normal. I don't understand how that's possible, but the progesterone suppositories completely stopped the spotting. This has given me more hope for the future than I've had in a long time.

As I've said many times, my fear all along has been that we would stay undiagnosed. That they wouldn't be able to find out what was causing the spotting, and that it would undermine any treatment we attempted. Now that I know that we can stop the spotting with something as simple as progesterone, I feel like we have a shot at actually getting pregnant with an IUI or IVF.

Tomorrow I go in for my pre-op appointment for Monday's laproscopy/hysteroscopy. That's our last diagnostic test in the military system. Once it's over, we're going to start seeing a civilian RE again. Assuming that it takes 4-5 weeks to get my first appointment like it did last time, we could be doing our first IUI cycle as early as October. October!

Suffice it to say that in spite of the negative test, I'm in a pretty good place right now.

It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to

I'm having a bad day. Sort of a bad week, actually. It seems like everywhere I turn, something is bothering me, and I don't know what to do about it. Some things I just have to let slide--they're out of my control anyway. Other things I *should* forget about, since trying to resolve them would probably just make things ten times worse. Nothing has a clear-cut solution, and I'm tired of feeling so conflicted.

So, for the record, I'm having a pity party tonight. Juan is on call, I'm alone with the pets, and I think I'll order a pizza and gorge on the delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I made yesterday. Drowing myself in calories won't fix anything, but it'll make me feel better just for a little while.

Okay, who are you and what did you do with my pets?

This is what's been happening in our house over the weekend. Codi and Jasper, playing together. All day long. No hissing (well, very little hissing) or growling, or anything. They LOVE each other! I really couldn't believe my eyes the first time I saw them like this, and frankly I'm still not entirely sure that this isn't all just a wonderful dream. For now, though, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy this amazing turn of events.

In other news, the ogersterone-pay is orking-way. Shhhh--don't tell anyone or you'll jinx it. I'm going to be a good girl and not test until Wednesday.

Oooh, book meme!!!

I've been tagged by the lovely and talented Megan, whose blog I read religiously (all those hits definitely aren't just from Juan!) for this fun literature meme.

You're stuck inside Farenheight 451, which book do you want to be?

This is a toughie, mostly because I don't think that I've read Farenheight 451 since junior high. I like Megan's answer about being one of the first books on the fire, so I'll steal it and move on to the next question.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Oh yes. Yes, yes yes. Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice (and, if I'm being completely honest, from Bridget Jones' Diary too) is one of my all-time favorite literature crushes.

The last book you bought was

The First Days of School by Harry K. Wong because it was recommended by a woman in my Curriculum Development class as a must-read for a new teacher.

The last book you read is

I'm in a trashy fiction phase, so the last book I read was Holding the Dream by Nora Roberts. It was a brainless read, and I loved it. Some English teacher I'll make, huh?

What are you currently reading?

I'm between books at the moment, but the next fun one on my list is Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler.

Five books you would take to a deserted island

1) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver because every time I read this book I get something new out of it.
2) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens because it's LONG and one of my all-time favorites.
3) The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde because it's just so funny and bizarre.
4) Truman by David McCullough because again, it's LONG and it took almost a year for me to read it the first time, plus it's an excellent biography.
5) Postsecret by Frank Warren because after all those thick, heavy books, a funny and thought-provoking coffee table book is exactly what I'd need.

Who are you going to pass the stick to, and why?

I'm going to tag two of my favorite readers--Kathleen and Kyt because they both love to read and have really interesting opinions about books we've read.