The Beauty of The Falls

We have internet again here at the house so I am able to share these photos with all of you. Just a warning...expect several photos.

I had to include this photo of the US/Canadian border...I thought it was a cool tourist picture.

It's very wet at the falls and my hair hates the humidity so I look like I just stepped out of the shower.

The following pictures are all of the Canadian side of the falls.

These pictures are all of the American side of the falls, not as nice, but the ice formations are amazing!

Lots To Think About

For those of you that check this site often I apologize for the long wait between posts. Jim and I finally returned from Canada on Sunday after a long drive. My flight was cancelled out of Buffalo on Friday and I was forced to drive back with Jim. Well, my flight was kind of cancelled...the flight I thought I was suppose to be on was cancelled but in reality I wasn't suppose to leave Buffalo until Monday. Apparently, my sweet sister didn't book my flights correctly...oh well I survived the drive home.

Also, we haven't had internet at the house for most of this week. Jim is in the process of changing our internet provider and hopefully we'll have it up and going by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, I'm using my work computer for all of my internet needs...something I'm not comfortable doing. Anyhow...

Canada was pretty cold the entire time we were there and overall we had a wonderful time. After Jim picked me up from the airport on the 13th we drove straight to Niagara Falls. Since Niagara has been extremely cold we were able to see lots of ice formations in the water. I took loads of pictures but have yet to move them off of the camera. I hope to download those pictures this weekend when we get the internet up and going again. Jim also gave me the grand tour of Toronto and we did lots of walking in the downtown area. All in all we had a pretty good time.

Okay, moving on to our latest infertility news. For those of you that are wondering how Jim and I are holding up we still taking things one day at a time. As for me, I continue to feel devastated at the prospect of not being able to bare children. I feel less and less of a women and I feel very isolated and let down. I've been keeping to myself for the last two weeks not really wanting to talk to anyone...just my way of handling things I suppose. I imagine I'll emerge from this "shell" eventually but I'm not sure when. Today is actually one of my better days and I'm not feeling as depressed today as I have.

We had our "final" appointment with Dr. Thompson yesterday and our options were laid out in front of us. We were told that we could do another round of IVF with my follicles and Jim's sperm using the assistance of ICSI (a process of injecting a single sperm cell directly into the follicle) to see how my follicles reacted. However, ICSI was an option for us but Dr. Thompson seriously doesn't recommend using my follicles....my follicles are that bad. I really didn't get any indication as to why my follicles are so bad...nothing in my past could have given us a clue that this would have happen. A part of me, the part that can't seem to let go, would really like to try ICSI once, but then reality sets in and I know the cards are stacked against us. Not to mention the financials aspects of all of this and financially we can't take that large of a risk.

So where do we go from here? We actually have two other options in front of us....donor eggs and donor embryos. With donor eggs we could either pick a donor or the office could recruit a donor. Recruits typically come from students at the university needing cash and we would be presented with a picture and a profile of the candidate(s) and then Jim and I would chose which candidate we liked best. Or, we could "size" up our young friends (she has to be younger then 35) and use them as a donor. After Jim and I discussed this option we decided that we would rather use a recruit rather then someone we know. Jim just feels like it would be to weird for him if we knew the donor. I will respect his feelings and lean on the side of an anonymous donor.

We also have the option of using donor embryos. These are embryos already frozen in time that former patients have decided to donate to couples like us. This option is considerably cheaper then donor eggs, but the child would have no biological ties to either Jim or I. I'm not sure which option Jim and I will chose but more then likely it will boil down to our financial needs. I'm still secretly hoping that Ed McMan makes a surprise visit to the house, or that the Powerball fairy comes by the house sometime soon. Whichever option we chose it will be a few years before we can afford to do anything....we need to payoff the existing loans first.

Results

My results are in and as perdicted they came back as a big fat NEGATIVE.....

Peace & Quiet

Jim left after work yesterday for Toronto and drove all the way to North Platte NE. I'm currently sitting here in the house enjoying the peace and quiet of everything. No television on...just me and the Three Stooges (Nanook, Sasha, and Corki). I just got done staring at the refrigerator trying to figure out what to cook for breakfast. Unfortunately, I really can't bring myself to cook just for myself. I kind of figure....why bother. Don't get me wrong I love to cook, I just prefer to cook for other people. Not to mention I really shouldn't be leaving any leftovers in the fridge since I'm going to be gone all next week.

My weekend will consist of catching up on homework. I managed to fall a little behind in school the last couple of weeks as result of all the IVF stuff and I want to spend the entire weekend catching up. I really would like to leave for Canada and not have to worry about taking any homework with me or trying to complete anything last minute. If I have time tomorrow I might try to catch a movie...a nice little treat for myself.

Anyway, Jim took the camera with him so I will not be posting any photos this weekend (not that I can think of anything to post) but hope to when we return from Toronto. I think we might have a few days where we can get away and I can take some pictures of the city. We also plan to make a trip to Niagara Falls....the highlight of the week. Hopefully, the falls will be a nice healing place for the two of us....

Coping

It's been a few days since my last post and I thought I would give you all an update. The cramping has subsided and physically I've been feeling really good. Emotionally I'm pretty much just going through the motions of everything and taking it one day at a time. Four more days till our pregnancy test and I feel like I should be looking forward to it, but I'm not. Somehow I feel like I'm cheating myself of an event that should be joyful.

This morning I was getting ready for work and when I stood in front of the mirror putting on my eyeliner it dawned on me that I will never look at a child and say he/she has my eyes, my smile, my odd sense of humor, or any other feature for that matter. I suppose this is just part of the grieving process that I will have to endure on my own.

Jim continues to give me daily injections of progesterone and butt is very sore. In fact, I've officially retired my right butt cheek. For some reason my left cheek handles the injections better and I don't seem to be as sore on that side. I spend much of my evening sitting on a heating pad praying for some relief. I've also changed injection sights for the heparin since I've run out of spots on my stomach. Not to mention, my stomach looks like a war zone and it needs some time to heal.

I also realized today that if the pregnancy test on Monday comes back negative then I can discontinue my injections and my period will start soon after. Unfortunately, that means I will dealing with my period while in Canada. I know this period will be heavier then normal and probably more painful since my uterine lining is so thick. I'm really not looking forward to dealing with this while in Canada and would prefer to be at home where I can mope on my own. Oh well, at least I'll have Jim with me...

Jim leaves tomorrow to start his trek to Canada and I'll be joining him on Tuesday afternoon. In the meantime my cousin will be administering my progesterone injection since I can't reach my butt on my own. I'm not sure if she has ever injected a human or not (she's a veterinary assistant) and I sure hope she doesn't try to shave my butt....just kidding. Either way, I can easily walk her through it.

Weeding Out the Bad People

As I sit here on the couch trying to do homework so that I may be ready for class tonight my mind wonders. The last several days my mind has been wondering a lot and I'm waging a war between my subconscious and my heart. I've been cramping a lot today and the thought that this IVF cycle isn't going to work is looming high on my head. I've felt these same cramps before...the same ones I felt with each failed IUI done in the past...11 to be exact.

I did have one successful positive pregnancy test in March 2005. I had never seen a positive pregnancy test before and I was delighted to see the dark line on the stick I had just peed on. Jim even took a picture of it...kind of gross but he felt the need. A few days later I began to bleed...I will never forget that day. As you can imagine, I was devastated. I raced home and I was bleeding so bad that at one point I decided to just sit on the toilet and let the blood flow freely from me like someone had just turned on the water faucet. I didn't think it would ever end and I didn't think the emotional pain would subside. Of course with the passage of time the bleeding stopped and somehow I manged to move on with my life.

Jim, the doctors, and myself had high hopes for this IVF cycle. My body responded well to the meds and I was feeling pretty good knowing this was our only shot at getting pregnant. Financially, this was the only chance we had. I even had to take out a loan to pay for everything and I walked away from the casino empty handed and nothing to show for our lost time.

As I sit here today (I really should be doing homework) I'm filled with the same dread that I had in 2005....knowing this isn't going to work. I'm still thinking back to those 11 IUI's I had and wonder why I even wasted my time. I could have saved so many years of my life had I known that my follicles would malfunction. For ten years my infertility was classified as "unexplained" and I always said I could cope better if I knew the exact cause of my infertility. Well, here I am with the cause and it's just as hard to cope. I also could have married Jim and told him that my fertility status would prevent the two of us from having children and I would have avoided letting him down.

Above all I'm strangely reminded of a comment made by my ex-husband when we first "discovered" we couldn't get pregnant. His comment was, "It's God's way of weeding out the bad people." I guess he was referring to nature running it's own selection course so to speak. Either way, that comment has never left my head and I'm more so now reminded of it and his callous ways.

So, I ask myself why has this happened to me? What could I have done differently? Was my car accident as I child to blame? My years of smoking? How about the fact that my Grandmother took the dreaded DES drug now linked to infertility? Did any of my sexual choices in my past play apart? What about my age? These are questions I will probably never know the answer to. The one thing I do know for sure is I will never have a child that is biologically linked to me.

Jim and I walked out of Dr. Thompsons office with our instructions for the next few weeks and two pictures of the embryos. Yes, you read that correctly, we were able to get pictures of our two slow dividing embryos. One pictures was taken from the ultrasound immediately after they were placed inside my uterus (an event Jim was proud to view) and the second picture was taken by the embryologist while they were still in the incubator. You can clearly see that they were only two-cell embryos at the time of transfer, but still they are my hope and faith that given the small 5% chance that they might survive.

And to top off everything else going on in our lives, the tea pot between Jim and I has been running over for days (a culmination between numerous issues I suppose) and I will no longer be joining him in Canada next week. Instead he will be going alone and I will be having a nice private vacation in some place far from here. In a strange way I'm looking forward to the seclusion of the week and being able to regain my thoughts.

Until next time....

Answers At Last

Jim and I just got home from transfer and it didn't go nearly as well as the two of us had hoped. In fact it was pretty much a disaster. Dr. Thompson met with us about the results from our fertilization and we received no good news. When normal follicles meet with sperm, one sperm penetrates the nucleus and something (I'm not sure exactly what) prevents any other sperm from entering the same follicle. Immediately after the penetration the follicle is now considered an embryo and the embryo starts to divide into multiple cells. My follicles on the other hand do not follow this routine. Instead of letting one sperm cell inside they allow several sperm cells to enter. When this happens the embryos are not viable for transfer.

With that said I did have four follicles that only allowed one sperm cell to enter. Those embryos however did not divide at the normal rate and will most likely not survive. We did go ahead and transfer the two best embryos back into my uterus but our chances of them surviving are less then 5% (we would normally have a 65% chance if everything proceeded normally).

Needless to say both Jim and I were very upset. I feel like I lost at the IVF casino and my body let me down. How do you deal with knowing you will never have a biological child? We were told if we were to try again my follicles would follow the same path and it really wouldn't be worth our time. So our only option at this point is either adoption or donor eggs. I'm still not keen on the whole adoption idea as I want to fuck up my own child and not someone elses. I feel like a failure as a women not being able to bare children...

How do we move on????

Gumball Retrieval

First I wanted to apologize to everyone who has been patiently been waiting for a post from me since I had the gumball machine emptied. I really haven't been feeling all that well the last several days so I haven't been turning on the computer (I'll get to that later). Anyway, for the most part things went rather well on Wednesday. They were able to extract 15 follicles from my ovaries...I was honestly thinking they would have gotten more but we were very happy with 15. I was knocked out for the procedure so I didn't feel anything, but damn did I feel like crap when I woke up. That was certainly some of the worst cramping I have ever felt in my life...to the point where I couldn't sit down. Eventually the cramping subsided and I felt much better. Jim and I went to eat after we left the office and then we went straight home and I spent the rest of the evening on the couch.

On Thursday I started doing my heparin shots again and I also started taking an antibiotic to combat against any possible infection from the retrieval process. The antibiotic I'm taking is tetracycline, which I would swear I've taken before without any problems. This time however the tetracycline is kicking my ass! I've had the worst stomach pain that I narrowed down to the antibiotic so I was forced to stop taking it. To give you an idea as to how bad the pain is...it's difficult to stand up straight and I've been comparing the pain to the same pain I had when my appendix was removed. So, I was able to get a hold of a nurse this morning and they prescribed a different antibiotic for me. I stopped taking the tetracycline yesterday afternoon and I didn't get relief from the stomach pain until early this morning.

Okay, I'm sure most of you wondering what the next step is for Jim and I. I was instructed to call the office yesterday to find out how many of those 15 follicles had fertilized and was told that only 4 had fertilized. Both Jim and I were very disappointed and honestly a little depressed that more didn't fertilize. I do not have any answers at this point as to why only 4 had fertilized, since I just spoke with a nurse. I'll ask several questions the next time I'm in the office to see if the embryologist has any answers for us. In the meantime Jim and I are just praying that those 4 lonely follicles survive to transfer and beyond.

Transfer is scheduled for tomorrow morning. From there I'll be on bed rest for the next few days and then the only thing Jim and I can do is wait. We'll have to wait two weeks before we know if I'm pregnant or not. Also, I don't know how many follicles we'll be transferring back in tomorrow. I was really wanting to transfer 2 follicles back but since things have changed we will not know until tomorrow.

With that said, I'm not sure when I will have the opportunity to post again. Please bare with me as it may be a few days before I can get to my computer. As usual here's a list of my meds...notice it's much shorter now.

AM:
Heparin (25 IU)

Noon:
Prenatal Vitamin
Baby Aspirin
Antibiotic

PM:
Heparin (25 IU)
Antibiotic
Progesterone (1 CC)