Merge!

I finally merged my IVF blog with this one.  I didn't realize it would be so easy, thanks blogger!  My homrones definitely got the best of me during IVF and I am sure not fully sure I remember the reason I started the IVF blog anyway.  Either way, it's merged, all in one lovely place now.

And now I have a kidney infection

Fun times, really.  Ugh.  Let me start off by saying it has been over a year and a half since I have had any sort of urinary infection.  Why?  Because my doctor has me taking antibiotics after sex...

At my gyn annual appointment two weeks ago my dr said he was going to lower my dose of antibiotics I take after sex and he assured me I would be fine.  Yep, not so much.  Last night I was so cold and had the chills so bad that my teeth were chattering.  I almost hopped off the table when he pressed my kidney.   They gave me some good drugs so I should be fine in a few days.   My gyn said to call if I had any problems with the new dose and he would change it back so hopefully by the time this clears I will have my old dose back and this won't happen again.

Sugar Cutdown

How is this even possible?  Just two pieces of fruit a day and a glass of skim milk put you over the sugar threshold for the day.  I don't think cutting out all milk is a wonderful idea and fruit is obviously a better snack then most other things I can come up with.  I am going to have to ask the dr next time I see him how low he really wants me to be with this.  I generally don't drink soda, eat candy bars, chocolate, cake, and I cut out no sugar added ice cream!  I thought this would be good enough but according to the calorie counter I am still over!   Arg.

The protien front is going much better.  I have a delicious shake in the morning and I don't crave a morning snack anymore which is nice.   Then for snacks throughout the day I am going with string cheese and almonds.  

Airing of my issues

I have issues as we all know.  Several of them today in fact. 

Issue #1- I hate blogging/nesting about my insurance.  I feel GUILTY that I have it when so many don't.  So basically I won't anymore.

Issue #2-  I saw that someone on my IF board wrote that IF was the worst thing in the world.  Now, I am not talking IF sucks today, I hate IF, ect ect because we all have those days, months, years.  This was straight up that IF was the WORST thing.  Um, really?  Even when I was depressed and hopped up on prozac last year I could still recognize that there were worse things in the world.

Here's a quick list...

terminal cancer, terminal cancer when you are leaving kids behind, ALS, your significant other dying in some horrific way, becoming paralyzed in some horrible accident where now only you can't have kids but you also can't move, nuclear war, regular war coming to US soil, living in a third world country with no clean drinking water, and if I called my father I could come up with fifty other things.

The reason he can think of so many is because he would always remind me this when I was a teen.  I wasn't  always a happy teen and needed to be reminded sometimes.   And if my list isn't convincing enough, then you need to take a trip to your local hospital and take a look around and then search war on google and look at those pictures.

Issue #3- Life isn't fair.  It's not and never will be.  My husband kills me in this department sometimes or actually a lot.  Yes, the economy sucks.  It sucks we went to college and can't afford to live in a McMansion, have a ton of kids, and the list goes on and on.  Taking my husband and I as an example again lets look at our past

-awful childhood and basically no family for my husband now that he is older

- rape and abuse for me in college

- chronic pain issues, sometimes to the point of where I want to pull out my hair and be alone for the rest of my life because I just can't take it.   

-infertility and miscarriages

So really, why would you now expect life to be fair?  That just isn't logical.   It never has been fair but a lot of good has come also.  If I was never raped I would not have met my husband.  If my pain levels weren't through the roof some days then I would not be so grateful for the days it isn't.  I don't think this is some sort of divine plan at all, it just IS.  I am sure as shit if you looked at your life there is a lot of bad, but there is good to.   I have to remind my husband of this sometimes on daily basis and then there are days were I tell him I will punch him in the throat if he doesn't stop his shit. 

Those are my issues today, feel free to disagree. 

More good news from the new office

I just got off the phone with the IVF coordinator and their billing department.  First bit of good news is that state employees don't have to pay their program fee!  The program fee was for the injection classes and a few other things, which chances are we won't be attending anyway because we have already been through this so I would have felt like that was a waste of money.  The second is that they do their embryo freezing payment completely different.  We give them a check or credit card number and if there is anything to freeze then they put the payment through.  No waiting for months on end to get our freeze money back, me calling once every other week wondering what the hold up is, ect.  

My insurnace company is calling me back at some point today to let me know how much of my benefit I have left.  I know there is at least enough left for one full cycle so that's all that matters at this moment.  

My one diet change that I am supposed to make is to cut down the sugar and pump up the protien.  That shouldn't be too hard besides my beloved frozen yogurt at night.   I also realized upon some googling that my favorite fruits are the highest in surgar.  Go figure.   

I'm back from my 2nd opinion appt!!!

I am in love!  My new clinic has the nicest staff and the doctor was wonderful.  He looked over my file and we talked about my E2 and FSH levels.  My FSH is fine, but the cycle we did IVF my E2 was pretty high to what it normally is on cd3.  He said hands down that they picked the wrong protocol for me and that he would not have used lupron at all.  The question now is what my E2 high because of a cyst or something else.  I go in for day 3 bloodwork whenever my period decides to come.  If everything looks good and my E2 is down to where it should be then we are off to the races.  If not, he is going to have me do the clomid challenge to see if I do in fact have some egg quality issue that were never discovered before.

 I am so glad I went!  I was really ready to give up all hope when the old RE made the toxic dump comment.  Of course my old office neglected to send me my detailed IVF sheets so I have to get those before he writes up the protocol and then I can get my drugs ordered. ---update--they called me right back and are putting it in the mail tomorrow!

 Whoa, I can't believe we are going to be cycling again, and soon!  Is that a small glimmer of hope I see? 

Pub Troubles

I took Chris out for lunch last Friday to a local pub.  The food was freaking excellent, OMG so delicious.  The problem is that they charged my card once and put two additional holds on the card.  So a 25 dollar lunch has turned into 90 dollars missing out of my separate checking account.  Chris and I each have a separate account that is basically our lunch/gas/other incidentals account that doesn't get very much money in it so its sort of a pain in the ass.   

I called my bank today to ask when these charges were going to come off, they keep telling me they are only pending.  Ok, pending or not the money is still not available to me.   Then I call the pub who tells me to check in a few more days and they pending charges should be gone.  Gee, thanks.  Then I ask her if this is a new policy because after it happened to me, someone I know said it happened to them also.  She said it was a waiter error but that it is their policy to put holds on people's debit cards.  WTF ever.  Again, it's only an extra 60 bucks, not a huge deal but its still annoying.  I will definitely think twice about eating there again and if I do I will be bringing cash.