As I mentioned before, I had a laparoscopy (hereafter referred to as a "lapo") in 2006. On Valentine's Day, to be precise. 5 years, no babies, and plenty of pain later, I'm having my second one tomorrow. My gynaecologist, Dr Swift, will check out whether my endo has come back (probably), and if there's any other reason I might not be getting pregnant. Popular theories include "you're thinking about it too much", "you're too stressed", and "it's all in your head".
Newsflash: telling an already stressed person who is already over-analysing everything to chill out and stop thinking about it is just not going to help, and will probably make it worse. This applies to every situation in which a person is stressed and over-analysing, and especially so for someone trying to get pregnant.
Here's the thing: conception is still quite mysterious. While pretty much everyone knows the basic story - sperm meets egg, has a few laughs, etc - there are so many factors that contribute to the success or failure of this simple mechanic that it's amazing anyone gets pregnant, ever. For every "I knew someone who couldn't get pregnant for years, then they (had a holiday/took this pill/had sex on a hilltop under a full moon) and BAM!" story, there are plenty more where that didn't work, because (and this may come as a surprise to some of you) EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.
The journey I am undertaking with my husband in an effort to get pregnant is a personal one. Just because I'm sharing it here, that doesn't mean I'm asking for advice, you see? Sympathy, empathy, constructive suggestions, sure - but telling me what I should be thinking or feeling is not going to help and will probably just annoy me.
For a hilarious and touching commentary on infertility from a male point of view, please read "Inconceivable" by Ben Elton (don't bother with the movie version, Maybe Baby: I love Hugh Laurie but the book version is much funnier). I can't plug this book enough. Ben Elton is usually top-notch, but he really just gets it with this book, because he went through it himself.
Lapo tomorrow. I'll keep you all posted. I don't have my follow-up until the 18th, however, so any detailed analysis won't be undertaken until then.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Health
This was originally posted on my personal blog on 14 September 2010.
This post is going to talk about various health-related things, including my endo. Feel free to skip it.
So my next endo op is scheduled for February 1st. It's a little way away but my gynaecologist goes gallavanting off somewhere over December and January. In the mean time, though, I'm having a lot of problems with migraines and endo pain and just generally feeling pretty shitty. My GP says he can't give me anything for my migraines because I'm trying to get pregnant and that I should just deal with it. When I was looking at my health insurance provider's website to check out what would be covered for my next op, I noticed that Naturopathy is covered so on a whim I booked a Naturopath consultation and had that this evening.
I'd never seen a Naturopath before so I wasn't sure what to expect. The first thing I noticed was her amazing voice. She had a Canadian accent, I think she was maybe Chinese-Canadian or Philippine-Canadian, and she had a beautifully modulated voice. It's what I would call a therapist voice. I immediately felt calmer and reassured. The consultation was in a room that was lit only with a lamp so it didn't feel like a harsh doctor-style consultation. She told me that she would ask me a lot of questions and that they might not seem related, and that she wanted me to let her know if there was anything I wasn't comfortable doing or talking about or was unsure of because she wanted to make sure I felt happy enough to come back.
The consultation was part doctor, part therapist - she let me just talk about a lot of stuff, especially relating to my fertility, which was really nice. I broke down and bawled my eyes out at one point and she just patiently waited for me to get myself back together and then reassured me that my feelings were normal.
Once we'd done the initial discussion she told me that she thought I had too much damp heat in me, that my spleen was squished from sitting down, and that the rising heat was contributing to my migraines...And I thought Here we go, airy-fairy time. But that was the only airy-fairy bit: after that we talked about improving my diet by eating more protein and veges and less white bread, and getting 20 minutes of exercise in the sun each day. She gave me a couple of supplements to help with my endo symptoms and recommended weekly acupuncture, and we agreed that the short-term goal is to get me pregnant before I need my next endo op.
One of the things I was really impressed with was that she didn't mention my weight at all. I actually went in prepared for a fight over that (completed with this letter) but it simply wasn't an issue. The diet and exercise stuff was what I was already trying to improve and was expecting her to bring it up, but the fact that she didn't relate that back to my weight was lovely.
Unfortunately with the dosage of the supplements she's given me on top of my pregnancy multi-vitamin I'm now taking 7 pills a day, eep! My plan at the moment is to follow her plan with the acupuncture, supplements etc until February, at which point I'll reassess if it's helping and worth it or not. I'm hoping that, if I can show Dave that it helps, I might be able to get him to see her too. We'll see!
Failure
This was originally posted on my personal blog on 27 April 2010.
This post is about endo, periods, and making babies. Don't read if that bothers you for some reason. You have been warned.
One of the (many) reasons I put off getting married again for so long was because normally once you get married people start asking when you're going to have a baby, as if it's some kind of natural progression: boy meets girl, boy and girl get married, girl has baby. And of course, now that we are married, I'm getting that question a lot more than I used to. I usually give a vague, brushing-off type answer, because it's too painful for me to talk about it and anyway most people aren't that interested. The fact is, we've been trying for over four years now with no success.
Man, I tell you, if there's an early pregnancy sign out there, I've felt it, convinced myself that this time it's really happened, and cried over how delusional I am when I fail, again, to get pregnant. I was so sure this month, I really felt different...and yet I failed. Again.
Yes, failed. That's how I feel each month: like a failure, like I'm somehow failing at being a woman. I've wanted to have children for as long as I can remember - I'm certainly not one of those rare women who has no interest in having children at all. I love babies. I instinctively want to help crying children. I have lists of names or girls and boys. I have strong opinions about how my children will be raised. Why is it so damn hard? Plenty of people make it look easy. Most of my cousins have already reproduced. I have one cousin who is 2 months older than me who has five kids and is currently pregnant again. Why is it so easy for her and so hard for me?
I guess after we get back from Malaysia I should make an appointment to see my OB/GYN. Apart from an op to try to cure my endo (which failed, I'm sure), we haven't had any intervention so far. But I've been putting that off for a bunch of reasons, partly because my husband has also been sick, but the most important reason is that getting help with producing a child is so bloody expensive. Also, once you start down that path, it can get pretty invasive. My first marriage failed, in part, because we had started seeking help. I'm also not convinced that paying for expensive medical intervention to have a child of my own, when there are so many disadvantaged children waiting to be adopted, is the best idea. And if we're paying exorbitant amounts for IVF, for example, how much more of a failure will I feel each time it's not successful? My husband doesn't really like the idea of adopting, though, and that has its own expenses and privacy invasions. So I guess seeing my OB/GYN is Step 1.
But now that my husband's illness is under control, I've run out of flimsy excuses. Also, I'm getting old. I had it all planned out in high school, you know: two kids, first a boy and then a girl, by the time I was thirty. Now here I am, looking down the barrel of 31, without either of those fantasy children. If I don't act soon, it may be too late and too risky. I think I'll make that appointment in the morning.
In which I introduce myself
Fair warning: everything on this blog is going to be quite personal, and I will discuss medical procedures, conception, and periods. If you're at all squeamish or simply not interested, my generic personal blog is over here. Alternatively, have some cute.
Still here? Right. I'm Jen, and I have endometriosis. Let's get that out of the way first, shall we?
Endometriosis is so little talked about that my browser dictionary says I've spelled it wrong. This is probably because it's related to periods. Nice Girls don't talk about periods. Endometriosis is a medical condition in which the cells that normally grow in the lining of my uterus grow in other parts of my abdominal cavity, such as my ovaries, bowel, and so on. Unfortunately, these misplaced cells still react to hormone changes like their sisters in my uterus - they engorge through my cycle, and then try to bleed away when I get my period. But they're in the wrong place to do that, so they create little pockets called adhesions where they grow and bleed and grow and bleed. This is understandably quite painful. I get agonising cramps and pain around my period, but also when I'm ovulating, and at other, seemingly-random times throughout my cycle. I'm going to abbreviate it to "endo" from now on because it's much easier to type.
I was first diagnosed with suspected endo at the end of 2005, however, I've had it my whole life. I've always had painful, heavy periods, but I just thought that was normal. Apparently it is not normal to suffer from crippling pain each time you get a period. Who'd have thunk? After my GP suggested I had endo, I was referred to an obstetrician/gynaecologist. Dr Swift. Dr Swift is well-known on the Gold Coast as an endo specialist. He did an ultrasound, and some poking and prodding, and declared that he didn't actually think I had endo, but he wanted to do a laparoscopy to be sure. He though the laparoscopy would take about an hour. It ended up taking about four hours and I had to stay in overnight. Afterwards he said it was some of the worst endo he had seen.
That was 5 years ago, on Valentine's Day 2006. My endo pain went away...for a little while. But it's gradually gotten worse and worse, until I'm back at the level I was before surgery. Even worse, I have not managed to fall pregnant in that time. I have endometriosis-associated infertility, which is a fancy way of saying "women with endo are more likely to have trouble with their fertility, but we have no freaking idea why". After 5 years of trying, we're way past the point where we should be looking at some form of intervention, so we're getting the ball rolling on that now. Hence, this blog.
So, that's me. I'll be discussing my journey through endo treatment and fertility treatment, whatever we decide. Blogging may be sporadic, and will almost certainly be more personal than my parents would be comfortable with...But it's also a kind of therapy for me, getting it all out, you know?
Oh, one final thing, in case you were wondering...I called this blog "Moments of Irrationality" because when I get hormonally-imbalanced I get irrational. Simple as that!
Still here? Right. I'm Jen, and I have endometriosis. Let's get that out of the way first, shall we?
Endometriosis is so little talked about that my browser dictionary says I've spelled it wrong. This is probably because it's related to periods. Nice Girls don't talk about periods. Endometriosis is a medical condition in which the cells that normally grow in the lining of my uterus grow in other parts of my abdominal cavity, such as my ovaries, bowel, and so on. Unfortunately, these misplaced cells still react to hormone changes like their sisters in my uterus - they engorge through my cycle, and then try to bleed away when I get my period. But they're in the wrong place to do that, so they create little pockets called adhesions where they grow and bleed and grow and bleed. This is understandably quite painful. I get agonising cramps and pain around my period, but also when I'm ovulating, and at other, seemingly-random times throughout my cycle. I'm going to abbreviate it to "endo" from now on because it's much easier to type.
I was first diagnosed with suspected endo at the end of 2005, however, I've had it my whole life. I've always had painful, heavy periods, but I just thought that was normal. Apparently it is not normal to suffer from crippling pain each time you get a period. Who'd have thunk? After my GP suggested I had endo, I was referred to an obstetrician/gynaecologist. Dr Swift. Dr Swift is well-known on the Gold Coast as an endo specialist. He did an ultrasound, and some poking and prodding, and declared that he didn't actually think I had endo, but he wanted to do a laparoscopy to be sure. He though the laparoscopy would take about an hour. It ended up taking about four hours and I had to stay in overnight. Afterwards he said it was some of the worst endo he had seen.
That was 5 years ago, on Valentine's Day 2006. My endo pain went away...for a little while. But it's gradually gotten worse and worse, until I'm back at the level I was before surgery. Even worse, I have not managed to fall pregnant in that time. I have endometriosis-associated infertility, which is a fancy way of saying "women with endo are more likely to have trouble with their fertility, but we have no freaking idea why". After 5 years of trying, we're way past the point where we should be looking at some form of intervention, so we're getting the ball rolling on that now. Hence, this blog.
So, that's me. I'll be discussing my journey through endo treatment and fertility treatment, whatever we decide. Blogging may be sporadic, and will almost certainly be more personal than my parents would be comfortable with...But it's also a kind of therapy for me, getting it all out, you know?
Oh, one final thing, in case you were wondering...I called this blog "Moments of Irrationality" because when I get hormonally-imbalanced I get irrational. Simple as that!
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