Immunology Updates

Up on the new blog.

A post recapping our second LIT experience and another one on today's blood draw for our retest.

Back Again, Sick Again

So that was *fun*. I thought my cold was nearly done with me, but apparently, it liked flying so much it decided to get comfortable and stay a while longer. And this time it really got comfortable. Which meant I got really uncomfortable. And of course I just *love* traveling while I'm sick, especially with a head cold. Especially the pressure changes part of flying with a stuffed head. Lots and lots of *fun*!

Plus I got to get 8 more injections of my husband's white blood cells. Which for some reason aren't bothering me nearly as much as they did last time. So that's a silver lining. Now I just have to hope that my LAD retest comes back over 50 in 3 weeks. Oh yeah, and I have to schedule my next appointment with the vampires to give blood for that test.

Like I said, lots and lots of *fun*. Isn't that what the holiday season is all about?

Crazy Busy

OMG I have been going insane being busy the past few days! A lot of it is just regular stuff, but that keeps me busy enough, and on top of the regular stuff I'm preparing for my second LIT treatment, knowing my arms will be out of commission for a few days. And then The Mister sprained his ankle yesterday. OUCH! He couldn't put *any* weight on it yesterday, and we were both worried he had fractured something. So that necessitated a trip to Urgent Care. Luckily, the X-rays didn't show any breaks or fractures, and the latest thinking is that it is okay to use the foot, as long as it doesn't hurt too much. Of course he's on ibuprofen, and the doctor gave him permission to take a higher dose, so he's much better today, but still! And I'm still in the getting over it phase of my cold. Ugh! What a week!

My voice survived two music classes on Monday, and another one on Tuesday. I can't remember if I'be mentioned that I'm doing monthly music with my friend Gwyn's daughter and one of her friends. It's much more layed back than the kinder classes, but still a lot of fun.

Anyhoo, with all of that, I haven't had much time to work on my new blog, but it will get done soon.

Oh, and I'm seriously considering getting a lap before we start TTCAL again. I talked to Ms. Bird about it at acupuncture, and she's in favor of not assuming that everything is structurally okay. So I'd appreciate any opinions or advice anyone has to offer on that topic. Particularly when it comes to what sort of indications I need to have to get a doctor to think it's warranted, and/or to get my insurance to cover it. TIA!

Changes Brewing

This week had been quietly busy. Quiet because I got a cold and basically put myself to bed for a few days. But busy because, well, my new iPad arrived and all I wanted to do was play with it. Plus I lost my voice, which meant I was keeping busy with things that didn't involve talking, like playing with my new toy. :-)

Then it was The Mister's birthday, and I got him a new toy of his own--a Kindle. And around the same time, we nuked Ubuntu on my computer, and tried a couple of other open source OS's, including Ubuntu Unity which sucked and made my machine run even slower than its usually crawling speed. Plus we couldn't figure out how to get the wireless Internet working, so that was a total bust. Then I tried Linux Mint, which I loved right away, probably because it has such a beautiful, green launch screen. And we were able to get the wireless Internets workings. Yay!

But then I went to update Firefox, and the next time I tried to boot up I got a fatal error. So now we are re-installing Linux Mint, only it's a new version and it doesn't have the pretty green launch screen anymore. :-(

And all this time, I've been playing with my new iPad, discovering what it can do. Lots of cool stuff, but the only thing that will effect you is that the Wordpress app finally tipped the scales and I'm moving my blog over there, just as soon as I can get my computer working to complete some of the stuff that is just to cumbersome on my lovely, new iPad.

My cold is finally better, and my voice is coming back, which is good, since I'm teaching music tomorrow, which effectively means I'll be singing for an hour! Eek! Wish me luck!

Oh, and bookmark my new address for when I move, so you don't miss anything. (You'll get more reminders, don't worry.) My new digs are here. Or if you want I written out, here: http://aninvisiblemother.wordpress.com/. But don't try to go there yet. I'm keeping it private until I have all the pages set up and all the wonky links corrected. All my updates will still be here. I promise, you won't miss anything by not being able to access that site yet! I just want to fix the links before I let you come over there. I'm a perfectionist. Shoot me.

BTW, does anyone know how to set up an automatic redirect so that people who put in this address will get redirected to the new one?

And one more thing, for those of you who are wondering, my LIT reaction is basically gone. I still have a little bruising and some very small bumps, but I'm calling it pretty much over.

Changes

Things have been changing. Inside me, around me, in a lot of ways. It affects everything. No, I'm not pregnant. This cycle failed. Not sure what went wrong, but I never really felt unmistakably pregnant like the previous 3 times, so I'm treating it as a failed cycle. I'm still very disappointed--I had my hopes really high--but it's different than if I had believed beyond a doubt that I was pregnant.

What's been changing is my attitude towards myself and my life and especially this blog. I had 4 weeks of pure happiness that started with the vacation The Mister and I took at the end of May. I felt like I'd reset the clock and gone back the the hopeful place before all this infertility and miscarriage stuff took over my life last spring. Then my MIL popped up and triggered more childhood trauma and spoiled the peace. And then I got a BFN. Which made for a really hard week last week. But I think I'm recovering better than I would have a few months ago.

During the weeks I was in that place of hope, I found that I didn't want to blog. I didn't miss it. I did read along with some of the blogs I've been following, but I gave myself permission not to read every post, and not to comment unless I had something to say. Because, unfortunately, trying to keep up with everyone and read every post and comment as much as possible had become a chore. I was trying to be so conscientious about my reading and commenting that it was taking several hours a day, and leaving me exhausted. When I didn't miss blogging on our vacation, I decided not to pick it back up at the same level when we got home. I cut back to about thirty minutes a day (an hour at the very most) on the blogs, and I was much happier.

This probably sounds crazy to a lot of you, but it seems to be true for me. The less time I spend on-line, no matter how supportive and like-minded a community I'm participating in, the happier I am. So I backed off for my own sanity. No disrespect meant to any of you--you are all great people with really interesting blogs--but I need to live my life IRL in order to be happy.

I doubt I'll be posting or updating very frequently, so if that bugs you and you want to stop following, no hard feelings. I'll definitely still read the blogs I'm already following, although I won't be actively looking for new ones. And when something really moves me, I will comment. But I'm going to try to keep it in balance with the rest of my life. So I'll probably also be a lot quieter than I was up until about a month ago.

Quick Update

• Things are wonderful. I'm very focused on life in the real world, and it's really helping my mood--hence my silence on the blogs. I'll probably continue this way for a while, as it seems to be better for my mental health.
• Finally had my follow up with Dr. R. and got cleared to start TTCAL immediately. Full steam ahead for this cycle!
• I'm on a full-out anti-inflammatory protocol including diet, supplements, and a steroid once I'm pregnant.
• Feeling very hopeful and trying to focus on the positive, rather than everything that could go wrong.
• To those who asked where we vacationed, the pictures were taken at various spots along the Northern California coast.

Immune Results!

Dr. R. e-mailed me with my immune results yesterday. (Have I mentioned how much I love my doctor? He e-mailed me, even though I have an appointment with him in 2 weeks!) My NK cells and Antiphospholipids were "OK". (Insert Big-Sigh-of-Relief here.) However the third test, which is called the Tumor Necrosis Factor and measures inflammation, was high. The fix? Eliminate certain foods (dairy and gluten being major culprits) and take high doeses of DHA. My reaction: It's that simply? Really? Yay!!! Will something that simple really work???? Shut up, self, stop worrying. Believe! Please let it work! Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleeeeease!!!!!

I am incredibly relieved. After months of worrying about the possible effects of intralipds, it looks like I won't need them after all. Diet and supplements are something I can do. It won't be easy, but if it means I get a baby, it will be worth it!

Off to do my happy dance, again! :-)

How was your Monday?

Hope Returning

Thanks everyone for all your support on my last post! It really helped! I am feeling much better and much more hopeful for my own chances of a healthy pregnancy, soon.

Gwyn was very sensitive to how difficult her news might be for me when she told me, even telling me that if I needed to spend less time with her for a while she would understand. I won't go into details, but she has had her own fertility journey and is somewhat of a mentor to me (she already has one living child). So my worries weren't so much about the immediate future, as about the long term, if I don't have an ongoing pregnancy, soon, myself. I know I won't have to worry about conversations suddenly turning pregnancy-only, and that Gwyn really understands what it's like to be happy for someone else and sad for yourself.

In other news, The Mister and I have started talking about names. It feels like a really hopeful thing to be able to talk about names and consider them. In fact, I'm feeling really hopeful, overall. Some of the optimism and hope I felt a year ago, when we were first planning to get pregnant, has returned. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm no longer affected by grief or envy, just that it is now tempered with more hope. I'm allowing myself to feel hopeful, to daydream a little bit, to imagine a baby again. I'm tired of living with my heart closed. It just makes me miserable in the present. So I'm trying to enjoy the present by hoping for the future. (That sounds really strange, but it's the best description I can give.)

I also had my first Mayan Abdominal Massage session yesterday. I went, mainly for some digestive issues, but I know it will help with making sure my reproductive organs are optimally positioned, as well. It felt really good to have someone touch me like that. I used to get massages regularly, but since I've been spending so much money on acupuncture, I stopped. I think this will be really good for me, on a lot of levels.

Oh! and I also wanted to mention that (as many of you probably already know) Blogger went nuts last week and I lost a few comments. I did read them, before they disappeared, but I don't know how to reconstruct them. So if your comments didn't appear to publish or seem to have gotten deleted in the past couple of days, it's because of Blogger. I didn't personally delete anything.

Appointment Made

First, I want to thank everyone who offered their support over the last few days. I really, really appreciated it. It especially meant a lot to me that you went to bat for me when you thought I was being bullied, and that you told me I had handled the situation well in the end. Thank you all so very much!!!!

Now, on to my news: once The Mister gets on something it happens really fast. He's got his appointment for the Sperm DNA Fragmentation Assay later this week. He has to go to a guy doctor to make his, um, deposit, but the results will be sent directly to Dr. R. So once he's had his appointment, we should be able to schedule our follow-up to go over the results of all the testing on both of us and make a new game plan.

We have also made plans for a short get-away right before Memorial Day Weekend. The Mister will be taking a week off, and we'll be driving to a scenic location and staying a few nights in a cozy B&B. I even got "permission" from Ms. Bird to go off my diet during that time--she thinks the chance to get away will be worth it for us. So the earliest we will be starting TTCAL again will be June. I'm actually okay with that. Much as I want to have a baby, soon, it's also really good to have some time off between pregnancies, to set some things in better order.

This weekend has been surprisingly difficult, and I'm having a PJ day today. I do need to get going, though, as I have acupuncture in a few hours, and then a support group to attend.

On a side note, I have been exploring and researching foster care a bit over the past few days. I've had an interest in fostering for years, and The Mister and I have discussed becoming foster parents someday. I'm not actually thinking of it in terms of fost/adopt, since I know that the goal of foster care is usually reunification. It is more as an adjunct to our other family building goals--a way to reach out and help more children than we might otherwise be able to raise from infancy to adulthood. Challenging as foster parenting is, I think it would also be very rewarding.

Why I've Been so Quiet

I haven't been blogging much about what's been going on in my life lately, because it's been really hard to find the words. How do you say, on a blog about grief and loss, that life is, well, wonderful? Really, truly, I don't believe I have ever felt better in my life. Even the "bad" days I have had in the past week have been nowhere near the depths of despair and depression I was experiencing a couple of weeks ago. Things are truly fabulous! But how can I say that, without sounding annoying and insincere?

The thing is, I have been living with the weight of my childhood trauma pressing on me for as long as I can remember. A week ago, a couple days after I had an especially intense EMDR session in therapy, that weight lifted. I feel free. I can handle the stress of dealing with RPL now, because I am no longer looking at in through the eyes of a traumatized child. I am finally have a normal ability to cope with stress. It doesn't make the stress go away, but the painful filter of the past is gone, which makes facing the future much easier.

So this is where I am right now. Many things have gone right in the past week. I sold some things that have been taking up physical and emotional space in my life for several years. Ms. Bird had to cancel an appointment and I didn't even miss it. I took my ear balls out a week ago, and I haven't missed them, either. (To put that in perspective, I've been wearing ear balls almost constantly since Christmas, and if I did have them out for more than a few hours, I was a wreck.)

On Friday, I called up a friend, a woman I used to work for, to get back in touch. I really hope that we will be able to get together soon, but even if we don't, just talking to her make a big difference. I knew I would be able to tell her my story. I don't think she'd told me hers before, but there were hints that were easy enough to piece together from hindsight. Turns out we do have a lot in common in our reproductive stories. Just hearing her story and sharing mine helped so much.

If the real-life pregnancies are more difficult, the real-life support is equally potent. Even with someone like this friend, someone who is a talker, and not the type to sit down and just listen and cry with you, there was still the feeling of underlying support. It was tangible.

One thing she said really made an impression on me. It was something like, "Don't close yourself off from testing." At the time, she was referring to prenatal screening, but hearing her say that jarred me into the realization that it will be worth getting the immune tests run. The information I gain from them will be valuable. I wanted to be sure I actually wanted the information before I went in for the blood draw, because too much information can be a bad thing. Now, I feel confident that getting the tests run is the right decision. I'm ready to handle whatever information they may yield. (That's another huge shift from how I was feeling just a couple of weeks ago.)

Thanks again to everyone who has shared your stories with me about immune testing, treatment, and related decision-making! It helped me to put my own choices and decisions into perspective.

Happy Week, Harder Day

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to offer support this week. To all the folks from the LFCA, your insights are much appreciated. I'm seriously considering going for a second opinion to help myself make this decision. There's an RPL specialist in my area that I didn't know about last fall, when I was first looking for a doctor, so I'm going to see about having a consult with her. Hopefully that will help me decide what direction to take.

Also, thank you so much to those of you who took the time to comment on my Ugly Duckling post. I really appreciated hearing from each of you.

This week has been a very good week, but today has been harder. I'm not sure why. Still, even though I am feeling worried and sad and unsure of what to do next, I don't feel like I'm drowning in all those emotions. They are still hard, but I'm managing to ride the waves and not get sucked under (even if I do get an occasional face-full of the salt-water of grief). For me, that is just huge progress.

So that's where I'm at. Hopefully the bloggy-writing juices will start flowing again soon, and I'll have something more interesting to post . . .

Music Update

Thanks so much for your supportive comments yesterday. I helps to know that you're all thinking of me. Things are better today. The Mister and I had a nice evening together last night, and then I had good night's sleep. I woke up feeling a much better this morning.

I managed to pull off the music lesson this afternoon, although one of the games I had planned had to be scrapped. It was a partner dance that I thought would be easy, but it disintegrated into a mess of "I don't want him/her," which I thought would be resolved when the kids figured out that the point was to change partners. Unfortunately, then the other half of the class started saying, "I want to stay with my original partner," so I gave up. I didn't think I could explain how it would work, and I'd lost the class's attention, anyway. Luckily, I had some extra songs planned, just in case, and one of them turned out to be a hit. Probably because it was supposed to say, "Who fed the chickens?" and I kept messing it up and saying, "Who stole the chickens?" Of course the kids thought that was hilarious! Anything to keep them entertained, even my mistakes. :-)

Then, the new sub told me that the original classroom teacher is going to be back on Monday. I sincerely hope this is the last change of teachers these kids have to go through. It must be really hard on them, constantly having to adjust to a different teacher and a different teaching style. I'm disappointed for myself, though, because the original teacher seemed really hard to connect with last fall, and I need to set up a meeting with her to go over some paperwork. Both the subs have been easier for me to work with than I remember the original teacher being. Oh well, I'll do the best I can . . . *shrug*

What Does This Message Mean?

This morning, I clicked over a blog I've been following for months and got this message:

Now I wonder, what happened? Did she delete her entire blog? Did she go completely private (not just password protected, but completely private)? What happened?

The teaser of the post in my Reading List was sensitive, so I can imagine she might have gone private. I don't want to publish it here without her permission, but I do want to send her my love and support. I know I can send that without commenting on her blog, but I wish I could tell her--I want her to know I'm thinking of her.

BBH @ PartlyCloudyWithAChanceOfSunshine, if you're reading this, know that I'm sending you huge (((HUGS))). You are in my thoughts and prayers.

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AFM, no real updates here. Still semi-anxious, still using Circle+Bloom to relax, mostly just finishing lining up all my ducks so that if we do get a BFP this cycle I can rest as much as possible in the early weeks.


I do want to thank all my readers for your insights and support on these two posts last week Wigging Out and Who's Life Is It?. I'm still trying to figure out this whole, blogging etiquette thing. When is it important to say, "Thanks for the support!" and when do you just assume that your commenters know you appreciate them?

TIA for any insights into my questions in this post. ;-)

Feeling Optimistic and Supported

This week has been really busy. My doctor's appointment on Tuesday was brief, but informative. Dr. R. took the time to explain my lab results and what he wanted to prescribe. He answered all my questions clearly and simply. He clarified my diagnosis as polycystic ovaries caused by insulin resistance. When I asked if I had PCOS he said it was, "just a touch." He explained that PCOS is a broad diagnosis, and although I am on the spectrum, I don't have the full blown syndrome. That felt like good news.

I am also relieved that I don't have Factor V Leiden. Dr. R. seems to think the even being homozygous for MTHFR C677T is less serious than being heterozygous for FVL. He said I would only need the Love.nox for the first trimester, and that the Folgard and baby aspirin would prevent another early miscarriage. The Met.formin should help with that, too. I'm not looking forward to having to do self injections, but I certainly think it's worth it for the sake of having a healthy pregnancy.

I'm surprised at just how much I'm willing to do to stay pregnant next time. A year ago, I was the kind of person who avoided western doctors and treated everything I could at home. Now here I am taking 4 prescription meds, plus several over-the-counter meds and supplements! I hardly recognize myself!

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My initial visit with my acupuncturist was on Wednesday and it went really well, too. She confirmed that Dr. R's prescriptions and recommendations were on target for my diagnoses. She also suggested adding one more supplement--fish oil (EPA/DHA combo). She's going to add some herbs at some point, as well, but she wants me to get used to all the new meds/supplements first. She basically said that my diet is already pretty good, and just needs a little tweaking, which was nice to hear. The acupuncture itself turned out to be quite soothing. She was very responsive to my reactions. There were some points she skipped or adjusted because I found them too uncomfortable. But for the most part, once the needles were in, they didn't bother me. I'm looking forward to having weekly visits for the next few months.

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Yesterday, I spend the afternoon with an acquaintance whom I've known for about 3 years. She has a 3 year old daughter, but before that pregnancy, she had an early miscarriage. It turns out we had a lot to talk about, and it felt really good to talk with someone who has had a similar experience. We both really enjoyed our visit, and plan to get together more in the future. We even live on the same block. I think we have a chance of becoming good friends. It's really nice to have the support of someone who had "been there" in real life.

Quick Update

Saw Dr. R (my RE) yesterday to go over blood work. Good news is I don't have FVL. Not so good news, I'm homozygous for MTHFR C677T, and I have low iron and low vit. D. So now off to get more drugs: iron, vit. D3, folgard, and baby aspirin to start now, and heparin and progesterone for once I get a BFP. Seeing the acupuncturist for my initial visit later today. Now off to volunteer at the farm--hopefully before most of the mommies and kiddos arrive.