Another Month...

Another bust.

This time stings more... for a variety of reasons. My temps were one reason. They looked really good and parts of the pattern were different than usual, so hope crept into my heart. Then the decline started and I knew inside that it was over. I hoped my temps would rebound once I adjusted to the time change, but truly, after 2 days of declining temps, I knew it was only a matter of time.

Time. Something I feel that I have so little of. I worry how much it's working against me, how much time is actually left on the game clock and whether or not I can eek out a "win" before the whistle blows.

It's ironic... I made my mind up very early that I was NOT going to be an unwed teen mother. I was going to get married and then start a family. That was the right way, the responsible way to do things... and how I'm being rewarded for my responsible choices!

Sometimes I think if I were to make all the wrong choices... maybe then everything would fall into place... Because it sure seems like everyone else gets what they want easily enough. Babies are given to young girls who put them into dumpsters or to unbalanced women who drown them in bathtubs.

Life just feels a bit more unfair right now than usual.

An Apple a Day...

or a slight variation thereof.

Sadly... the pills I crowned as "miracles" worked for a short period of time before things seemed to revert to their old ways.

Since then, I've committed fully and completely to the G-free life. I've also begun taking 1 tbsp of Bragg's unfiltered organic Apple Cider Vinegar every morning. We put it in a shot glass and top it off with V8.

Initially, I was not keen on the regimen. I turned my nose up at it and the whole bit. Imagine my surprise when I began developing an actual taste for my morning shot! It has a ketchup-y kind of quality to it... which makes sense when you consider the 2 main ingredients in ketchup are tomatoes and vinegar.

I've learned my lesson so I'm reticent to claim victory... but I will say that my tummy has been quiet, not bloated and pain free. My bowel movements have become much firmer and MUCH less frequent. All things that I've been hoping and praying for.

I'm really hopeful that I'm finally on the right track to getting my body "normal". I can't help but feel the clock bearing down on me...

Oops

It's a new dawn...

Yesterday evening on the way to get Danny from the train station, I stopped and checked the mailbox. I all but jumped out of my skin when I saw a small priority mail box jammed inside. MY OTHER PILLS!!! I couldn't wait to eat!!

I took one of each pill right before we sat down to a dinner of smoked turkey sausage and applesauce. Danny and I sat watching Bobby Flay have a throwdown with Tony Luke. All was quiet. No gurgling, no bloating, no cramping.

A while later, we're watching the Glee special that aired after the Super Bowl (on the DVR) and I felt kinda hungry. So I went out to the kitchen to rustle myself up an old favorite. I actually have my big sister to thank for introducing me to this one! The Veggie Sandwich!! :^)

We found this awesome G-free bread at our grocery store! It's actually light and airy and not like a fuckin' brick! My only complaint is that the loaves are really small and they cost $5.99... It's like smurf sized bread. But I digress...

I toasted up some bread, sliced a tomato, an avocado and ripped up some green leaf lettuce. I decided to do a little test and let myself enjoy a healthy dose of mayo. OMG!!! It was soooo good! The bread and the veggies and the mayo... it all blended together in a perfect combination of flavors.

But the best part? Here I had eaten a fair bit within a few hours and for the first time in a really long time, I felt fantastic!! No cramping, no bloating, no gurgling and no blazing a trail to the bathroom!! I slept peacefully, not once waking with a stomach pain or the sensation that a bomb was about to explode in my colon.

It's a new day and the only thing I feel right now is my tummy growling because it's hungry for breakfast... and that's a sensation I can live with!!

Through the Medical Looking Glass...

Generally speaking, Google is NOT your friend when it comes to health problems. Within 4 clicks you'll be convinced you've got Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma with less than a week to live! But every once in a while, you'll find something that doesn't make your hair instantly burst into flames. That's where I am right now.

After having tummy problems in '96-'97, I was finally properly diagnosed with gallstones and had surgery to remove my gallbladder in Dec. '98. Within a few years, I began to experience some pretty nasty problems that became progressively worse. Abdominal cramping, bloating, excess gas and chronic diarrhea had become a part of my every day life.

I voiced my concerns to my Dr. who took me through a round of IBS meds, ultrasounds, an Upper GI with small bowel follow through all wrapping up with a lovely colonoscopy. Each and every test came back with normal results. At the peak of my symptoms I dropped from a size 18 to a size 4 and had anywhere from 12-24 bouts of diarrhea PER DAY. Tired of banging my head on the wall and paying $30 a pop only to hear "Everything's normal"... I gave up on the Dr.

I was talking about this with a friend on a message board a few days ago and I typed the word "malabsorption", as malnutrition was brought up. The word was underlined in red as if it were either misspelled or not a word. I decided to quickly run to Google just to make sure I wasn't a dumb ass. Little did I know, this was the entrance to my rabbit hole.

The malabsorption link led to a steatorrhea (excessive amounts of fat in the stool) link. The first 2 sentences describing steatorrhea were all too familiar. Further down the page under the heading Possible Biological Causes was having the gallbladder removed in a cholecystectomy. BINGO! We have a winner!!

I finally had a name... and a cause! The next question was obvious "Now what do I do about it?" I couldn't click fast enough. Tumbling further and further down the rabbit hole, each query unearthing more and more piles of information, some relevant and worthy of bookmarking, some not. I read with hungry eyes about things I had never heard of like digestive enzymes and a pill to help the digestive system run more smoothly designed specifically for those who have had gallbladder surgery.

I found that 80% of gallbladder patients will go on to live normal lives without incident. My dad is one of those. The other 20%... that's a different story. Those patients will experience chronic diarrhea most cases will resolve themselves within a few weeks. Then there's a smaller group yet... those rare cases will persist for many years and CAN BE TREATED.

While it may sound nice to have all the fat you eat rush out of your body without being processing, it's really not good for you. There are certain things associated with fat that you need. Fat soluble vitamins like A, D & E not to mention Omega-3's. I learn I'm not getting any of it... no matter how much of it I eat, my body can't digest the fat, so I can't get the good stuff. And the weight loss? Oh yeah. This is good. Weight loss isn't even evident until it gets pretty bad.

This was when my blood began to boil. After all the Dr's appointments, all the tests... They had my medical history right in front of them in black and white! Not a single one of them had connected the dots. For the first time in almost 10 years... I had answers and possible solutions.

I was told about the 80% of patients, I should have been told about the other 20%. I should have been told what to do if I happened to become one of those 20%. I should have been told about that pill. It's only been in existence since 1956 for God sake!

I had my answers. My mind turned to our struggle with trying for a baby and I felt like a light had been flipped on for the first time. If my system is struggling to get enough nutrients just to keep me going, and doing a crap job at that if I do say so myself... there's gotta be NO WAY it would allow another person to ride along for 9 months. How would I sustain it when I can barely sustain myself?

I spent the weekend drinking tons of water, eating an extremely low fat diet and plenty of fruit. My digestive enzymes have arrived and I'm looking forward to taking them. I'm still anxiously waiting for the other bottle of pills to arrive... they've been reviewed as "miracle pills" that other sufferers swear they'll take for the rest of their lives.

So today is the first day. I'm looking forward to being able to say "Everything's normal" and have it finally be true...

A new year with new ideas...

I'm alive.

I haven't done anything so far this cycle. No soy, no OPKs, no ferning microscope... hell, I only checked my cervix for the first time today. I'm still temping, obviously. I've never really been stressed by temping and it's so much an automatic habit anymore, so I'm fine with that.

I ordered a couple of things from Amazon. I ordered a book called Inconceivable by Julia Indichova and a yoga DVD set called Restoring Fertility. I found the book used for $4.87, which was a steal! The DVD was regular priced, but I'm a bit excited about it.

The DVD was designed by Brandon Horn and Wendy Yu, two of the most knowledgeable Chinese medicine practitioners working in the specialty field of infertility. They've broken down the sessions by phase of cycle, so there are 4 different sessions, one each for your menstrual phase, follicular phase, ovulatory phase and luteal phase.

They explain how we're always encouraged to exercise when TTC. Each session has postures that focus on supporting what your body is trying to accomplish during that phase (shedding lining, building follies, transporting egg through tubes, implanting, etc). I've seen plenty of Prenatal Yoga DVDs, but I hadn't seen much on fertility... let alone something that focuses so much on the individual phases of the cycle, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Granted, I missed out on the first 2 phases for this cycle, but no matter.

Inconceivable is about a woman who, upon trying for her 2nd child, discovers she has an FSH of 42 (ovaries not producing fertilizable eggs) While this is not my issue, this book hit home for me in so many ways. I identified with her in so many different places and different ways. The age issue she faced, her thoughts, her fears. I related to just about every experience of doctor's offices and waiting rooms, wondering if your Dr. actually knows who you are or if you're just another chart and overhearing conversations from other women.

I identified with her feelings of guilt for wanting "more" when she had so much already... The ups and downs and everything in between, she tells other women's stories towards the end and it seemed in so many ways that they were also my story. The same tests, the same drugs, the same procedures... all in the same order... all with the same outcome.

To make a long story short... she pretty much gets herself off of the Western Medicine roller coaster and starts looking at more natural approaches to bettering herself through the foods they ate, herbs, etc. I found a bit of kinship in that as well, because I was raised with a lot of natural remedies that were handed down from my Grandmother. The author tries a lot of stuff, some of which makes you laugh! But she makes some pretty serious changes to her family's life/diet/etc with fantastic results.

So, while I'm not tossing my chicken wings out the window and jumping on the next New Age Veggie wagon out of town... It was an uplifting read at a time when I needed lifting. It was both encouraging and thought provoking. It seemed to reaffirm thoughts I'd already had.

I've made mention of the digestive troubles I have and I've often wondered to myself if that is a road block on Baby Blvd. I've wondered if my body won't let me get pregnant while my digestive system is in such a state of flux.

Needless to say, I've got plenty of food for thought and topics for research...

I Will Be Better...

There are women that become mothers without effort, without thought, without patience or loss and though they are good mothers and love their children, I know that I will be better. I will be better not because of genetics, or money or that I have read more books, but because I have struggled and toiled for this child.

I have longed and waited. I have cried and prayed. I have endured and planned over and over again. Like most things in life, the people who truly have appreciation are those who have struggled to attain their dreams. I will notice everything about my child. I will take time to watch my child sleep, explore and discover. I will marvel at this miracle every day for the rest of my life. I will be happy when I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my child, knowing that I can comfort, hold and feed him and that I am not waking to take another temperature, pop another pill, take another shot or cry tears of a broken dream. My dream will be crying for me.

I count myself lucky in this sense; that God has given me this insight, this special vision with which I will look upon my child that my friends will not see. Whether I parent a child I actually give birth to or a child that God leads me to, I will not be careless with my love. I will be a better mother for all that I have endured.

I am a better wife, a better aunt, a better daughter, neighbor, friend and sister because I have known pain. I know disillusionment as my own body has betrayed me. I have been tried by fire and hell many never face, yet given time, I stood tall. I have prevailed. I have succeeded. I have won.

So now, when others hurt around me, I do not run from their pain in order to save myself discomfort. I see it, mourn it, and join them in theirs. I listen. And even though I cannot make it better, I can make it less lonely. I have learned the immense power of another hand holding tight to mine, of other eyes that moisten as they learn to accept the harsh truth and when life is beyond hard. I have learned a compassion that only comes with walking in those shoes.

I have learned to appreciate life.

And yes, I will be a wonderful mother.

~ UNKNOWN