The Dog Ate My DHEA, and other stories

I feel like I've been a bad blogger lately.  I haven't been posting regularly and I'm not even really good at commenting recently.  Bear with me.  It's not that I'm in a bad place emotionally or anything, although I think we all have our good and bad days.  I just haven't felt the same urgency to vomit my emotions all over the internet now that we aren't actively cycling.  Plus there's finding the time; I can't blog from work, and when I get home there's workouts, dog walking, making dinner, cleaning up, and then hopefully some time for relaxing with mindless TV or the internet.  Some nights I'm just frankly not in the mood to spend my evening reading or writing about what's going on in my/other people's uteri.  But I love you all and I know how important the support of this community has been, so I'm definitely not going anywhere!

With that said, here's an update on my week:

First, I got my period.  It was about 4 days late, which would normally have started getting me pretty excited but for the fact that we did our FET last month so I figured my body might be a bit out of whack.  I called in my CD1 in order to get instructions for the Cadillac of all endo biopsies that I'll be doing this month, the Yale Endometrial Function Test.  They're essentially mimicking an FET cycle by putting me on Estrace for a couple of weeks, followed by some form of progesterone prior to the biopsy.  The only difference is that this time, they want me to take my Estrace vaginally.  Which, for those of you familiar with this little blue pill, is particularly lovely as it changes your cervical mucous to a psychadelic shade of blue-green.  I imagine what's happening inside my panties right now is kind of what it would look like if I'd fucked a Smurf.   

Next, I had my first pap smear in two years that did not require a colposcopy.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it's a biopsy of your cervix.  Yep, they be biopsyin' err'thing up in here!  (Note: much funnier if you say this in an Antoine Dodson-esque twang.)  For any of you on the fence about getting potential future daughters vaccinated against HPV, please allow me to voice my two cents on the issue.  I had my first abnormal pap waaaaaay back in 2005, due to an HPV infection.  At that point I had slept with a grand total of four people in my life, and had used condoms with all of them except in the later years of a 5-year long relationship with my university boyfriend.  When I found out that I had a sexually transmitted infection, I freaked.  FUH-REAKED.  I wasn't (overly) promiscuous, and yet here I was with an STI.  Worse, I had an STI that could cause cancer!  After a bunch of research I finally realized that I wasn't in fact a dirty slut and that an estimated 80% of women will at some point contract HPV.  But I still had to go to a specialist every six months for a checkup to make sure that the virus was clearing itself from my system and that the abnormal spots on my cervix weren't progressing.  It took two years, but by 2007 I was in the clear.  Or so I thought. 

In 2010 I had yet another pap come back abnormal.  Rather than having contracted yet another strain of HPV, my doctor seemed to think that I was one of the lucky 5% of women in whom the virus can reactivate over time.  (Cue frustration that I keep falling into the shitty 5% statistics instead of the good ones when it comes to IVF!)  So for the last two years, I've yet again been subjected to twice-yearly checkups and cervical biopsies, followed eventually by a Loop Electrical Excision Procedure (LEEP) to get rid of those stubborn abnormal cells.  Let me assure you, ladies, you don't want your daughters to have a LEEP.  While the procedure itself is relatively painless, the aroma of singed cervix is not one that anyone should have to experience.  And the discharge that you get as your cervix repairs itself from being burnt to a crisp?  Let's just say that it's watery and there's a LOT of it.  The biggest maxi-pads that you can find (the ones that stretch from your navel to the small of your back) will not do the job.  So I beg of you, all of you, to GET YOUR DAUGHTERS VACCINATED.  It's been researched.  It's safe.  HPV could be eradicated like polio if everyone gets on board with this, so why would you not?  The only conclusion I can make if you refuse to do so is that you love cancer.  Seriously.  Why else would you not get your daughter vaccinated against something that can cause cancer??  Because you must love cancer. 

Anyway, my pap results are still pending but my gyno didn't find any abnormal spots to biopsy (and this man loves cutting, so if there was something to biopsy he would have been a-snipping!) so I'm tentatively in the clear.  

Finally, as my post title indicates, Buddy got into my drugs this weekend.  Since we got him we've been baby-gating him into the kitchen when we leave the house.  It gives him more room than crating him, but there's nothing he can get at to be destructive.  But last week we started experimenting with giving him more freedom when we're out of the house, and it had been going well so far.  Mostly he just went upstairs onto our bed and napped.  Tonight, however, we apparently pushed it by leaving him alone as we went to M's parents' house for Mother's Day dinner.  Given his...er...vehement reaction to the car ride last time we took him there, we thought we were being kind by leaving him home.  But apparently he didn't agree, since we came home to a chewed up Blu-Ray disc and bottle of DHEA on the front mat when we opened the door.  It seems like he mostly just chewed the bottle until the top popped off, because when I put the capsules back inside it didn't look like much (if any) was gone.  Of course I can't be sure, so when in doubt...Google it!  Turns out that no matter what you do, some other idiot out there has done it first.  Dr. Google, Pet MD assures me that a couple of capsules of DHEA is not harmful to Buddy, although I'll be sure to keep an eye on him for acne and increased body hair.  Obviously not nearly as bad, but reminded me of this:

Everyone loves a good poop story

Have you guys ever been around a group of new parents telling baby poop stories?  You know the kind.  There's the one where new dad opens his first really gross diaper and almost vomits while mom laughs.  There's the one about baby getting his hands into his own poop during a diaper change and smearing it all over himself.  And then there's my personal favourite, the "poop blowout", where baby poops so vociferiously that it simply cannot be contained by the diaper, shooting simultaneously up baby's back and down baby's legs so that the feet of her onesie are sagging.

New parents love this shit (pardon the pun).  I can't say I've ever been sorry not to have been able to participate.  But now, even though I remain babyless, I also have a poop story to tell.

As our anniversary gift, M's parents got us tickets to see a show at the Stratford Festival, which is a large theatre festival that runs all summer in the picturesque town of Stratford, a few hours west of Toronto.  Stratford is also now famous as the hometown of Justin Bieber, but we won't hold that against it.  M and I decided to make a weekend getaway of it and booked a hotel room to spend the night in Stratford.  M's folks volunteered to dog-sit so we dropped our friend Buddy the beagle off with them and their hyper-energetic Airedale Terrier on our way.

What we discovered about five minutes after leaving the house is that Buddy is most definitely not one of those dogs that enjoys going for car rides.  Which is unfortunate, as the ride to M's parents' house is about an hour and a half.  On the way there he whined, paced and panted, but eventually he calmed a bit and lay down.

Our drive home was a different story altogether.   Buddy got in the car and immediately lay down.  M and I congratulated ourselves on how quickly we had helped him to overcome his car phobia.  There may have been a celebratory fist bump involved.  And then things went sideways.

I don't know if Buddy was under residual stress from having spent the night away from home with strange people and a strange dog.  Maybe the car was too hot, or we just pushed things by taking him on two long car rides in as many days.  But he was most definitely unhappier on the ride home, pushing himself between the front seats to perch on the armrest and look anxiously out the front window.  We had lowered the back seats so that he had a nice big flat area covered in a blanket to lay down on, but he just couldn't settle.  He moved to my lap, then to the backseat again.  Then he hung his head and puked.  He walked around a little bit, and puked again. 

We thought the worst was over.  We were wrong.

After a few more stressful trips up to the front seat and back, he went to the very back of the car by the hatchback.  He looked at us mournfully, squat, and shat his little guts out.  Then he walked a few steps, and shat again.  A few steps more, and another few little squirts.  By the end of it, what was coming out of him pretty much looked like brown-tinted saliva instead of actual poop.  When he was all done, he went to his dog bed, curled up inside, and hung his head over the side.  If a dog had a hangover, this is what it would have looked like.  The worst part was that we were still about 40 minutes from home when this happened, and had to endure the stench for the rest of the ride.

You'll all be happy to know that once we got home, Buddy quickly reverted to his happy-go-lucky self and forgot all about his car ride ordeal.  M and I, on the other hand, remain traumatized and aren't sure how we are going to handle car rides with Buddy in future.  The only saving grace is that our strategically placed blanket saved us from having to have the entire interior of the car shampooed, or possibly just set on fire and shoved off a cliff.

On the plus side, we now feel adequately prepared to counter any new-parent poop story with one of our own, and to handle said baby poop when/if we should ever encounter it ourselves.

Oh, and we had a lovely weekend in Stratford.  Thanks for asking.

Office gossip

For your amusement, I present an excerpt from a conversation I had today with a colleague from our office in Winnipeg.  I haven't seen him in quite a few years but he knew I got married not too long ago.  After all the obligatory workity work talk:

Him:  So, how many rug rats you guys have running around now?

Me:  Uh...none.  We can't.  (OUT AND PROUD, BITCHES!!  Seriously, I'm done censoring myself.)

Him:  *awkward silence* What?  Er...seriously?

Me:  Yup.  Been trying, not working.  Maybe in future with the help of science, but we'll see.

Him:  But...I thought you were...I mean, I heard through the rumour mill that you were expecting? 

Me:

Lucky for him he caught me on a good day! 

Enough with the f$%&ing chicken fingers!

Tomorrow will be our two year wedding anniversary.  I think it's pretty safe to say, like many infertiles, our first couple of years of marriage haven't exactly worked out the way we thought they would.  We had about 6 months of wedded bliss before we started TTC, and it's been a reproductive roller coaster ever since then.  But on the plus side, we're still talking to each other and no one has filed for a restraining order just yet.

This weekend we went for an early anniversary dinner at one of my favourite restaurants.  If you're ever in Toronto and looking for a recommendation, you should definitely try to get a reservation at Ruby Watchco.  It's run by former Food Network celebrity chef Lynn Crawford, and the concept is that they source local, seasonal ingredients to make a different set four-course menu every night.  They do of course make allowances for food allergies and legitimate dietary restrictions, but otherwise there's no choice and what's on the menu for that day is what you get.  Everything I've ever had there has been fantastic, and at $50 for four courses cooked by a celebrity chef (who is actually there every night, working the kitchen and cleaning your table like a regular joe), it's a pretty sweet deal.

The first time we went there for dinner last year, M demonstrated both why I married him and why I can't take him anywhere nice.  I had filled him in on the concept for the restaurant ahead of time, so he knew damn well there was no choice involved.  That didn't stop him from starting, a couple of days before our reservation, from talking about how much he was looking forward to going out because he had a hankering for chicken fingers.  This from a man who without fail orders either steak or ribs no matter where we go.  I wryly reminded him (several times) that chicken fingers were unlikely to be what Chef Crawford would be cooking for us that evening.

The night of the actual dinner, the real comedy routine began.  First, there was his overstated childlike anticipation of being able to order chicken fingers no matter what I said to the contrary.  

M: I can't wait to order me some chicken fingers!

Me: Yeah, well, like I said, you can't order there. 

M: I've had a real craving for chicken fingers all week.

Me: That's unfortunate, because like I told you, we won't be having chicken fing...

M: They're gonna be the best chicken fingers ever!!

Then, there was his feigned disappointment when we arrived at the restaurant and the evening's menu inevitably did not include chicken fingers.  This quickly degenerated into overly dramatic belligerence at the fact that he couldn't order any Jesus chicken fingers.

M: What??  This place calls itself a restaurant??  They don't even have chicken fingers on the menu!!

Me:  No?  Shocker.  Well, too bad.

M: This is outrageous!  I demand to speak to the manager!  I want to see Ruby Watchco!  Someone bring me Ruby!

Me:  You mean Chef Crawford?

M:  No, I mean Ruby Watchco, the owner!  The one the restaurant is named after.  I want to talk to her.  Where is she?  Where's Ruby?

Me:  There's no Ruby.  And there's no fucking chicken fingers!

The best part was when, at some point during his diatribe, Lynn Crawford actually ended up coming out into the main dining area to put some clean glasses onto a waiter's station less than three feet from us.  I was quite enjoying his performance and was tempted to let him keep going, but eventually shushed him lest she overhear and wind up thinking that we actually were some pair of unsophisticated chicken-finger-demanding rubes as opposed to the sophisticated foodies I like to pretend we are.  Of course as soon as I told him where I wanted to go for our anniversary dinner this year, the everloving chicken finger bullshit started again.  Honestly, I think I would have been disappointed if it hadn't.

I play the part of the exasperated wife pretty well, but the reality is that his shenanigans make life worth living and I couldn't imagine things any other way.  While I still hope at some point we can welcome a child into our life, I know that even if we can't, we'll be OK.  As long as there's chicken fingers.

A friend comes through

Yesterday morning I had an email waiting from Derek.  I know he came off sounding pretty bad in my last post, but I'm happy to report that he completely redeemed himself.  

Apparently I'm not the Oscar-worthy actress I thought I was, since he knew something was up during our phone chat.  But since he knew I was in a big shared office he didn't want to ask me about it at work.  In his email he came clean about their IVF, and told me how sorry he was that he hadn't been able to share it before but apparently his wife had sworn him to secrecy from all but their closest friends and family.  He was hesitant to even try IVF, since after months of trying with no success he had basically convinced himself that he didn't want kids anyway, since "it would make the reality easier to accept."  His wife has pretty bad endometriosis, and they actually had an ectopic pregnancy on their first IVF.  He said he knew that it was probably hard to hear his news given our situation, and he understood that but didn't want to leave me out of the notification calls because my friendship was important to him. 

I wrote him back and apologized for not being able to be as excited as I should be about their pregnancy.  I told him about our most recent failed FET and how hard I've been finding things.  I also confessed that I had put the pieces together about their IVF but didn't want to bring it up if he didn't want to share it with me.  He responded that, during our previous conversation when I told him about our situation, he really wanted to tell me but didn't want to break his wife's confidence.  Can't blame a guy for that.  But he clearly understood my reaction and how lonely it is to feel like the only one who isn't having kids.  One of the reasons Derek and I are such good friends is because we're both equally snarky and cynical, so I had to laugh when he wrote that "I was so glad when people finally stopped asking us all the time about having kids... a few people who were rude enough to keep harping on it, I just told them I was impotent with a straight face and left it at that (AWKWARD!)"

He finished with a few non-trite, totally appropriate words of encouragement, including the following:

"Of course some of it comes down to luck...we had a long run of bad luck that seemed it wouldn't end, but it did. I won't pump sunshine up your ass because you are way too smart for that, but I really do think you have good reason to be hopeful if you can stick it out for another cycle or two."

I told him that I think he's going to make a great dad.

Yeah, that's about right

Remember a few months ago when I posted about a conversation that I overheard between my officemate Jill and a person that I soon figured out was another friend Derek's wife?  They were talking about the latter's recent IVF treatment and her upcoming beta.  I was pissed because Derek and I had spoken recently and I had told him about our infertility struggles, and he hadn't said a word about his situation.

He called me today.  To tell me that he and his wife are expecting.  Twins.

He still didn't say a word about their IVF.  Then he proceeded to complain about how hard it's going to be to have twins.

FML.

Updates from a grump-tastic week

I've been struggling a little bit about what to write lately, now that we're not actively doing any infertility treatments.  I guess I kind of feel a little bit irrelevant at the moment, even though our journey is far from over.  I've been taking my DHEA (no side effects so far) and M's been taking his "boner pills", but that's it.  I don't even know what cycle day I'm on.  I have probably ovulated but have no idea when it happened; I'm just guessing based on when my last period was.  M and I have had sex when we felt like it, and I haven't bothered to lie there for 20 minutes afterwards with my hips propped up.  And you know what?  It's fucking awesome.

I certainly haven't forgotten about our infertility, though.  Last week the one remaining childless person in my unit at work announced that he and his wife are expecting.   I managed to choke out a congratulations, but then sneaked out to hide in the bathroom as my other officemates (all parents) launched into in-depth baby talk.  Nothing like a sucker-punch pregnancy announcement to take the wind out of your sails.

The wind stayed out my sails pretty much the whole rest of the week.  At first I felt grumpy for no particular reason, and then the reasons started piling up.  First we ended up dropping an obscene amount of money at the vet to get a full checkup done on Buddy.  I objected pretty strongly to some of it because I felt that a lot of the tests were unnecessary, but M believes that since Buddy is a rescue and therefore an unknown quantity, we should make sure we're not missing anything.  The major expense was x-rays, which we had done because we noticed that Buddy favours his rear left leg when he runs and isn't keen on going up and down stairs.  But he has no evidence of past damage or hip dysplasia, so we're poorer but not really any the wiser about what the problem is.  It didn't stop him from going bananas today and running around like crazy for an hour when we took him on his first doggy play date at a local off-leash park, so I guess we'll just wait and see.

We've also been having a bit of an issue with Buddy's digestive system.  I know it's probably just a result of the stress of him moving in here and adjusting to all the new routines and stuff, but it's stressed me out nonetheless.  The first few days he wasn't really eating much at all.  Then he started eating, but very pickily.  He would actually nose through his kibble, take the larger chunks out and drop them on the floor, and then nibble the smaller bits.  We started adding wet food to encourage him to eat a bit more, and that worked for a few days.  But then he started getting diarrhea (which is lovely to try to scoop off the sidewalk, by the way) so we went back to just dry.  Which he is now refusing to eat again.  I completely realize that he's just being picky (as his vet workup included stool and blood samples for worms, parasites, and everything else under the sun).  He's probably waiting for us to cave and give him people food, which he's not going to get.  But the amount of worry it's caused me have had me wondering if I'm really capable of ever being a parent at all.  If I get this stressed out as a dog mom, what the hell would a human baby do to me?  The first fever and I'd be a total wreck.  Perhaps this infertility thing is really for the best.

The grump-train was chugging along at full speed mid-week, when I ended up turning my ankle pretty badly while doing jump lunges in my last week of the 30-Day Shred.  I walked it off and finished the rest of the workout, but later on that evening it started swelling and throbbing like a son of a bitch.  Ice and copious amounts of Advil helped a little, but I slept terribly and was kicking myself for being such a moron since I was afraid it meant that I wouldn't get to finish the rest of the workout schedule.  Luckily a day off helped a lot and I was able to get back into things by the end of the week.  Today was Jillian Michaels' last day to kick my ass, and I'm not sorry to see her go.  All in all I had a love-hate relationship with the Shred.  I loved it when it was over, and hated it the rest of the time.  I'll just never be one of those people who talks about how much she loves a good hard workout!  I will do them, and I will appreciate that they are good for me, but I will never love them. 

That's it for my week.  Obviously, on top of being grumpy, I felt guilty for being grumpy because of the events in Boston.  I mean, how can I realistically be grumpy when me and all of my loved ones are safe and in one piece when there are so many people injured and grieving right now?  But there is no logic to the grump.  The grump just IS.  

Oh, and if it doesn't start getting spring-like around here soon, I'm gonna punch someone.