endometriosis – Just Stop Trying and It Will Happen…

Tag: endometriosis

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The Western Front

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013. CD11.

Howdy, friends.

All’s quiet here… No surprise, I’m sure.

I wish I had more to report on these days, but I really don’t.

And you know what?

I’m okay with that.

As for reproductive updates, I have few, but here they are:

I just wrapped up five days of Femara, complete with the lovely letrozole headaches to prove it.

I have a teensy amount of Gonal F left in the fridge from last cycle that expires liiiiiike… today. I’m probably going to take it tonight, because hey – why not?

I’m not having any medical monitoring – blood work, ultrasound, or otherwise – this cycle. Just good ol’ fashioned temping and OPKs for me.

I don’t have a whole ton of hope that five little pills and a miniscule amount of FSH are going to help me conceive, but for what it’s worth, the taking of the pills has done what I hoped and helped me to feel like I’m doing something to further my cause.

Unrealistic though that thought may be, it works for me right now.

I’m having some trouble with my diet lately, and therefore I’m also having some trouble taking the Metformin as I should be. Some days I skip my lunch dose because I forget, or some days I skip my dinner dose because I eat too late at night. It’s not healthy, but I’m working on getting back on track.

I’m also doing that self-defeating thing again where I forget to take my vitamins. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that sometimes I don’t see the point. Sometimes I forget. And yeah… sometimes I just don’t want to.

I’m working on that, too.

Other than that, it’s been a fairly laid back week since I last updated. Work has been keeping me extremely busy, I got my hair cut and colored last night (some people go blonde for summer… I go ginger!), my garden is in and prospering, and the husband and I are traveling out to my homeland this weekend to have family photos taken with my side of the fam.

My little kitchen garden, growing every day!

Salad, anyone?

The only thing stressing me out a bit is that I’m waiting on pins and needles for my doctor to call me. She is the only one who can schedule my laparoscopic surgery to look for endometriosis, and once I have a date in hand, I’ll be able to start planning around my recovery.

Speaking of lap recovery, I’ve heard anything from two days to two weeks… Does anyone here have any insight? I’d really like to not be laid up for a fortnight (Ha! I’ve always wanted to use that word!), but if I can plan my work around a tentative recovery time frame, I might be able to swing it.

Also, can anyone provide input on what cycle day(s) your doctor/surgeon recommended having the surgery? Mine is recommending before cycle day twelve, but after the bleeding stops. For me, that leaves probably around five days to work with, likely the second week of July.

I’ve heard that others have had their surgery during the very start of their cycle, and have gone on to have a normal ovulatory cycle that month. I suppose it would make the most sense to me to have the surgery done as close to Aunt Flo’s arrival as possible, as that would be when any suspected escaped endometrial tissues would be the most inflamed…

Then again, I’m not a doctor.

I just play one on the internet. 🙂

Do you have any advice or insight on having laparoscopic surgery? Please comment below – I’m all ears!

June 18, 2013 13 Comments Short URLendometriosis, Femara, gardening, Gonal F, laparoscopyCDaily, Life

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Drifting Forward

Apologies, again, for yesterday’s heap of venting. Sometimes you just need to put it all out there, read it over a few times, and become accountable for your own life.

And sometimes you just need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, put on your big girl panties, and deal with things.

Which I am now doing, thankyouverymuch.

My doctor is on vacation, which I know isn’t easy for her to do… I would hate leaving my patients in the hands of others; luckily, she works in a large practice with several other very competent physicians, and they are helping me work through all of the WTF?, NOW WHAT?!, WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?!! crap I’m currently spewing into the universe.

More accurately, the lovely nursing staff at the University of Michigan Center for Reproductive Medicine is fielding my emails, running around and asking doctors to make decisions for me, and generally just patting my hand and giving me virtual hugs to make me feel better about being a crazy person with busted junk.

I love them. I need to send them flowers or a fruit basket or something.

Anyway, they talked another of the doctors there into letting me continue on with a Femara-only cycle. No monitoring, no trigger – just pills and OPKs and old-fashioned mattress-dancin’.

(And shhhhhhhh… don’t tell, but I have a teensy bit of Gonal F left in the fridge that will spoil if I don’t use it. So I probably will. It’s too small an amount to make much of a difference, but hey… why not, right?)

Based on past results, I have very little faith that this will be my miracle cycle. About that much, I am realistic. I’m not doing this because I think it will get me a baby…

I’m doing it because it feels like doing something, and I need that right now. It’s something to hold onto, and a way to feel like I’m less drifty and floaty in the miasma of space and time. It gives me a bit of an anchor, and something to obsess over for the next month.

Next month is going to be a whole different story…

July will be my laparoscopy month. When my doc gets back from vacay, she will call to schedule my surgery for me. I estimate that it will be scheduled for around July 12th, but I’ll know more in a couple of weeks.

I’m super nervous about having surgery. I haven’t had to be put under for anything since I was like four, and that freaks me out. I have faith in the doctors, though, and know that this is one step I have to make, regardless of where I’m headed next.

Worst case scenario – they find nothing, and the surgery was a waste. At least I will have gotten it out of the way, as most docs require it before moving forward with IVF.

Best case scenario – and I know this sounds twisted – they find some serious endometriosis in there. I don’t want to have endo, believe me, but if they find it, they can remove it. If they remove it, there’s a good chance that I will feel so much better physically. Maybe my periods won’t leave me gasping and sobbing on the floor for the first three days of each cycle, and maybe – just maybe – removing the potential escaped endometrial cells will help my hormones shift back to normal and let me go on with the business of making babies.

Maybe. It’s a gamble, but there’s no way to know until I try.

I suppose that’s why they call it an “exploratory surgery”.

So that’s where I am. Not so much adrift as I was yesterday, because now at least I have a distant shore in sight. I don’t know what I might find there, but it’s the only bearing I have, and I’m taking it.

Ahoy, bitches!