Brace the mainsail

The thing about getting a fourth opinion is, that you might agree with the fourth opinion. And then you have to do something about it. And then, and then. Hope is painful. Medical treatments raise the stakes, and failed cycles drive those stakes into your back. It’s been two years, nearly, since I was last officially, look-I-have-two-lines pregnant. It’s been miserable, but, as Woody Allen said, life is divided into the miserable and the horrible. Be happy when you’re miserable, at least it isn’t horrible.

H is liaising (or, actually, playing telephone tennis) with Dr 4th Opinion’s secretary. We are seeing about scheduling an HSG, to check the endometriosis hasn’t glued the one-and-only fallopian tube shut (it’s been over a year since anyone last took a peek at it). And then we do LIT. And aspirin, and heparin, and Intralipids. If the tube is damaged, we go straight to IVF. If the tube is fine, perhaps we carry on trying au naturel for a few cycles, then retest to see if the LIT sensitisation is still holding, and then rethink the IVF option if there have been no two-lines. Dr 4th Opinion thinks IVIG, neupogen, clomid, steroids and progesterone support are all unnecessary, especially as the lining of my uterus is not infested with psychotic killer cells looking for embryos to slay.

I can go with this. H can go with this. So we are going with this.

I Just don’t expect any enthusiasm or positive thinking. They burnt out of me long, long ago.

Trauma

No, I’m not dead, nor on holiday, nor did the infrastructure of the known world collapse, taking the internets down with it. I was just… sulking.

Shark week, it has been, and a good brutal one too. It’s day seven now, and I’m still bleeding like a stuck pig, which you’ll agree is not optimal. Cute Ute the Despoiler has decided she rather likes the trick of easing up on the bleeding, waiting until I am lulled into a false sense of security also mere ‘super’ tampons (as opposed to double-plus super extra ultra tampons, which can double as marital aids, frankly), and then yanking out the bathplug and laughing hysterically (ho ho ho) as I leap to my feet with a tiny shriek and flee to the bathroom, blood running briskly down my leg. I am very tired.

On Sunday night, a week ago now, as full of cramps and anxst as can be, I decided to check my medication supply to see if I needed to renew any prescriptions any time soon. There was no urgency. There was a whole box of diclofenac suppositories right there, see? I don’t remember leaving a half-empty box back on the shelf, so it must be a full box… you see where this is headed, right? Because you don’t have the IQ of a house-plant, unlike me. So on Monday morning, in quite heady amounts of pain and starting to spot, I took my slightly-out-of-date repeat prescription form to the GP, to see if they’d renew it urgently, as, obviously, to my mind at least, anyone on this kind of painkiller really rather means it when they say they need it urgently, nu?

I am, personally, absolutely freaked out and humiliated by what happened next.

The receptionist was adamant that they did not renew prescriptions the same day, it would take 48 hours. That there new policy was that GPs were not to be disturbed for anything short of an emergency. That renewing a prescription was NOT an emergency. That they couldn’t renew it anyway, as it was out of date. That I’d need to make an appointment to see a GP. That there were no GP appointments left for that day. That coming in that evening for the emergency appointments first-come-first-served slots was not an option because they were for emergencies, which this was not. At this point, in tears, I asked if it would be considered an emergency if I threw up or fainted while waiting, and the receptionist told me that wasn’t very nice. She actually thought I meant it as some kind of passive-aggressive twatweaselry. I actually meant the question seriously, because I was in pain and freaking out and what the hell else was I supposed to do?

I was crying too hard to speak at this point, and I was in a waiting room full of people, and so I fled home again. H, thank fuck, was still at home himself, and promptly grabbed his coat in one hand, me in the other, and dragged both back to the surgery, where he, very calmly but sternly explained to the receptionist that this was not about some idiot trying to game the system, this was about a person in serious pain, and that he’d seen how the pain affected me, and that I did, actually, need this drug with some urgency, thank you, and after a few minutes bluster she caved completely and arranged for my prescription to be renewed and waiting for me by lunch-time. So in the end all was well.

And I cried all morning, because I had been so very scared I’d have to do Shark Week with inadequate pain-relief, and because the whole thing was so humiliating. I’m thirty-seven. I’m a nice respectable middle-class over-educated lady with a cut-glass accent. I can, if necessary, out-posh the Queen. How was I reduced to weeping hysteria in a GP waiting-room, being treated like a moronic teenager having a tantrum by a GP’s receptionist?

I don’t think I can do this for very much longer – menstruate, that is. It’s giving me shell-shock. Every cycle, also, is doing more damage to my uterus. When I lie on my back and rest my hand on my belly, now, I can feel it even through my ample padding, a great heavy bruised fist buried in my guts, an obscene parody of early pregnancy.

Pissiness

I don’t know why, but I’m feeling angry and sad at the moment.

Maybe it’s because we’re going to get a fourth opinion, things are moving forward, we might be about to do something big and, err, doey, about the infertility/RPL Suck Permanence that is my life. It’s frightening. Suck Permanence may be deeply unpleasant and soul-destroying, but it tends not to put your soul on the line and then jump up and down on it in hobnailed boots.

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling a tad lonely these days. Hello, Gentle Readers. How many of you are five, six, seven, more, years into trying to have a child, and yet still childless? Do you also, just sometimes, feel a bit left-in-a-ditch? Not that anyone wants to leave us in a ditch, of course not. But here is the ditch of years-and-years-and-nothing, and we are in it, and quite a lot of our best and most beloved cheerleaders aren’t, and there are moments when we just feel… slightly… a tad… well, left-in-a-ditch. I must give myself a hearty slap and shake before I start wailing ‘nobody understands meeeeeeeeeeee’. So jejune.

And I’ve not done myself any favours by falling out of the blogging-and-commenting loop the past few months (aha! Favourite punctuation of the day, the hyphen!). Woe is me, self-inflicted woe is me too. Woe!

And then there’s my uterus. My period is due next Monday, possibly Tuesday. I would like a pint of strong coffee and a very large bottle of wine now please. Remind me to tell you about the actual state of said uterus at some point when we’re all either slightly drunk or feeling very strong-stomached. *shudder*

Anyway! And another thing that made me angry today! –

I was in a coffee shop this lunch-time, buying soup, when I overheard two women at the table behind me. One was saying: ‘No, I don’t have kids.’ The other replied, in tones of excitable jollity: ‘Oh, but you should! Kids are great!’

Oh, for the sake of fuck.

I took my soup and my tea and slunk sloshily away. I don’t even know how the first woman reacted. But on behalf of all childless people everywhere, I’d like to say:

Never say ‘You should have kids!’ to a childless person.

Two reasons:

One: They really don’t want kids. They know they don’t want kids, can’t afford kids financially or psychologically or physically, don’t like kids perhaps, and did I mention? Do not want kids. Telling them they should have kids regardless? Anyone who has the intelligence and insight to know they can’t do parenting and then take steps to prevent themselves becoming a parent should be celebrated. I can think of few acts more morally awkward than bringing an unwanted, unloved child into this world. I know many oops! pregnancies have turned out for the best, and the parent has found new reserves of love and strength and dealt with it with grace and courage, even if that includes the courage to let the child go to another family. But then, so many more (in my own family, even, and by the dozen) have turned out, if not actually horrifically, then into low-grade, dreary, resentful misery which sets up a whole new generation of neurotic and damaged people to be unwilling and shitty parents. It’s just not fair to do that. It’s not fair to wish parenting on people who bloody well know it’s not something they can handle. Think of the children! A person who does not want kids, and therefore does not have them, should have their hand shaken, and that is the end of that.

Two: They really do want kids. Best case scenario, they have only recently started trying for a baby, and will have one very soon, and your thoughtless squeaky remark is merely utterly pointless and bossy. They’re already on that! FFS! More likely, they want kids, but can’t have them. They are still single, perhaps, so just rub that the fuck in why don’t you? Or they’ve been trying for a while. You know you’ve just basically slapped them in the face? Or maybe they’ve been trying for years, or had a miscarriage? Well, now, would you go up to a car-crash victim in a wheelchair and burble: ‘Legs! They’re great! You should try having some!’? Would you skip past a homeless man shrieking: ‘Houses are fabulous, dude! I love my house!’? Would you prance up to a widow or widower and chortle: ‘Isn’t marriage great? Why aren’t you married? Try being married!’? No? But you just did the moral equivalent, you turnip-head.

Excuse me; I am going to fume picturesquely in the middle distance.

Opinions are like glands. I’ve got lots of both.

So, my thyroid. Back at the end of last summer, among the bazillion tests Dr Expensive was gleefully ordering, my GP and I decided to recheck my thyroid, as the last test was taken in 2007.

So I got needled, as per, and then played telephone tennis with the nurse at the practice for a few weeks ending in a no-score draw, and then I forgot about it because Life. And then I saw my mother at New Year and the subject of her thyroiditis came up, and I thought oh! My thyroid! And I needed to refill my Metformin prescription anyway, so I asked the GP to just ‘fess up.

My thyroid, it is normal.

Seriously. TSH is 1.14 mu/L. Free T4 is 14.1 pmol/L. Given that reference ranges for ‘normal’ are respectively 0.4-5 and 10-23, this is very normal. Hell, the TSH is not only under 5, it’s under the magic 2 recommended for ladies attempting ensprogulation. So, dear internets, given that you’re cleverer than my doctors, is it worth having my thyroid antibodies tested, or is the fact TSH and T4 are perfectly fine finio fine fine?

Anyway, it sort of cheered me up.

And! H has found another doctor specialising in reproductive immunology, and has contacted him, and has made an appointment, and we’re going to see him on Thursday. For a 4th opinion! Which is not in the least bit weirding me out and making me sound neurotic as a bag of wet cats!

If he recommends medicated + Clomid DIY cycles ad infinitum, I will climb his freakin’ curtains and make him eat the pelmet.

There is nothing wrong with me that another holiday wouldn’t cure

Hello, Gentle Readers! How was your New Year celebration? Celebraty? Excellent. Not-so-celebraty? I am so sorry, forget I mentioned it – unless you want to vent, of course, in which case knock yourself out.

My New Year’s Eve was actually quite nice. I was at my mother’s, as were an assortment of siblings and and aunts&uncles and cousins and niecephews. We had dinner, we played cards and board-games until my head fell right off from sheer exhaustion, and my sisters took to sitting up all night every night playing the guitar and singing Leonard Cohen (they are, respectively, 24 and 36. Well now). Nobody actually fought. There may have been a little frustrated weeping in bathrooms. One uncle, who can occasionally be an immature sulky bastard, behaved like an immature sulky bastard, which I’m afraid I found hilarious because he was sulking at us all, very pointedly, because the 9-year-old had cheeked him. The 9-year-old. *snort*. Oh, and there was a truly unpleasant incident involving a cat, worming tablets, cat-bodily-fluids, worms, and my having a migraine, which ended in bleach and cleansing with fire. Happy New Year, start as you mean to go on, eh? Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

And then as soon as we got back home again on New Year’s Day, it was time to do laundry and find my work ID, and I spent the rest of the week wondering why I hadn’t had the nous to book the first week of January off, like absolutely everyone else had done.

I am so tired.

Next time, on Nuts in May: my thyroid, and progress on the Fourth Opinion.