TTC - Onward

Pincushion  (c) Shutterbug

It is just seven weeks since we lost our baby, and here we are well and truly back on the TTC train. TTC roller coaster.

We trudged back into the Mt. Sinai clinic, dreading our day three scan and the chance of running into our now least-favourite doctor (Dr. Arthur), but we were in the clear. My blood work came back showing my hCG levels were back to normal, so we were free to start another cycle with Clomid.

5 days on 150mg of Clomid, the maximum dose available. Remembering to take it, dealing with the hot flashes and bloating and headaches, coping with the emotional instability that could be attributed to the drug or to the trauma...so goes our path to parenthood.

Counting down the days to Day 11 and the scan that would show us where things were at, it was difficult to focus on much else. By the time my name was called and I hopped up on the ultrasound table, I was nearly sick with anticipation. I had bet on three follicles this month; my wife on two. We waited while Dr. Greenblatt pressed unbearably hard on my ovaries, and announced in her very pronounced lisp that there was one follicle on the right side. My heart sank as I realized she seas not going to add anything else. I felt like the drug was useless and the effort wasted, but at this stage who is to say there would have been anything at all without it.

The blood work is always the real issue. Day 11 it took two technicians three tries to find a vein: both arms, and the back of one hand. Day 12 we were given a pass and got to sleep until a normal hour. Day 13 it took two tries by one clearly inexperienced tech, and Day 14 it took two tries by one obviously irritated tech. Sometimes I want to grab the needle and stab it into their eyes, is that so wrong?

Feeling like a human pincushion and totally fed up with the process yet again, I went in for my IUI on day 15. Nurse Kathy asked for the usual history, and took it all in stride. My eye kept going to the unusually thick binder with my name on it in front of her, and I finally asked to see the ultrasound photos that were taken during my pregnancy. I looked at them with a morbid fascination: despite the difficulty in making sense of them, they were physical proof of what I had, and what we lost.

Kathy proceeded to complete the easiest insemination of our entire history at any clinic. Did the miscarriage change my cervix in some way? Is this what IUIs are like for other women? I was shocked to hear that she seas done, since I had hardly felt a thing. I wanted to hug her.

This sperm sample was not our best; only a 3 million count compared to the previous averages of around 9 million (top count was around 18 million), but we keep telling ourselves it only takes one. One tenacious swimmer. We are not going to complain about the sample quality, even though it falls below the guaranteed count. Complaining just takes too much energy.

It is now 6 days past IUI (6dpiui), and I took a home pregnancy test to get a baseline negative. If it had come out positive then it would mean the hCG trigger shot was still in my system. Since it is negative, that means any positive result from this point forward is due to what's going on in my body, and not any of the drugs. 

It's hard to put into words the strain of this process. The mental, physical, and emotional drain and preoccupation; trying to remain hopeful and positive, yet not get our hopes up too high, and trying not to lose our minds.

I think I lost that battle long ago.

Where Are My Keys, I've Lost My Phone

A lyric that Lady GaGa could have written for my lovely, if organizationally-challenged, wife.

We recently had the sort of week that left us shaking our heads, and wondering how there can be so many souls out there seemingly without a conscience.

Hoping to enjoy some fresh air on a clear spring day, I ran home on my lunch hour so that my wife and I could take our two dogs for a walk. We only had about twenty minutes, and just did a short route on the streets around our home. Our conversation covered the many decisions we're trying to make, how strained we feel right now both in terms of time and budget, and what we can do to reduce our stress. Most of it comes down to money, which I think is pretty common for married couples–even those who aren't spending thousands of dollars trying to make a baby, or caring for sick pets.

Shortly after returning from our walk, my wife realized her Blackberry was gone. Panicked, she retraced our steps in full in less than twenty minutes, but there was no sign of it. We did the route again later when I got home from work, and then tore our house apart to be certain her Crackberry wasn't mislaid somewhere indoors. It was gone, and the only explanation that makes sense is that it somehow fell out of her pocket on our walk without us noticing, and someone picked it up. It was fully charged and had plenty of contact names and personal information for anyone who found it to try to contact us, but no one called.

We placed ads on Kijiji and Craigslist offering a $300 reward, even stating that we'd be happy to just get the memory card back. If someone was that desperate for a used phone, they could keep it. One of the first responses my wife received to the ad was from someone who said they'd found a Blackberry in our area, and they would "let her have it back" for $600. We asked what the screen saver photo was to confirm it was hers, but got no response. Charming. We had no choice but to incur the unexpected expense of replacing the phone, but there was no way to replace the information on it that wasn't backed up.

A few days later, I realized that a credit card number was stored in a memo on the lost phone, so I went online to check my statement. Lo and behold there were two charges from a gas station in Scarborough that I'd never been to, dating back two weeks. This had nothing to do with the lost phone, I was able to connect it to visiting my mom in hospital, and using the card at the parking machine (which I noticed was out of order the next few days that I was there). What kind of evil person defrauds people trying to help sick relatives?! More time was lost dealing with the credit card security people, but the charges (including pending ones I didn't yet know about) were reversed relatively easily, and I was issued a new card. I lost a little more faith in people's innate goodness.

As if this weren't enough, we finally decided it was time to spend the last bit of money we'd received for our wedding, which were two $50 bills a friend had folded into origami hearts and stuck inside a picture frame. We carefully unfolded them, tried to use them for a purchase...and discovered they were counterfeit.

It's sad to run into this much dishonesty in the space of just a few days. I struggle with the idea of how I will raise a child to believe the best of people, be savvy enough to recognize when a person is bad, and not let it bring them down when they encounter a deviant. And how to stop my child from ever becoming one of the deviants...

Stolen Hearts and Broken Bank

Taz the cat  © Shutterbug

We all know what we sign up for when we let these little creatures into our hearts. They steal them, and then one day, they break them.

This is Taz, short for Tasmanian Devil. He is 16 years old, and was adopted as a small kitten by my wife. I met him when we began dating more than two years ago, under less than ideal circumstances. He arrived in the arms of my beloved, who was in the midst of a very ugly separation. She showed up at my apartment with a car full of clothes, her cat, and nothing else. She was able to walk away from everything else she had acquired in life, but not him. This little guy is something special, full of both personality and patience (helpful when one of your moms is a professional photographer).

I don't understand people who don't like cats. I'm an animal lover in general, and I've bonded with everything from mice to dogs to birds, so cats are no exception. Their personalities are just as individual and idiosyncratic as humans, and you grow to accept their quirks as you do every other member of your family. This one has a penchant for climbing door jambs, despite being declawed and, quite frankly, old. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen, although it scares the hell out of us when it happens. The cat door bangs open, his little body flies through and takes a run at the nearest door jamb, which he shoots up as high as he can crawl before gravity drags him down. He hits the ground running and tears through a room or two, often up a flight of stairs or two (and if the dogs get involved the excitement gets ratcheted up a notch), before coming to a stop with a crazed look in his eyes. He may repeat these steps, or he may just saunter over to the nearest chair and collapse beneath it, looking over as if to say, "What are you looking at?". I love him.

This poor little guy has lived in a lot of different places, often surrounded by people who were indifferent to him at best, before landing in a smallish apartment with two largish dogs. This cat took it in stride and learned to navigate the apartment on surfaces, much as his predecessor Dallas had done. Two more moves have ensued, and one more feline joined in the fray. It's a wonder any of us survived, really. He is now king of his castle with as much space as he could want, if not quite as much freedom as he desires. Every now and then he makes a run for it out the back door, but so far we've beaten him to the fence line every time.

It started as a cold, or so we thought. Sneezing, wheezing, and another Taz-ism we refer to as "pancaking" (put that in your Funk and Wagnalls) where he flattens himself on the floor and makes every effort to cough up a lung. Trips to the vet became more frequent, a variety of medications ensued, a variety of testing ensued, and still the symptoms returned with a vengeance. And then there was blood.

As our apartment, and then our house, became decorated with the contents of Taz' nose, both our disgust and concern grew. And our bank account shrank. Eventually we were referred to the VEC (veterinary emergency clinic, for those of you lucky enough not to know) to see a respiratory specialist. She recommended a rhinoscope at a cost of around $4,500 to determine whether Taz has a sinus tumour. I wasn't sure where the "line" would be, but we drew it there.

Taz has been to three vets and been prescribed every antibiotic known to them. He has rebounded and relapsed, run circles around this house, been force-fed cherry-flavoured medicine (what sadistic company came up with that idea?) by his naked co-owner while crouched in the bathtub, vomited various medicines all over the house, and almost died. We have spent thousands of dollars and many hours shuttling him to and from appointments, feeling torn about spending so much money, and feeling guilty that we weren't doing enough.

Taz started his last round of his last antibiotic today. The next step would be steroid treatments, with additional costs and potentially frightening side effects. We are almost at the end of the road here, with our boy who still seems to have good quality of life and personality to spare. How do you choose to end the life of a wonderful pet with essentially a stuffed-up nose? What do you do when he is sneezing mucus and blood all over your house and sounds like a slurpy kid with a cold at the best of times? It's not a clear-cut illness like cancer, where pain and suffering make the decision clearer.

What do you do?

Taz in his "house"  © Shutterbug