Body Issues

My senior year in high school, I took an AP Literature/Composition class. For those of you not familiar with these courses, it's a way for high school students to receive college credit without every having to leave the comfort of their surroundings. One of the assignments was to dissect a poem, analyzing the writers intention and the pattern.

At the tender age of 17 yrs, I picked Andrew Marvell's "A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body."

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE SOUL

AND BODY

By A. Marvell

Soul.                                                               Body.

O, WHO shall from this dungeon raise          O, who shall me deliver whole,

A soul enslaved so many ways?                     From bonds of this tyrannic soul?

With bolts of bones, that fettered stands         Which, stretched upright, impales me so

In feet, and manacled in hands;                       That mine own precipice I go;

Here blinded with an eye, and there                And warms and moves this needless frame,

Deaf with the drumming of an ear;                 (A fever could but do the same),

A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains                And, wanting where its spite to try,

Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;                   Has made me live to let me die

Tortured, besides each other part,                    A body that could never rest,

In a vain head, and double heart?                     Since this ill spirit it possessed.

Soul.                                                               Body.

What magic could me thus confine                But Physic yet could never reach
Within another's grief to pine?                       The maladies thou me dost teach;

Where, whatsoever it complain,                     Whom first the cramp of hope does tear,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain;                     And then the palsy shakes of fear;

And all my care itself employs,                      The pestilence of love does heat,

That to preserve which me destroys;              Or hatred's hidden ulcer eat;

Constrained not only to endure                       Joy's cheerful madness does perplex,

Diseases, but, what's worse, the cure;             Or sorrow's other madness vex;

And, ready oft the port to gain,                       Which knowledge forces me to know,

Am shipwrecked into health again.                 And memory will not forego;

                                                                         What but a soul could have the wit

                                                                          To build me up for sin so fit?

                                                                          So architects do square and hew

                                                                          Green trees that in the forest grew.

At the time, though the poem fascinated me, I didn't understand it. I misinterpreted it, trying to make it about something it wasn't. And for years, though I remembered it, I was at a loss for it's meaning.

After 2.5 yrs of living with infertility and living through two miscarriages, I think I'm finally beginning to understand Mr Marvell's message.

Lossing this pregnancy has broken me. It's left me in doubt and frightened to move forward. But most of all, I've found that I'm angry. Angry with many things. But mainly, angry with my body. I'm angry that it has let me down, let Grey down and is not doing what it was designed for. I'm angry that it failed my children, not providing the home they needed to be able to grow and come into the world.

The thing is, I know if I'm going to move forward I have to confront this anger. I have to learn to trust my body again. So, this past week has been spent with me trying to resolve these issues by having a dialogue with my own body.

So far, I haven't been successful.

Unlike other situations where I would have nursed my body back to health, I instead spent this time nursing my soul. My worked longer hours to distract myself, ignoring my body's request for water and food. I started running again, despite the cramps. And when I plead with my body for some relief from the bleeding, promising it relaxation and warmth, it hit back with uterine pain and more spotting.

The reality is, my body and I are currently in dangerous territory. If we could be physically separated, we'd be sleeping in separate rooms and talking with divorce lawyers. And I'm at a loss for how to fix this.

Because I want to be able to experience pregnancy, to bear Grey's child. I want the ability to be a vessel for life. But I think my body has other plans.

Getting back on the roller coaster

The main focus for the past couple of weeks have been healing and getting back into work. Work has been wonderful for the healing process, as I've been able to focus on my students and my lesson plans. Still, in the back of my mind, I've been thinking about the pending FET. Thinking about when this will happen, what it will take to prepare and trying not to worry about the outcome. Because of work I haven't had a lot of time to think about this.  Until today.

This morning, I received a phone call from the nurse that handles the IVF schedule for my clinic. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I been very fortunate to find this clinic because of how outstanding the doctors, nurses and staff are. So, without surprise, the conversation with E went quickly, was to the point and very informative. Basically it comes down to this: I'm on the calendar for a FET in the middle of March. Seems so very far away, but in reality it isn't and there's a lot to do.

1) I need to go in for a blood draw on Friday to check my progesterone levels.  They want to see where I'm at in my cycle.
2) If I'm in the luteal phase, then I start Lupron on Sunday. You read that right, THIS SUNDAY!
3) Grey and I are being sent consent forms.  We need to sign both of these and have them notarized in order to proceed with the cycle.
4) At the end of Feb, I go in for another mock transfer as well as a SIS (saline infused sonogram). Basically, because of the D&C, they want to check that my uterus is healing properly and then they need to repeat the measurements for the transfer.  Considering all the posts I've read about transfers-gone-wrong, I'm more than happy to chug a couple gallons of water in order to go through the procedure again.
5) If everything checks out, my first ultrasound will be at the end of February.

The nice thing about all of this is that I won't have as many appointments nor are they worried about pushing my ovaries. Plus the drug regiment is lighter, resembling what I was on after retrieval through to the D&C. Simpler and calmer.

Yet, after getting off the phone with E, I immediately felt the familiar wave of anxiety begin to rise. And immediately all I could feel was a sense of dread knowing that I would once again be allowing my life to be dictated by injections and pills. The madness of it all.

I've spent most of the day in a cloud because of this. Yes, I want to be a mother more than anything, but I also don't want to go through this limbo again; it's hard and exhausting. So as I made my way through the day, I slowly came to the realization that if I was going to survive around round of this roller coaster ride, I needed a few things to change.

1) I will schedule some time for myself to meditate and relax each week. Getting back into meditation on a daily basis will be essential for staying sane on a daily basis, but I also think I've earned that weekly bubble bath.

2) I will start jogging again. I was actually pretty good at this last semester, but fell out of practice because I was so bloated from the stims. Not an issue this time, so no more excuses.

3) I will make a point to do non-fertility related activities.  This one I've already started doing with the help of colleagues.  I actually had a chance to hang out at the faculty club with other co-workers last week. I was a lot of fun and very needed. Clearly that needs to happen more often.

4) Dinner parties need to start happening again. I figure bribing friends with the promise of good food and wine is a good place to start.

5) I will make peace with this situation.  This one is by far the hardest because this is kinda it.  If this cycle fails, then things need to change.  As I've said in previous posts, I don't have it in me to keep doing treatment for many years. I'm too impatient.  So, while all of this is happening, I will take some of Grey's coworkers up on their offer of coffee to begin exploring adoption. This doesn't mean that I will forever close the door on treatment (hell, something may come up that suggests success from another round), and I reserve the right to back out of this previous statement that this is the end. But I'm also not strong enough to spend another Christmas doing the same thing over and over again.

So ladies, as of next Sunday, I'm officially back on the coaster, riding through those crazy loops and hoping that at the end there will be good news and joy. G_d help us all.

Mission: Optimism

The past few days I've been riding the emotional roller-coaster.  Some moments I'm incredibly optimistic for the future, seeing good signs and hearing stories of hope at every turn.  Other moments, not so much.  Part of the lows are being fueled by the drugs on currently on, another part is the weather, but the truth is the doubt and pessimism are coming from a part of my subconscious.

On October 31, results from a study were released concluding there is a link between mood and mortality.
Headlines on this research titled "Happy people live longer" began to circulate and many began to speculate why.  Many wanted to know how this data was collected, as there is really no standard to measuring "happiness." But where a lot of attention went was wondering what choses these individuals were making that was extending their lives. Did they take more vacations? Laugh more?  Did they turn down that career-forwarding job and opt for something that was less stressful?

It's no secret that there's a direct connection between mood and fertility.  Alice Domar, one of the leaders in the field of mind/body intervention just published a report showing a significant difference between IVF success rates between the control cohort and the cohort that participated in a mind/body program.  The connection is so striking, that RESOLVE has many links on its website promoting finding support following diagnosis and prominent bloggers, like Keiko Zoll, began talking about the importance of remaining optimistic during treatment.  Women in the trenches of infertility are encouraged to laugh more, focus on the positive and even quit overly stressful jobs, all in the hopes of boosting their fertility.  Some may scoff and announce "BS," but the data is hard to deny.

So, based on this, what's my issue?  I know all of this. I've participated in a mind/body program.  And I love doing yoga!  The problem?  Well, like most pessimists, I'm lazy.  It's been easier to feel sorry for myself and focus on what I don't have.  A big part of it is that I'm tired of defeat: I've charted, peed on more HPTs than I ever dreamed of, meditated, avoided alcohol and even say a psychic (not my proudest moment).

It wasn't until this morning, with help from Jay,  that I realized I've been pouting.  Sure, it's not fair that half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned and that most of expectant mothers have never experienced (and never will) the heartache of longing for a child.  But that's not where my focus should be.  My focus needs to be on the fact that though I'm here, there's hope.  There's a good chance of all of this working, so I need to stop focusing on all the things that could go wrong and instead focus on where I'm currently at.

In the spirit of that, today is being spent rallying support, opening up to friends and busting out the knitting needles.  Grey and I are planning a ski trip and preparing for Thanksgiving.  And instead of focusing on what I don't have, I'm choosing to focus on what I do: an amazing husband, two awesome furbabies, a job I love and hope.