The End of an Era

Kechara

5/24/99 - 6/28/11

Kechara was my baby from the day he was 6 weeks old, when he came back from Ohio with us, falling asleep in the tiny loaf pan of litter we had placed in the carrier in order to introduce him and his sisters to the concept of litter (they had been barn cats).  He was my cuddle boy up through this afternoon, when I held him (and DH held both of us) as he died.  After the seizure he had this morning, it was the right thing to do, but oh, it hurt.  I'll say more later.

Creme de la Creme Decision

I'm trying to decide which post to submit for the Creme de la Creme list.  For those who aren't aware, it's a place for people to choose their best post of the year to submit.  I've narrowed it down to 2, my return to writing poetry, and my infertility manifesto.  What do y'all think?  So far, I have one vote for the manifesto.

ICLW #2

As we get into my second International Comment Leaving Week, it's been an eventful week over in this part of IF-land, rife with hard financial decisions.

For those new to the story, DH and I are currently stalled out waiting to find out whether he is a carrier for spinal muscular atrophy, like I am.  Finding out that I'm a carrier killed our cycle from last month before it started and pushed us into a new insurance year and new insurance plan, taking us from no coinsurance for IVF to $1500 coinsurance.  We've been waiting for insurance coverage for DH in order to get the testing done.  He could have gotten it done while he was on my insurance this month, but it's taken two weeks so far to find out what effect that would have on the HSA that covers my deductible.  His new insurance will take effect this weekend, and once we know his insurance numbers, we can order the test for him.  We can't really afford to do the test at this point, since it would fall under the deductible and thus come out of our pockets.  At the same time, the emotional cost of being stalled out is high enough that DH said tonight that we can't really afford not to do it now either.

Speaking of costs we can't afford, my oldest cat, Kechara, was sick again over the last couple of weeks.  Through it, we found out that even when he was healthy, he was losing weight.  He's lost 5 pounds over the last year or so.  The vet said last night that if his labwork came back normal, which it basically did, that we'd be most likely looking at cancer.  However, there's no way to tell unless we do an x-ray ($150) and possibly an ultrasound (a couple hundred dollars).  And if we find out that he does have cancer, we'd have the question of whether surgery would be helpful or harmful and, if it would be helpful, whether we could afford it.  There would be no way to afford it without putting our dreams of IVF on hold for a while longer. 

So I'm feeling caught between whether to possibly save the life of the furry child I have now or whether to create my possible human child.  Either way we're looking at uncertainties and possibilities.  I don't know if Kechara has cancer.  I don't know if we would be able to conceive on the first try with IVF.  I don't know if he does have cancer, if it would be operable (without hurting him more than it helps).  I don't know if we could become pregnant through IUI instead of IVF.  I don't know how long Kechara would live if cancer was able to be surgically removed...he's 12 years old, but before last year he was perfectly healthy despite being overweight.  I don't know anything except that it will break my heart whenever I do lose Kechara and that it's breaking my heart not being a parent to a human child. 

Touching

As I was working last night on my workshop for this weekend's APO conference and telling a non-APO online friend about it, that friend said, "You do have a servant's heart, don't you?" I was really touched by that, even though all I do is live the way God made me.

Giuliana Has Cancer

Giuliana Rancic just announced on Today that during the process of her third IVF, they found out that she has early stage breast cancer.  She's having surgery later this week and will try again for IVF #3 after the surgery. 

She had an interesting quote about the situation: "I still want this baby...because this baby has saved my life."  I would be interested to see what was in the ellipsis, but HuffPost didn't put that in the article.  For many of us, it's easy to feel like having a baby would save our lives figuratively, but most of us don't have the process save our lives literally like her.  Good luck, Giuliana!!

The Nature of Blogging

It's interesting watching Julie and Julia and thinking of getting blogs started.  It was about a month after I saw the movie that I started this blog, although I had been thinking about the possibility of a blog for 2 months by then.  Over the past year, I've seen the number of people reading this increase little by little, and I identify with the feelings Julie had about wondering whether people actually read/care about what I'm writing.  My mom is more supportive of what I'm writing than Julie's mom was in the book/movie, but then again, I'm not doing anything crazy, just trying to have a baby.

On a side note, the movie does a good job of touching on Julia and Paul's infertility without dwelling on it.

It's especially interesting watching the movie right now while reading the book Julie wrote after this, called Cleaving, about the affair she had after the book came out and learning to butcher after the affair ended.

I'm getting fun ideas for things I want to make as DH and I chat with my father-in-law about food and cooking techniques.

Because I Needed Life to Suck More

So then I get home for a bit and get the mail, and I find out that my doctor doesn't take my new fucksurance plan.  And as I go to the computer to verify this, my watch breaks.  I start crying and my nose starts bleeding. (I get nosebleeds when the weather changes, but this fall I had avoided them so far despite spending the past week croaking and unable to breathe).

Ah, Irony

It felt weird enough to be infertile and taking BCPs in preparation for the IVF-that-wasn't.  I have to say, though, it feels even weirder to be checking the nightstand to see if there are any non-expired condoms left in there.  At the same time, I'm too scared to risk conceiving before we know whether DH is a carrier for spinal muscular atrophy. 

We can't get him tested until he starts his insurance, which will now be 2 weeks later than we thought because of security and stupidity, which are sometimes synonymous.  Good thing we were able to get him onto my insurance for a month to fill the gap between when it ran out from his old job and when he starts the new insurance...MUCH less expensive than COBRA!!  Still, I bet we won't be able to get him tested right away even when he is on his insurance because it'll fall under the deductible, which will mean we still can't afford it.

Just, Wow

Even the damned spayed cat thinks she'll get IVF before I do!!  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of Summer sticking her paw through the flaps of the box of meds.

Hunkering Down

I last used those words during the hurricane we had at the end of August, but they feel appropriate now.  Or at least they sound better than "running and hiding" and make me feel like less of a pathetic wuss.  I'm about to go out for lunch, even though I brought stuff to make my own, because I've just gotta get out of here.  They're about to have the shower for my coworker's oops baby.  This is the coworker that had the baby a month early after a ruptured placenta, and I'm REALLY glad that she's ok and the baby's ok, but she's brining the baby, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to handle the shower even before she had the baby early.  I had tears in my eyes signing the card earlier today, and that was my signal that I just couldn't do it this time.  So I'm trying to hunker down and make a tiny little secure cave to hide in, just big enough for the turtle shell I'm trying to withdraw into so I can survive.

Curses, Foiled Again

DH has about 10 choices for insurance.  None of them are any better 50-50 on infertility coverage.  There is still one possibility for us to be able to have a cycle before spring: DH doesn't count the third paycheck of a month into our budget for the 2 months per year it happens that way.  Next one of those will be December, it looks like.  I've got a call in to the genetic testing people to see if any of the plans cover DH's testing, and hopefully they'll call me back tomorrow.  The other thing we'll need to budget for that I hadn't been thinking of is PGD, if DH also is a carrier for spinal muscular atrophy.  The plan that finishes this week for me did not cover it, and I need to check if my new plan will cover it...none of the options for DH do.  Anyone have any idea how much PGD runs? 

In other news, I was fiddling with my Facebook list again tonight because I had added some new friends.  So I looked to count the friends within 5 years of my age who are married and compared that to the number of people who are within 5 years, married, and parents.  Among my married friends within 5 years of age, 62% are parents.  That doesn't really surprise me either...after all, about 1 in 8 are infertile, and there are some that aren't ready to start a family yet.

Happiness and Jittery Afraid-to-be-Excited Nervousness

So, at the end of July 2010, I fell on a set of steps at a subway station and my assembled clarinet (Buffet E-11, for those who know) fell over the railing and down to the platform.  I thought it was toast.  This clarinet was the first non-student-model instrument I had owned.  I had bought it myself when I was in college, the first time I had decided that I was enough of a musician to deserve a real instrument.  So yeah, I had enough emotion invested in my clarinet that when it broke, I was a sobbing mess.  I replaced it with an instrument of similar quality that I bought off fo CraigsList, a Selmer, but I was never really happy with it.  It just didn't play like my Buffet.  It wasn't worse, per se, but it was different enough that I wanted my Buffet.  I was finally able to make contact with a woodwind repair man that my mom used to apprentice with, and I took my Buffet in today to see if it was salvageable.  And it is!!!  It's going to cost about $350 plus whatever we can get a bell for (the bell was completely shattered) and it's going to take him a while to fix, but so much the better because that gives me time to save the money up.  I had tears in my eyes, I was so happy!!

The jittery nervousness comes in because when I go home, I'll get to see what DH's insurance options are.  My first inclination is to be excited because this is the government and the government has good insurance, but I'm scared to be excited because that has never ended well in this IF journey.  If the options aren't any better than what I have now, the prenatal vitamins are going back in the medicine bin in the closet.  No need to waste them by taking them when I can instead save them for next year when they have a chance of being useful.

Cheering Myself Up

For one thing, I do need to give DH a lot of credit.  He's been really great lately, sensitive to my needs and supportive.  He's still letting me know how he feels, so he's not "taking care of me" by hiding how he feels.  But he's caring for me without resenting or being annoyed by me needing care.

I noticed on Wednesday night that the Princess Diaries was on.  I watched that and the second movie when it came on right after.  I then watched the end of My Sister's Keeper and then all of A Cinderella Story before going to bed.  I noticed that watching silly chick flicks made me happy.  I decided to run with that today, watching one chick flick after another all afternoon and evening.  I also made a tiered cake for the first time and experimented with a couple of other techniques on DH's birthday cake.  I've got a LOT to learn and improve on with cake decorating, but considering I'm entirely untrained and have learned what I have from books and LiveJournal, I'm pretty happy with it.

Whirlwinds

That's what this past week has felt like.  Today should have been my transfer if we ended up with a three-day.  We should have been getting a possible baby for our five-year anniversary and DH's birthday.  Instead, I get more births and baby announcements and sonogram profile pics. 

I took a survey for a study at Drexel University about online support and IF forums.  Part of what the survey covered was symptoms of depression, and it really struck me to see just how depressed I've been over the past two weeks.  I know I've been depressed, and I've taken my Zoloft up to 150 mg in response, but it still struck me how depressed I've been.  I can catch the nuances in others, but not as easily in myself as long as I'm staying away from the major red flags. 

I did end up counting the people within 5 years of my age (excluding the gay ones but including the unmarried ones) and the ones pregnant or with kids.  I wasn't going to, but when I ended up clicking on every person to put them into a list so that I could make Facebook look normal again, that was too much temptation to resist.  So, out of the 507 straight friends I have within 5 years of me, 188 have kids or a pregnancy, or about 37%.  So, my perception was right about correct.  I could see what the percentage of married/committed ones with kids or a pregnancy is, but since several of my friends are single parents, I'm not sure what that would change.  I still might do it, we'll see.  End result, though, is that it didn't change anything, all it did was confirm what I already believed, and I'm not having the stress of thinking I shouldn't do it because it's batshit crazy.

Less crying in the last day or so.  Last night, I ended up watching chick flicks for most of the evening, and that made me happy.  Trying to find those little things that do help and cobble them together into...something.

Welcomish

Welcome to anyone coming for ICLW.  For my regular readers, this stands for International Comment Leaving Week, an initiative to get people reading and commenting on each others' blogs and feeling cared about.  I've seen it for at least half a year now, but this is the first time I've tried to participate.  Hopefully I'll be able to do as much as is requested (6 comments a day on participating blogs).  Now you can ignore me for the last paragraph as I catch up people who haven't been with me through the last year or two.

For people who are new, here's the recap in a nutshell: Started TTC in August 2009 with charting and OPKs, started getting frustrated in spring 2010 but didn't get really frustrated until we were getting up on a year.  Got DH seen in summer 2010 and me in August 2010, was told that two things for him and one thing for me "should not be a problem," found one major problem in learning that insurance had covered none of that.  Finished paying off $1400 in medical bills in March 2011, managed to change insurance plans in June, saw RE in July, scheduled to have first IVF in September.  A week later the shit hit the fan: flipped my car (yes, I'm ok), found out my father-in-law may be dying, spent over $2000 keeping my cat alive, found out I'm a carrier for spinal muscular atrophy and IVF had to be put off, found out that insurance is changing on October 1 to a plan with coinsurance for IVF that we can't afford until next summer, found out that grandmother is in the hospital and may be dying.  OK, so it's a big nutshell, maybe a coconut shell.

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled bitching.

Stopping Myself

I'm not going to look through my 1086 Facebook contacts to look at how many of them are within 5 years of my age and then figure out what percentage of those have kids or are pregnant.  I'm not.  I know it would just make me feel even more like shit, so I'm not.  But I can't lie, it seriously crossed my mind.  Not actually as an act of self-flagellation, but to find out how much my perception coincides with reality.

Punctures and Punctuation

Tonight I was supposed to have my trigger shot for my egg retrieval.  This month feels like nothing but should-have-beens and no-time-soons.  This feeling was, as DH put it, punctuated tonight by going to an event at the curling club and (in addition to seeing a pregnant woman I didn't know) finding out that one friend and one acquaintance are pregnant.  I'm glad for my friend, but at the same time, each one is another puncture wound in my heart.

I think I'll be dealing with things a bit better once September and maybe the first part of October are over, once we're past all of the days that were written down on my schedule of events.  I sure as hell hope so, at least.  I can't take it if it doesn't get better.

DH was suggesting that I try to do more things with people who aren't parents.  I went out with the UM clarinets for tapas last night and had a lot of fun.  It felt good and was what I needed, a chance to not deal with it all for a night.  DH has (half-jokingly, half-seriously) batted around the possibility of banning me from Facebook when there is one pregnancy announcement after another upsetting me.  The problem is, Facebook is no worse than my real life when it comes to that.

Today is one of those days when I hate people.  That is all.

Held Back Again

I feel like I'm one of the kids I knew who was held back in Kindergarten, unable to get past what should be the easiest part. 

I got the call back from the genetic testing people this morning.  The test is $500 if they run it through insurance, and he has a $500 deductible which of course he hasn't met yet because he's DH and he never gets sicker than a cold. It would be only $350-400 if it was just paid by cash, but we don't have that kind of money either. 

So, we wait to see what his new insurance covers.  Fortunately, his insurance will kick in as of the first day of the new job, with no 30 or 60 or 90-day probationary/waiting period.  Unfortunately, he won't find out anything about the 4 plan options until that first day, so his insurance will backdate to the first day but we will still have to wait while we make a decision and the paperwork goes through.

It's hard for me to even write this, but I called my nurse a few minutes ago to say we had to put everything on hold for however long.  A couple of my coworkers told me to ask if they do payment plans for the patient part of things so we could do something sooner than the middle of next year, and I didn't think they did but I checked anyway...I was right.

So now we wait. Again.  Our nurse at work had her baby a month early (prayers are needed for them both...she had a ruptured placenta, and the baby is in the NICU at Children's), and now I'm wondering every day as I go in who's going to be the next one to announce.  After all, it doesn't seem possible at this place to NOT have someone pregnant, and it's sure as hell not going to be me, so someone's got to fill that gap.

Pitfalls and Tripwires

That title was a chapter title in one of the Wheel of Time books I've been listening to lately, and it seemed to fit, since everything we encounter seems to push back our dream of a family farther and farther. 

My insurance is changing again.  I'm going from no coinsurance to 50% coinsurance.  That's only up to an out of pocket max of $1500, but there's no way we can pay $1500 for close to another year (at which point the insurance will probably change again).  So the box of medications gets to sit there in the dining room, as lonely and forlorn as I feel.  I don't even know if we'll be able to use it when we can get money together, or if I have to try IUI first.  After all, my RE was surprised that it wasn't a requirement on my last insurance.  I just sent an email to our representative at the new insurance to ask her.

Ended up losing my cool and crying like an idiot in front of our HR person, our financial manager (who almost everyone is intimidated by), the insurance rep and the insurance broker yesterday.  I still don't get how it's impossible for them to get shit together to give us longer than a 4-day open enrollment period.  Every company I've worked at before has given a month, and every company DH has worked for has given either 2 weeks or a month.  I was at least able to find out that if I go with our insurance, I can cancel that through 10/31 if it turns out that the insurance is better at DH's new job.  We have friends that work there, but it's hard to get what we need in terms of answers about coverage at this point because there's 4 different plans DH can choose from, and our friends don't know details about all 4.  Still, being able to make that change helps avoid the short open enrollment period screwing us over like it did last year.  It makes me so mad to think about the fact that we could have had a couple of cycles under our belt, maybe even one that worked, if the open enrollment period last year had been even 2 weeks, long enough for me to get answers from them about what was covered! 

Since I've been having such a hard time with all this lately, I'm going up to 150 on the Zoloft, at least for a little while.  Still need to talk to the nurse at work about the real safety of Zoloft, with those commercials making DH twitchy.

Still haven't heard back from the genetic testing people on whether DH is currently covered for the test.  If I hadn't been a stupid SMA carrier, we could have actually had this cycle before the insurance changed!  September 8 was the one-year anniversary of this blog and was also supposed to be the day I would start my shots.  Instead I felt like crap and went home early and took Tylenol and lay down.