Money ankles. All that positive thinking and relaxing just made me develop money ankles. Hence the swelling. Oh…you haven’t heard of money ankles? It’s just as realistic as some of the other advice I’ve gotten over the years so it sounds pretty sensible to me. You just wish and wish for money so you can do a treatment and then it starts pooling up. In your ankles.

Or you get a bug bite and you have a terrible reaction/infection that requires antibiotics.

One or the other.

I’m thinking the nurse practitioner who examined me wrote down infection in my chart. She took one look at my swollen ankle and said, “oh my.” So now I am on antibiotics and I can’t hang out in the sun for the next ten days. Writing the prescription meant we had to play the navigate-my-allergies game.

Which meant we had to play the are-you-pregnant game because the medication she wanted to prescribe would have been detrimental to a baby.

Nurse: Are you pregnant?
Me: No.
Nurse: You say that pretty confidently. How can you be sure?
Me: Um…I just am. I’m sure.
Nurse: Okay. Are you taking any other drugs because this antibiotic can interact with other drugs.
Me: No, I’m not on any medications.
Nurse: What about birth control pills? Because it interfers with birth control pills.
Me: No. No birth control pills (yeah, right, like I’m going to spend money on those?).
Nurse: Hmmm…no birth control pills.
Me: I don’t think we need them.
Nurse: Why not?
Me: Because I’m infertile.
Nurse: Oh. (Glances at chart) But it says that you have children.
Me: Conceived through fertility treatments.
Nurse: Oh.

And this is the line that makes her the most kick-ass ninja honourary Stirrup Queen nurse practitioner in the world.

Nurse: You must love them so much and are so happy they’re here since you had to work so hard to have them.

Hee-ah! With that, she handed me a prescription and chopped a board in half with her bare hand. Thank you, nurse practitioner. You saved my ankle from disgustingness and you saved me a car ride of tears after the appointment with your fantastic last line.

Operation Heads Up is well underway. For those who don’t know, Operation Heads Up is the database we’re collecting of personal reactions/points-of-view on procedures, medications, surgeries as well as personal tips to get your through the experience. In other words, everything your doctor can’t tell you because he hasn’t actually tried these things himself. A literal heads up so you know what to expect, what you should bring, what you should ask, etc.

People are also HIGHLY encouraged to add comments (either additional information or just a supportive cheer) on posts in order to get more points-of-view out there. I’ve been grouping all the posts together by making the date the 26th of July (the first one we posted). That way, someone can read all them by scrolling down. Links to these posts are also provided on the sidebar under Operation Heads Up. Click on the link and it will take you to the write up on that topic.

We still have a pretty big list so volunteer volunteer volunteer to do a write-up. Email me at thetowncriers@gmail.com if you’re interested. And people keep adding to the list all the time. Remember, I’m limited by my own IF experience–there are dozens of other tests/medications/procedures out there that we missed out on because we only had the poor egg/no progesterone diagnoses. So keep emailing me things that belong on this list.

Currently up-for-grabs Write-Ups That Need To Get Done (so volunteer to write one)

Basal Body Temperature (how to take it)
IM injections
IUI
IVF (transfer/retrieval)
Hysteroscopy
Semen analysis
Post-coital exam
D & C
Testicular biopsy
Vasography
Varicocelectomy
Oral (Clomid) and vaginal (Prometrium) medications
OPKS (when to use/how to use)
Transvaginal ultrasound
Sonohystogram

Someone once had one of those horoscope books where you could look up your specific birthday and learn so many interesting facts about yourself (facts that apparently the book knows and you don’t). So, we were passing this book around the room and it comes to me so I naturally look up my birthday and read that while I take care of everything else in my life way before it is necessary, I always put off going to the doctor.

Which is true.

Scary book. If we were in a movie, we would then gather around the ouija board and it would spell out i-n-f-e-r-t-i-l-i-t-y and then the planchette would spin wildly out of our hands and then come to an abrupt stop pointing at…ME ME ME.

It is true. I start planning for Halloween in June. I sent out my graduate school applications in October. I don’t leave things to the last minute. Except when it comes to doctors.

I wait on all health problems just in case they mysteriously go away on their own. With the exception of infertility. For the first time in my life I was like, “get me to the doctor…NOW.” Fertility seems to time sensitive. My swollen ankle, on the other hand, does not.

Last night, my ankle began swelling and taking on a purplish hue. I don’t remember twisting it. I had a bug bite last week in the same area that hasn’t quite gone away. And my instinct is to still sit here at the computer working while my ankle throbs. Since getting married, my husband has done his best to override my fate of being born on a day that includes doctor procrastination. He pestered me all morning to make an appointment with the general practioner. I have one for this afternoon because he always wins.

He has to work hard to get me to allow a doctor to LOOK at my ankle, yet I was eager to jump into the stirrups and allow them to slide a cathetar into my hoo-haa. Maybe because the ankle is just a physical pain and the infertility was an emotional pain. And I think we all know which one wins out if the two kinds of pain got into a superhero fist-fight.

And speaking of intense pain, I just posted Carolyn’s third (yes, you SQ slackers, her THIRD) write-up for Operation Heads Up. It’s for the HSG, which was, hands down, the most pain I have ever experienced in my life. I know that makes me sound like an enormous wimp, but remember that I am the woman limping around on a swollen, painful ankle who would have had no intentions of fixing it if not for her husband.

When I was in labour, the doctor asked how the pain was on a scale from one to ten. I told her that the numbers were arbitrary because she had no idea how painful my 10 was to me. She asked me what I considered a 10 and I answered, “an HSG.” She then asked me how labour fell on that scale and I said…a 6. Maybe getting up to an 8. That HSG was so painful.

Ouch.

Ouch.

Just thinking about it. Ouch.

This comparison and subsequent question came to mind after a recent email exchange with Tertia at So Close (http://www.tertia.org/so_close/). As a side note, Tertia recently published a book about her journey with infertility. She’s working on getting it distributed internationally, but for the time being, you can go to her website and purchase it through a supplier in South Africa. Great work and I can’t wait to read it.

There are many comparisons between waiting for a baby and waiting to get married. The uncertainty (though everyone tells you to relax and it will happen. Or, even worse, they insist that it will happen for you even though you know enough about life to know that sometimes it doesn’t). The lack of control: you can’t force someone to be your soul mate, and it’s out of your hands when you meet them. The happy couples around you that remind you of what you don’t have.

But here’s the question–when singlehood ends, you’re married and unless you’re longing for the single-life again, you never look back. I don’t call myself formerly single. I don’t identify with that life anymore though I can certainly empathize because I went through the dating, the longing, the waiting. People who get married at 40 are not considered in a different category from people who married at 20. They’re just…married. You may still carry your own personal baggage or insecurities or unhappiness about the journey, but for the most part, people don’t still check the singles boards or feel stung by comments about being single. They leave it at the door when they step over the threshold on their honeymoon.

So why do people who went through infertility continue to identify as infertile even after they’ve had children? Why is there a division (however subtle) in motherhood between those who have used A.R.T./adoption/surrogacy and those who have had their children without assistance? It’s not a division that exists amongst good friends, but one that rears its head in the casual talks on the playground. And sometimes it’s a division you feel when you are speaking to a mother who stands on the opposite side of the chasm. When you feel like the motherhood bond should be enough, but at the same time, you know that while she says she understands, she really doesn’t. Even close sisters, like Tertia and her sister, experience this when the other one truly can’t understand why things didn’t bounce immediately onto a different plane once they were both ensconced in motherhood.

Is it because everyone is single until they’re married? And once you’re married, you’re just…married. There isn’t a heirarchy of marriage. Someone who eloped to Vegas and someone who had the big, white wedding are both still just married. Our ways of getting to marriage are different, but in the end, are we all on the same playing field? But journeys to parenthood lead us to stand on different platforms when we emerge on the other side? At least in the eyes of general society vs. the people who love us. I’m making generalizations.

I’m not sure. I’d love to hear other opinions. Am I totally off–is there a heirarchy of marriage? People who carry their scars of singlehood over into marriage?

Who came up with the phrase “happy ending”? I use it all the time, but was thinking about it today. Endings aren’t happy–unless you’re talking about the end of an illness, torture situation, prison sentence. Marriage isn’t an ending–it’s a continuance–so why do fairy tales mention the happy ending when the prince and the princess get married? And I used it recently in terms of children–I’m glad your story has a happy ending. But children aren’t an ending. They’re a chapter. They’re a happy chapter tucked into the long book of life.

Endings seem to be a theme today. We had a big family party this weekend and the last people went home about an hour ago. I’m not great with endings. I end up mourning the ending a long time before it arrives. And then afterwards, I feel a bit lost. So the idea of endings was already on my mind.

I just finished sending an email back to someone who wrote to me about the figuring-out-a-due-date entry. I’m sure there were therapists (um…like maybe my sister) who read that entry and said, “damn, that’s quite unhealthy.” But I once received great advice from a fertility counselor when I was pregnant who asked why I wasn’t buying things or setting up the room. And I told her that I was scared to do anything because I was scared that we would lose the babies.

The point she made was that losing those babies would be terrible even if we didn’t have a crib to return. It’s not like we would look at each other and say, “okay, I can deal with this loss. Thank G-d we didn’t buy a glider because returning that would push me over the edge.” It is painful to fold up those maternity clothes after a pregnancy loss or to return the crib after a stillbirth, but it would be painful regardless. Even without those tasks.

I think of that type of dreaming–the dreaming about due dates and how you’re going to tell people you’re pregnant–is the hope that gets you through the ending. Because a cycle ending is painful. It’s the end of this hope that was building up inside of you for an entire month, growing and expanding and filling every crevice of your body. Even if I didn’t know the due date, the sight of that blood wouldn’t be easier to see. I’ve always struggled with the concept that my period starts CD1. CD1 sounds like it should be a happy day, the start of a journey. And it is such a terrible ending when you’ve been hoping with all your being that you’re pregnant.

I use that phrase, “I’m glad your story has a happy ending” and yet I don’t really believe that infertility has an ending. My mother certainly is finished having children, and yet I can still see this expression come over her face sometimes when I’m describing something I’m going through emotionally. And it’s the expression of someone who still has infertility scars etched into her being. Is infertility something she thinks about daily? I’m pretty certain it’s not. But it is something that shaped her vision of parenthood. So when is the ending?

And what about something that is an end for you because it is a beginning for others? I went through two trying-to-conceive groups. Both times I left because I was the only person who didn’t get pregnant. Everyone wanted to talk about their pregnancy, and I was still stuck in infertility. I think that experience is what made me want to create a blog without end. Something that didn’t have to change because it was covering infertility in general and not my own personal journey (though my personal journey obviously guides my thoughts). I received a few comments about the blogroll and how to handle the pregnancy/parenting after IF factor. One day that list will be huge. And the people whose journey you read to get you through your endings will continue (hopefully) and leave infertility behind. At least as a major topic in the forefront of the mind. I think it will always colour their vision of parenthood, no matter how much they rationalize to themselves that they’ve left it behind. Blog without end. It sounds like it belongs in a funeral service.

Sorry to be so dreary today. I really am terrible with goodbyes. I hope my siblings have safe trips home.