In My Absence…

Wow – what a crazy several weeks.  It’s been hard to keep up with everything.

So, to get you current to this exact moment on the fertility front: I am reaching the end of my last IUI.  My last attempt at pregnancy.  150 IU/day follistim.  Ganirelix and Menopur round out the daily injections.  Since last Monday, I’ve had 3 ultrasounds and 4 blood draws.  Looks like 4-5 follicles might make it to the end.  We did the sperm vial hand off – picked it up from the old clinic and delivered it to the new in a cooler full of dry ice.  I also had to dig out my cystic fibrosis genetic screening from 2005 because this clinic requires it.  And my mush brain screwed up the blood draw for it – I’ve had so much happening that I apparently gave the lab the wrong lab slip and I never actually had a CF blood draw last week – when I thought I did.

So, my next ultrasound is tomorrow morning.  I would imagine shortly after this, I’ll be ready for the IUI and we’ll trigger with Ovidrel for that.  So, some different things this time.  Bloodwork, more monitoring, ganirelix, ovidrel – all different.  We’ll see if it works.

It’s also been a period of incredible ups and downs.  When I last posted, I was mentally in the best place I’ve been in a long time.  I was exercising 6 days a week and on a strict diet.  I was happy, and felt better about myself than I had in a long time.  I was loving my daily routine and really enjoying my trips to the gym.  And that shit just fell apart.  One night, The Wife and I got in a HUGE….fight is the wrong word, but also the right word.  It was terrible.  And then I went out of town.  Nothing was any better when I came back.  Several days passed and it didn’t get any better.  I was beginning to think that this might be the end and started half heartedly trying to figure out what happens next.  Then there was another blow out.  As much as it sucked,  that one actually seemed to move things forward and improve things some.  Things have been improved since then.  But, a few things came out of all of this.  First, The Wife is done with all of this fertility stuff.  She’s done, over it, and ready to stop and move on after this cycle.  Like it or not, our finances are with her, so I don’t have a choice in the matter.  But, I kept the door open to revisit this in 6 months.  We agreed on that – even though it was somewhat reluctant on her part.

The other thing that came out of it was that it ruined my diet, exercise routine, and everything that felt good.  This solid week of fighting and silence was just like getting  beat up over and over – and it exhausted me mentally and physically.   And it took everything I had to get up and go to work and come home everyday.  Everything else was extra and I couldn’t manage it.  I lost all of the good feeling, excitement, and drive I had.  And now I am just tired all the time and it’s incredibly hard to find whatever it was that was giving me that motivation and drive before.  And that makes me sad.

So, that’s the update.  I am going to call the hypnotherapist and see if I can get a follow up appointment to help me get things back on track.  I am generally more optimistic about this IUI than I have been in a while, although I am more than aware that my chances for success are not good, given my history.