Flotsam

Nov

Babies Don’t Make Pie: A Recipe For Adulthood.

I started making pies when I was seven. Not by myself, of course. Seven-year-olds don’t make pies by themselves. My mother and grandmother divested apples of their peel in sinuous, perfect strips. I was given a spork-like implement, the safety-scissors version of a paring knife, and subtly mocked for my inability to produce perfect spirals of apple-outside. By my ninth Thanksgiving I made pumpkin pies unassisted—a simple affair of Libby’s, condensed milk, and spices—but apple pie remained, like coffee, canasta, and gin, the province of adults.
I have always thought of adulthood as something that happens whether you’d like it to or not, like an earthquake or flash flooding—an act of God, so to speak. The way female hips suddenly stretch, science-ficticiously, at the onset of junior high. But suppose you find yourself growing inexorably older without any corresponding increase in, say, financial or emotional stability? What if you were the only girl in the eighth grade still changing for gym with her shirt half on? Where, exactly, is the portal that separates waking up mid-afternoon to hit the water-bong in your dormitory common room from loosening the tie around your neck, exhausted from paying insurance premiums, understanding mutual funds, caring about the Yen V.S. the Dollar?
After college, I got a lot of bills. Bills, bills, bills, as Beyonce might say. Can you pay my bills? Can you pay my telephone bills?
I couldn’t. Even now, when I receive an envelope from Qwest I shut it into a drawer of my desk, hoping that light deprivation will cause it to wither and disappear.
I have been legally an adult for years now, and I am still waiting for my act of God.
Five years ago I bounced a series of small checks. $22.50 here, $11.67 there. They bounced because I had insufficient funds in my checking account. I’ll bet you were clever enough to deduce that yourself. Why, then, did my bank think that adding $50.00 or $100.00 fees to each check would expedite my payment? A girl who does not have $11.67 most assuredly does not have $111.67. Math is not my strongest subject, but even I am able to appreciate this logic.
Anyway, during this dark period, I had occasion to spend some time on the phone with a combative young lady from a collection agency.

“You need to grow up and pay this account,” quoth she, “You’re an adult, and this is your responsibility.”

When I was young, during my apple pie apprenticeship, I used the leftover scraps of crust dough to make wobbly, continent-shaped cookies sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, cookies I named, in a burst of originality, “Pie crust.” The manufacture, decoration, and baking of “Pie crust’ was overseen and executed solely by me. I remember the feeling of superiority I had over other, Oreo-buying seven-year-olds.
“Oh these cookies? In my lunch box? I made them, actually. From scratch.”
I spoke of flour and dough and preheating with the same feigned nonchalance with which I imagine Prometheus examined his nails in the flickering light of the flames before him, as a crowd gathered.
“Oh, this old thing? It’s just Fire, that’s all. Something I whipped up in my spare time, you know, to heat things.”

I scrabbled my way out of debt. I figured out how to file taxes for my freelance jobs. I adjusted the ratio of shortening to butter in my piecrust. I tried to have relationships with men whom I didn’t want to kick out of my apartment after sex—I even let one of them spend the night, and he’s been here for years. You should see me peel an apple—it’s all in the wrist, as it turns out.
I make the best apple pie in the world. Ask anyone–It’s true. You could make apple pie from some other recipe, if you wanted to, but it would taste like interned brioche dropped during the execution of Marie Antoinette and later unearthed by filthy-handed archaeologists, compared to the apple pie I make.
I like to think that this makes up for all of the other ways in which I am less successful at being a grown-up. When I feel uncertain of my status in the real world–when I try and fail to understand something like my company’s 401K plan or the appeal of sensible shoes–I glance at my well worn pie plate and feel reassured that I am, in fact, an adult. It helps me believe that I will be allowed to have children despite the fact that I turned my underwear from yesterday inside out and wore them to work this morning, all in order to avoid doing laundry. Not many people make apple pie from scratch these days, you know. It is becoming a lost art, like blacksmithery or lute-playing.
And how many child-blacksmiths do you know?

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (12)

Nov

Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing.

Reading Julia’s post about Patrick’s parent-teacher conference (he failed Scissors, poor moppet) and whether to send him to Montessori made me ponder my own early scholastic experiences.
First of all, I would like to say that I, too, failed something. It will come as no surprise to my creditors, my mother, or the smug ATM machine I frequent that the pre-school subject I failed was Money. Specifically, nickels and dimes. I still maintain that as nickels are bigger, they are patently worth more than are dimes. What child-hating absurdist created our system of coinage, anyway?
But I digress.
The point of this entry (believe it or not) was that I am a big advocate of non-traditional public schools, especially for the early years. I went to an Open School for kindergarten and first grade. It was a public school with lots of gifted and talented programs and unusual curricula. In first grade I learned all of the usual things, but also took Spanish, sewing, and a literature class that focused on death–we read A Taste of Blackberries (boy stung to death by bees) and 1000 Paper Cranes (dying girl loves origami). Okay, that makes it sound strange, and yes, that unit precipitated an unattractive 6-year-old existential crisis (I want a fudgsicle and a copy of The Sickness Unto Death!) but it was great, really.
I also took workshops that year in carpentry and soap- and candle-making. I was on the literary magazine and in the “International Club”—the sole legacy of which is my ability to sing “Are You Sleeping?” in French, Sign Language, and Yiddish.
There were aspects of the school that were a little…much—we used to sit in a circle with linked arms, swaying and singing “We Shall Overcome,” and our school song was “Lean on Me,” by Bill Withers, but I suspect that was a product of the times.
It was during my years at that school that I developed a love of learning and an ability to integrate that learning into life outside the classroom that served me well when I was thrust into a mainstream public school system, where I remained through high school, where some of the classmates with whom I graduated could barely read, where I saw my first gun, and where I was so horrifically, stultifyingly bored that I stopped attending class regularly after the 7th grade.
Wherever your offspring fall on the abilities spectrum, Open Schools and similar institutions do a tremendous job, in my opinion, of accommodating individual interests and learning styles, and in translating them into achievement and confidence.
Besides, Open School hot lunches kick Regular School hot lunches’ ass.

Edited to add: We did have to do ALL of the basics–reading, writing, ‘rithmatic, etc. The electives were just gravy. There were a lot of interdisciplinary approaches, too. No one could, say, concentrate on spelling and opt out of long division.

Unrelated, but noteworthy:
Has anyone read this? I am curious, because I had heard some complimentary things about Letrazole–not in general, but in comparison to Clomid, especially for PCOS. What confuses me about the article is that it says Letrazole has been shown to cause problems when taken during pregnancy. Now, correct me if I am mistaken, but Letrazole (Femara), like Clomid, is taken for 5ish days in the first half of your cycle—it would be long gone by the time a pregnancy occurred, non? And–again, correct me if I’m wrong–most fertility drugs/hormones are contraindicated during pregnancy, non? So why the “Tsk, tsk, this is what you barren sluts get for using an off-label fertility treatment” routine? Am I missing something?

Oh! Back to the early scholastic reminisces portion of the entry:
I learned a passel of new words during my time at the Open School. Two of those words were “Infanta” (from the aforementioned Spanish class) and “Matricide”—leading to my belief (held through the 4th grade) that the term “Infanticide” referred to the assassination or murder of the daughter of the King of Spain.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (10)

Nov

What Do This Post and a Submarine Have in Common?

Has anyone else noticed the preponderance of pregnancy-and-miscarriage-related subplots on television lately? Most notably on abc?
Now, I admit that I only watch two shows on that network, but let’s review:

First: Sandra Oh’s character on Grey’s Anatomy falls pregnant–an apt term in this case as said pregnancy occurs approximately 71/2 minutes after she begins sleeping with whats-his-name.
Next: Ectopic pregnancy! Because Sandra Oh’s high-powered-surgical-intern character couldn’t have a baby, of course, but neither would abc’s sponsors approve of her actually getting—as her character intends–an abortion.
Next: Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives is attacked and Falls Down The Stairs—this is, after all, the leading cause of miscarriage. Haven’t you people seen Gone With The Wind? As she is ambulanced away, she clutches her ultrasound photo.
Next: Gabrielle learns to acknowledge her grief over her lost child—lots of shots of baby clothes and a ceremony in a park during which she releases a balloon.
Next: The Squat N’ Sassy resident on Grey’s Anatomy is pregnant!
And then, last night: Grey’s Anatomy presents: quintuplets! One of the doctors says to the mother “I guess you should have read the fine print on those Fertility Pills.” (what “Fertility Pills” are these, I wonder?) After hearing the Doctor’s snarky comment The Nearly blanches and turns to me—“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asks. He does not want quintuplets—are we having quintuplets? Twins, he could do, but FIVE BABIES AT ONCE? I explain about monitoring during injectables cycles, and the number of embryos transferred during IVF cycles. He still looks nervous. I remind him that the woman on Grey’s Anatomy is not, in point of fact, a doctor–she merely plays on on T.V. He is soothed, and we watch the rest of the episode together. Said episode ends with preterm labor and emergency Caesarian.
Next Week On Grey’s Anatomy: A whole episode in the NICU! Babies coding right and left, etc. etc.

The Nearly suggested that perhaps “abc” stands for “All Baby Carnage.”
Or “All Baby Channel” or “Ack! Baby Casualty.”

I have started getting the bills for the parts of the Diagnostic Tilt-a-Whirl (DTAW) not covered by insurance—i.e. the wandings and bloodlettings performed before my deductible had been met. The Nearly was scandalized by the exorbitant charge for an ultrasound, but as I reminded him, Nobody Rides (the wand) For Free. Having now met our deductible, we are determined to squeeze as much of the remaining portion of the DTAW in as possible before my insurance clock resets in January. Thus, the following tests will be performed upon us in the FOUR DAYS leading up to the New Year:
The Nearly’s Sperm Analysis, my LH (again), FSH (again), Free and Total Testosterone (again), 17OHP (again), DHEAS (again), Complete Thrombophilia Panel (Thanks to T), and Baseline ultrasound (again).

My veins ache just reading that.

As a sidenote, I made the call to schedule the thrombophilia panel and SA this morning from a quiet phone in a friend’s office (with a real door), specifically because I hate talking to Nurse Deaf-as-a-Goddamned-Post about delicate medical subject matter from my own office, where I am easily overheard.
I got the clinic’s voicemail.
Fine.
I left a very, very detailed message so that I wouldn’t have to repeat everything (loudly) when I got a call back. An hour later, I was back at my desk when the phone rang:

PHONE: Brring! Brrriiing!
ME: This is Alexa.
NURSE DAAGP (of course): Hello?
ME: Yes?
NURSE DAAGP: This is Nurse Deaf-as-a-Goddamned-Post. I received your message—Now, you said you wanted to schedule something for your husband?
ME: Partner, yes.
NURSE DAAGP: And what was it you needed to schedule?
ME: A…An analysis.
NURSE DAAGP: What sort of analysis?
ME: Oh, you know. Whatever you usually do.
NURSE DAAGP: What?
ME: THE USUAL ANALYSIS.
NURSE DAAGP: Is this bloodwork?
ME (very quietly): No, thisisforasemenanalysis.
NURSE DAAGP: Eh?
ME: Semenanalysis!
NURSE DAAGP: I’m sorry, dear, I can’t hear you.
ME: SEMEN! SEMEN ANALYSIS!

I swear the bitch just wanted to make me yell “SEMEN!” at my place of work.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (8)

Nov

Cornucopia.

So…Oprah had her Favorite Things show, and I thought “I have favorite things! I could do that!”
I imagined, fondly, the looks on my dear readers’ faces as I screamed (well, typed) “EVERYBODY GETS A CAR!”–or shower gel, or whatever–and then your doorbells would ring, and standing there would be an grown man dressed as an elf! With a package! For you!
But, as it turns out, Flotsam does not have the same sort of clout that The Oprah Winfrey Show has—I am still waiting for a response from the companies that manufacture my favorite things, and oddly enough, no offers of sponsorship have been forthcoming.*

So here is my list for 2005. Regrettably, my financial situation makes it impossible for me to provide you with the items themselves:

1. L’Occitane Shea Butter Foaming Cream Bath in Sweet Lemon
2. Hammacher Schlemmer Low-Voltage Hidden Wire Electronic Blanket
3. Ativan
4. The Collected Stories of John Cheever
5. Mode de Vie Creme Essentiel Moisturizer**
6. Hendricks Gin
7. Wonderfalls complete series DVD
8. Tassimo Hot Beverage Machine–w/Twinings Earl Grey Tea and Suchard Hot Chocolate Pods
9. Marks & Spencer Pear Drops***
10. Stila Eyeshadow in Golightly
11. Cedar Summit Dairy Heavy Cream

Of course these are merely things, and on this particular day, this third Thursday in November, what I am truly thankful for is the man whose underwear are on my bathroom floor: The Nearly is my cornucopia. There is no one and no thing I would be more lost without. I have been thinking all day about how to tell him that—I thought about it while I ate turkey, I thought about it while I ate stuffing. Eating creamed corn, I thought about it. Eating apple pie, I thought about it some more.

A few months after we started dating, The Nearly was scheduled to read with a group of local writers. We arrived at the gallery the night of the reading and I picked up a program and found a seat. The Nearly mumbled something and dashed off. My, I thought, He’s really nervous. Then I opened my program.
Now, in the back of the program are the bios, which are read aloud to introduce each writer. They generally go something like this:
“Stanza McPoet is a poet, playwright, and outdoorsman. His work has appeared in Fancy Magazine and Obscure-but-well-regarded Journal. He lives in Katmandu.”
Here is what was printed as The Nearly’s bio:
“The Nearly Fiance is in love with Alexa and wants everyone to know about it.”

The Nearly has a knack for this—the sweeping gesture, and also the eloquent small one: bringing me a snack, before I’ve even started whining about how hungry I am, or slipping a picture in my purse for me to find the next morning.
I do not have this knack. I tell him I love him, I greet him at the door wearing a sexy garment, I tell him I love him again. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
A few weeks after the reading where The Nearly told the Twin Cities literary community that he loved me, I exited my apartment building to find a piece of paper on the windshield of my car. It was a page torn from a book, part of it circled. At first I thought it had been left there by a vagrant, but then I looked closer and got suspicious.
Do vagrants read Frank O’Hara? I wondered.
The poem The Nearly left on my windshield was this:

“Having a Coke with You”

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye,
Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in
Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love
for yogurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the
birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people
and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be
anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in
front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and
forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just
paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in
the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s
in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go
together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes
care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangelo
that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do
them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree
when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider
as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some
marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m
telling you about it.

That is how I feel, today, Nearly. I wish it were written on a banner attached to the back of a plane or etched on the head of a pin, but you will have to settle for html.
Happy Thanksgiving.

*If you are reading this, and you are the maker of one of the items on my list (Wyeth pharmaceuticals, is that you?), and would like to donate your product to the readers of this blog, please email me at alexa79@mac.com. Remember, this is a publicity opportunity for you! I have tens of readers!
**So good, it’s like sex for your face
***Courtesy of Ms. Prufrock

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (6)

Nov

Nothing Goes Better With Turkey Than Whine.

There have been many lovely Thanksgiving posts about gratitude, etc. in the blogosphere in the past day, but I am bucking the trend. You know how the night before a fast (or lent or whatnot) you do the opposite of what you will be doing the next day? Eat vats and vats of the things you will be giving up? Well, it is the night before Thanksgiving, and while I shall be properly thankful in, oh…7 hours, until Thanksgiving is actually here I am going to whine and pule my hard little heart out.

Complaint#1: I am sick. I don’t understand how my throat can be so dry/scratchy/cough-making and still be seemingly filled with mucous. I woke up feeling as though somebody had thatched my throat in the night, and then poured a bottle of syrup over the thatch. I was too busy coughing to get more than a few hours of sleep, and this morning was spent busily retching into the sink. Delightful.

Complaint#2: My period finally graced me with its presence yesterday, on day 40. As you may recall, this upcoming cycle is the Cycle of Nothingness. Day 3 of the following cycle I will rush back into the arms of Dr. Doctor for more tests, a monitored cycle, the Nearly’s SA, and possibly (though hopefully not) an HSG. If my cycle this next time lasts its usual 36 days, guess when my day 3 ultrasound will be? One year, to the day, from the ultrasound that told me that my last pregnancy was failing. If it is a day or two late, day 3 will fall on one of the days last year on which I was waiting to miscarry. This would be the best scenario, because if it is 3 days late, it will fall on New Years Day, the day I did miscarry, and a day on which the clinic is closed.

Complaint #3: I miss the Nearly. He is out of town until Saturday.

Complaint #4: This is the true source of all this anti-bonhomie. Complaint #4 is more than a complaint, it is a horrible soul-sucking piece of knowledge, about which I need your advice.

Once upon a time, I read my company’s health insurance coverage details. I was pleased to find a proud paragraph about how they cover ART—IVF! GIFT! ZIFT! Any acronym your heart desires—they cover it! I believe I even boasted about my excellent insurance company. There was a lifetime maximum of $15,000, which I fretted mildly about—if we did non-IVF things, there might not be enough left to cover a whole IVF cycle, and we would have to pay for part of it out of pocket. And if it didn’t work…But I would think about that later. Maybe it wouldn’t get that far. And $15,000 is a lot of coverage.
Only I don’t have $15,000 worth of coverage.
Yesterday, I dug out my policy to look at it again, and noticed something. That lifetime maximum? That I read as $15,000? Well, I read it wrong.
There’s no “1.”
It’s $5,000.
And that includes medication.
So, their gushy paragraph about how they cover ART seems a bit disingenuous, non? Few people go straight to IVF without a few obligatory IUI cycles, after which there would be no insurance money left for IVF. And even if the Nearly turned out to have grieviously deformed sperm and we went straight to in vitro, $5000 wouldn’t come close to paying for a cycle. So my insurance policy does not so much “cover” ART as is offers a slight defrayment of costs. {I even looked ahead to the insurance I will have in two years, when I plan to have a graduate teaching assistantship—that insurance doesn’t cover IVF at all, only IUI.}
Also, I have not been able to get a straight answer about whether my $1000 ticket for the Diagnostic Tilt-a-Whirl is included in the $5000—if so, I actually have only $4000 worth of coverage left.
What this boils down to is this: IVF is out of the question for us financially, for now. If the Nearly’s SA comes back indicating bad things…we are fucked. Hard. Really, really hard up the ass. We can save and try to get financing for IVF—but if we did manage to finance a cycle and it failed, there would be no future cycles for a very long time, and no money left for adoption.

Assuming the SA comes back satisfactory, we have $4-5000 to spend. {Two years from now, when I have different insurance, we would be able to do additional IUIs but no IVF.} I cannot tell you how much I appreciated all of your advice on this post I wrote previously. Now I am asking for your advice again, greedy slut that I am. I figure we have enough money for three IUI cycles. Does that sound right to you?
I am comfortable being fairly forceful with Dr. Doctor about what I want to try, so riddle me this, my dears—if you had $5,000 and ONLY $5000 to spend, what would you use it on? What type of protocol might you try? I am attempting to be hopeful—after all, I have been pregnant twice without intervention. Of course I miscarried both pregnancies, so perhaps that isn’t so cheering after all.

And now, because I promised pictures, I hereby present you with a photograph of one of my cats, Irma:

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (6)

Nov

Go Ask Alexa.

The Nearly and I are capable of arguing about all sorts of irrelevant things—whether or not we should have carpet in our (nonexistent) house, whether we should go into debt to pay for our (nonexistent) children’s college education, and what we should tell said nonexistent children about my youthful indiscretions with controlled substances. The one thing we agree upon about this last topic is that drug education should not be left to schools.
The drug education program at Falcon Heights Elementary consisted of a burly police officer telling us fascinating anecdotes about drunks and junkies he had come across in his line of work, and then asking us to sign a contract stating that we would never, ever use drugs. Lawyer’s daughter that I was, I raised my hand right away.

“I can’t sign this. I need to have my mother look at it first.”
“Is there something you don’t understand, sugar?”
“No, but she’s a lawyer, my mom, and I can’t sign anything before she reads it.” I skimmed the contract. “Also, does this include alcohol?”
Officer Just-Say-No looked stern. “Of course it does—don’t you remember the story about the naked man, and the urine, and the gun going off?”
“Yes, but isn’t alcohol legal when you’re over 21? Couldn’t I have some Champagne, or whatever, when I’m old enough?”
Officer Speed Kills’ nostrils flared.
“Yes, fine, you can consume a responsible amount of alcohol when you are legally of age.”
“But it doesn’t say that on the contract.”
“I’m telling you, ok? You have my permission.”
“I’m still not signing anything.”

And I didn’t. Which is probably a good thing, as I would otherwise have spent the bulk of my teen years in civil court defending myself against breach-of-contract suits.

Next in line in the curricula regarding drug abuse was an assembly during junior high school—a skit performed by members of a teen-aged acting troupe.
I don’t remember the first part very well, but the gist is that some boy (we’ll call him Todd) has a girlfriend (we’ll call her Jennifer) who gets pretty heavily into drugs. He breaks up with her–and I can’t blame him, as the primary effect of whatever she is taking is apparently to cause her to spin around with her arms in the air shouting “Wooo! Wooo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Anyway, Jennifer eventually gets her shit together, and she and Todd start hanging out again, attempting to salvage something from the ashes of their love for each other, in time for prom.
Here is where my memory picks up…

{Jennifer is on the stage, alone.}
TODD, VIA VOICEOVER: “…And then, one night, Jennifer got together with some old friends…”
{The plaintive introductory piano notes of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” wend their way from a tape deck at the side of the stage.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around…”
{An actor wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the word “HEROIN” in white capital letters enters from stage right, and is embraced, fondly, by Jennifer.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around…”
{Enter COCAINE and SPEED. More hugging.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around!”
{Enter LSD, PCP, and MARIJUANA (where’s HYPERBOLE? I wonder snidely from my spot in the audience)}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bright Eyes!”
{The drugs have started moving in a circle around Jennifer, holding hands. Jennifer is smiling, reaching out to tenderly touch PCP’s twitchy cheek.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bright Eyes!”
{Jennifer’s smile falters, and she makes a move to leave the circle of drugs.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bri-ight Eyes!”
{But she cannot escape!}
TAPEDECK: “Every now and then I fall APART!” (Cymbal crash)
{Enter Todd, stage left! He tries to push his way through the circle to Jennifer, she tries to force her way out. They play an excessively dramatic version of “Red Rover” as the music crashes and swells around them and Bonnie Tyler begins to sound increasingly unhinged.}
TAPEDECK: “FOREVER’S GONNA START TONIGHT! FOREVER’S GONNA START TONIGHT!!!”
{HEROIN, COCAINE, SPEED, PCP, LSD, and MARIJUANA close the circle around Jennifer. The stage goes black.}
TAPEDECK: “Once upon a time I was falling in love—now I’m only falling apart.”
{A single spotlight illuminates Jennifer’s crumpled form, alone on the floor in the middle of the stage.}
TAPEDECK: “Nothing I can do. A Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
{Todd cradles Jennifer’s lifeless body, sobbing, as the piano plays a few more spare, mournful bars, and Bonnie Tyler tells us brokenly that once upon a time there was light in her life, but now there’s only love in the dark. A seventh grader sitting next to me bursts into tears.}
The End.
Afterwards we all went back to class, not to hear another word about drugs until the junior year of high school.

Public schools have many fine points, but in my experience drug education is not one of them. The Nearly and I will handle this ourselves. We will not take be sending anyone to bootcamp, or performing covert drug tests and random locker searches. Neither will we take the approach my own father did, which was to tell me one evening when he was stoned and I was 17 to “Stay away from powders.” I had most likely just done a line in the bathroom, and so spent a few minutes in a paranoid frenzy before slipping outside to run around the block a few times.

But I will think of some way to illustrate the dangers of drugs to our children—with eggs maybe. Or perhaps we could show them pictures of Mickey Rourke. Or make them watch that MTV Music Awards where Macy Gray…well, make them watch the MTV Music Awards.

And I should probably start brushing up on contract law.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (7)

Nov

Some Ramblings, and A Big List of Questions.

It is a complex and lovely thing, our community. Each cycle some of us will succeed in the struggle to shed the circumstances that bound us together in the first place. And each cycle others of us will not.
This past week I have been alternately filled with giddy joy over the news of my B.H. Lindy’s double lines, and drained with grief over the horribleness that greeted sweet Thalia when she awoke 8dp3dt. I have held them in a cup of my heart all week, and have found myself preoccupied with other thoughts as well–of branches and forks in roads.
Pixi had a post recently about how to visually represent our travels through infertility and miscarriage, and the image that returns to me most often when I try to imagine rendering this experience is a volume I kept in my room when I was 8 or so. I was a burgeoning hypochondriac and information junkie, in the pre-Google era, and it was a book of symptoms—you turned to the page for “stomach pain,” for instance, and answered a series of questions. Each “yes” or “no” set you on a different path, one of several. One led towards the ER and what, to my 8-year-old eyes, looked like certain death (a black circle with block letters screaming “Go directly to the hospital!”) another to the peace of knowing that all would be well (a pale box advocating “home care”). This is what it has been like, for me—each miscarriage causes my path to split into a shadow of what would have been and the reality of what is. Planning cycles and treatment involves flowcharts that branch away from one another depending on outcome. And in our corner of the blogosphere, we do this too—we take divergent routes, come back together, split again. I think our ability to celebrate and mourn in the same moment is our strength—there is something messy and human here that I am proud and grateful to be a part of.

Now I would like to talk about cooter maintenance. {I apologize for the wild pendulum swings of my mind—from Lifetime: Television for Women to The Playboy Channel in under 60 seconds, I know}
For most of my adult life, I kept things…natural. Maybe a little trimming with nail scissors, but nothing more. There were two reasons for this. One was that after my sole experiment with nakedness, the horrific itchiness involved in growing it out nearly loosed the fragile control I have on my mind. The other was the fear of giving myself an inadvertent clitorectomy. However, now that I am obliged to allow relative strangers to poke about down there for exams, wandings, etc. (I was going to count the number of medical professionals who have been inside me in the last month, but it proved too horrifying to contemplate) I have reluctantly started grooming the Area.
Luckily, I found a product that at least addresses my inadvertent-clitorectomy fear—Noxema Cooter Razors. They are fetching, tiny razors specially designed for this delicate task—I found them at a grocery store, but I am sure drugstores have them as well. I highly recommend them to you.

On yet another unrelated note, my endo pain returned last month, after a brief and delightful hiatus. The worst of it didn’t last very long, blessedly—there were only 3 days of me falling to my knees in the bathroom and clutching the edge of the tub whilst willing myself to remain conscious. But now, for the last two weeks, there has been something new—a pin in my ovary. I have had sharp stabs of ovarian pain before, usually on the left, where my evil, bloated, Polly McCysty ovary hangs out. But this month it is on my right, and feels as if a pin—perhaps from hemming something, or acupuncture—worked it’s way under my skin and swam cunningly through my bloodstream before lodging itself in my right ovary, where it jabs at me from time to time. I am assuming this is cyst related, but my question is—should I be worried? I am so used to unpleasnt sensations in my girl parts it didn’t occur to me to do anything about this pin-ovary problem.

And now—drumroll, please—the Big List of Questions. Things are afoot in the Alexa-and-Nearly household—options are being considered, plans are being made. And the time has come to expose my woeful ignorance about treatments other than IVF. Reading blogs has made me as knowledgeable about IVF as a person who is neither a (real) doctor nor going through IVF herself can be. I have Googled madly on the subject to follow the cycles of you all, my dear Internets. And there seems to be a lot of information available about IVF. I am having less luck researching my own options. Here are my questions:
1. Clomid—To be honest, I don’t see the point of this for PCOSers. Am I missing something? From what I have read, it doesn’t seem wildly effective for us. And—agan, correct me if I’m wrong—doesn’t it work mostly by fooling the body into believing there is an Estrogen shortage and tricking it into producing more LH? My LH is too high to begin with, and it surges every month (well, twice every month, actually) like clockwork. If my own LH is already working overtime, and doesn’t result in me ovulating, why would Clomid be any different? And don’t the unruptured follicles of PCOS, of which I have approximately 8 million, result in an estrogen dominant atmosphere? Why would I want to add to that? Discuss.
2. Egg quality—I am concerned about the fact that eggs take approximately three cycles to develop, and in a first treatment cycle for a PCOS patient, the eggs that would be ovulated have already lived for two months in an abnormal hormonal environment. It is posited that this is a reason for the high miscarriage rate in PCOS patients (along with late ovulation and high LH, both of which are terrible for egg quality.) I am very nervous about this, as I would prefer not to have a third miscarriage. Discuss.
3. Protocols—IUI w/ injectables? Bravelle or Follistim? Is IUI a waste of time? What protocols do you think are most effective, for PCOS patients and in general? Please let me know! I have not had my usual success Googling these topics, and trust you implicitly! Discuss.
4. And, lastly, do you know of any sites that have success rates for these sorts of things (IUI/Injectables, etc.), over one cycle and multiple cycles? What about costs? What have your experiences been? I need numbers, all sorts of numbers, and while I can find lots of success rate information for IVF, I am, as mentioned, less successful searching for other things. I am putting together a report for the Nearly, with charts and graphs and everything, and my data is quite skimpy so far. Discuss.

I know this was a rather unamusing entry, but unfortunately it is all I have time for today, because more important than me updating my own blog is me commenting on the blogs of those who giveth me sustenance, and I am very behind on that—so I am off to read and ponder and comment on the thoughts of others. Next time, though, I am going to figure out how WordPress does pictures and post some for you, my succulent dumplings–cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my ovary.

Updated: Oh Dear–I just realized that maybe people who are going through IVF find it irksome that some slut (me) is asking questions about IUI/Injectable cycles and Clomid, for pity’s sake…I truly apologize if you do.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (10)

Nov

Reading Your Content Just Made My Day, Or: Die, Spambot.

“Reading your content just made my day. keep the good work. while they only recover: http://lighth*using.net , Standard Slot is always Lazy Corner most people are even incapable , to Forecast Game you should be very International their senses slowly.”

I do have real things to talk about, but I would first like to take a moment to say Spambots: What the Fuck? In the past 45 minutes I have received 41 spam comments, full of links and prose-poetry-on-absinthe snippets like “Cool site! I’ll be back. It’s impossible to experience one’s death.” “Circle will Percieve Chair without any questions” and “Fetch Cards is very good Grass.”
Very good grass, indeed.

In a related matter, I would like to apologize to all of the women who have found my site by searching for the Google phrases contained in my post about charting, i.e. “BBT charting slow rise pregnancy?” and “Implantation dip low temps 8 dpo,” I wish to god I had something useful to tell you.*

Now. I think my emotional recovery from my second miscarriage, last year, has proceeded at a reasonable pace. I made it through the early days with my patented combination of grit, wisecracks, and gin. I handled my due date in August with aplomb—or at least demi-aplomb. Lately, however, it is as if the past 11 months of ostensibly healing time have vanished, and left me the same inert, sobbing mass I was in January. Last night I cried when I burned my finger, I cried when I realized I had left my Fresca in the car, I cried when the voiceover on a drug commercial reminded me that said drug was unsafe for women who are “Nursing, pregnant, or may become pregnant.” I cried because my clumsy, finger burning, Fresca forgetting ass can’t seem to get anything right, and because I never, ever thought I would be nearing the one year anniversary of my miscarriage neither nursing, pregnant, or on my way to becoming pregnant.
I mustered the discretion to cry in the bathroom, because I didn’t want to upset the Nearly and because “WHINY GIRL ISN’T PREGNANT!!” Isn’t exactly stop-the-presses newsworthy, is it? And then I watched the end of Desperate Housewives and lost my shit.
You know when you cry so hard you can’t breathe, or move, or do anything but hold your hands over your horrifically contorted face as you spew snot and tears in percussive bursts while your boyfriend crushes you against his chest in a desperate bid to contain your misery? It was like that.
I tried to explain to the Nearly that much of this sadness has to do with the fact that I thought I would be pregnant again by now, but he does not understand that the two things, the miscarriage and the fertility/getting pregnant again thing, are related. He thinks that if I am not “over” the miscarriage yet, any desire to get pregnant again is simply an attempt to fill the hole that opened up when the ultrasound tech’s smile faded last January.
I tried to explain that it is more complicated than that. I don’t think I will stop feeling raw about the miscarriage until I manage to get, and stay, pregnant: not that I expect my sadness to disappear with a successful pregnancy, but I do think it would feel different, less present—less convincing, if you will, as a statement about what my life will be like and what my body is or is not capable of. I think I would even feel better if we were in an active treatment cycle. Hitting this one-year mark, it is frustrating to be exactly where I was immediately after the miscarriage—in a state of loss, of non-pregnancy, of non-motherhood.
What I want to know is this: do those of you who have miscarried find this to be true? If you are pregnant again, has this made your loss and fear easier to deal with? If you aren’t pregnant again yet, do you think passing due dates, etc. would sting much less if you were?
Do you think you substantially heal from a miscarriage until you are pregnant again successfully?

*And to whoever found me by searching for the words “Baller Honeys,” that’s me, yo.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (8)

Nov

The Days of Your Life.

On Thursday, day 27 of my cycle, I had some pink spotting. Now, I don’t spot, except for the day before my period, so my initial thought was that for the first time in my life I was about to have a 28-day cycle, the kind you read about in books. {Well, actually, my initial thought was “Implantation Bleeding!” which I won’t even go into except to say I am on Progestin, i.e. birth control, but, apparently, my foolish twittery knows no bounds.} Anyway, my “28 day cycle” never materialized, the spotting was gone by the next day, and here I am waiting (again) for my cycle to end so that I can move forward.
Next on my agenda: deciding whether or not to chart during this next pointless sands-through-the-hourglass-of-time month. Dr. Doctor said it “might” be useful. It would certainly snap me out of this pesky good mood I am in this morning, as charting reveals nothing except the fact that my body can’t even pull itself together long enough to ovulate.

Here is how it usually goes:

Day 1: Have argument with self/Internet regarding whether this is really Day One, punctuated by many trips to the bathroom for Evaluation. Decide it is. This is not a surprise as your temp dropped yesterday and you have been peeing on sticks for a week. Feel relieved to be starting new cycle, about which, come to think of it, you have A Good Feeling.
Day 2: Snap awake at appointed time. Take temperature. Enter into charting software.
Day 3: See Day 2.
Day 4: Wonder how you will ever make it to the end of the month. Feel certain you will be dead by then—brain will have exploded messily.
Day 5: See Day 4.
Day 6: Start to get angry—why isn’t period ending? Period will never end, just like that time in college—will bleed for 22 days. Google “Period typical length.”
Day 7: Period ends. Begin thrusting fingers towards cervix to examine CM each time you are in the bathroom.
Day 8: See Day 4. Continue with the bathroom examinations.
Day 9: Google “CM day 9,” “CM cd 9” and “OPK when to start using.”
Day 10: Cue sleeping problems: begin waking at 4:30—too early to temp, too close to normal waking time to allow for recommended 3 hours uninterrupted sleep before taking temperature. Take temperature, doze for an hour, take temperature again. Get up and fiddle with temp adjuster in charting software. Cry a little. Google “BBT charting sleeping problems” “BBT charting wake up early” Continue bathroom examinations. Google “CM by cycle day”
Day 11: With a full bladder, stare at clock trying not to think of waterfalls, garden hoses, or babbling brooks. Must wait two hours. Wait one hour, forty-five minutes, then sprint to bathroom and pee all over OPK and part of hand. Examine OPK. Wish you had a chromometer.
Day 12: See Day 11.
Day 13: During bathroom examinations, gasp, then rush to desk to Google “Egg white CM” “EWCM” and “EWCM cd 13 ovulate?”
Day 14: Wonder if OPK lines are the same color. Break open OPK case with fingernails and remove test strip. Hold strip against piece of plain white paper and study from different angles in different lighting situations. Edge of test line looks as dark as control line, but the rest is obviously lighter. Google “OPK test line control line edge same color.”
Day 15: OPK is obviously positive. Remind self that this is what a positive OPK looks like, resolve to remember this for your next cycle—of course you will do no such thing.
Day 16: Google “How long positive OPK ovulation?” Wonder if you are ovulating right this very minute.
Day 17: See Day 16.
Day 18: Temp rise! Well, not a big one, but enough, you think. Figure out possible due date based upon ovulation.
Day 19: Temp drops a little. Google “BBT charting fallback stair step rise 2 dpo.”
Day 20: Temperature rising very slowly. Google “BBT charting slow rise pregnancy?”
Day 21: Temperature remains steady. Discover that by messing about with your temperatures and setting the ovulation detection to “Research,” you can get a dotted coverline. With most of your “pre-ovulatory” temps above it. During bathroom examinations, notice EWCM. Again. Google “EWCM after ovulation.”
Day 22: Temperature falls again, below coverline. Google “Implantation dip 5 dpo?”
Day 23: Temperature stays down, EWCM increases. Even chimerical coverline removed. Take OPK. It is negative.
Day 24: Temperature stays down, EWCM increases. Take OPK. It is blindingly positive.
Day 25: See Day 16.
Day 26: See Day 17.
Day 27: See Day 18. Google “Positive OPK twice ovulation?”
Day 28: See Day 19.
Day 29: See Day 20. Take HPT in case you ovulated the first time. Negative.
Day 30: See Day 21.
Day 31: See Day 22.
Day 32: Temperature stays down. Google “Temps below coverline pregnancy?” Take an HPT. Break open case with fingernails and remove test strip. Hold strip against piece of plain white paper and study from different angles in different lighting situations. Negative.
Day 33: Temperature rises a little. Poke at your breasts to check for soreness. Take an HPT. Wish you had a chromometer. Negative.
Day 34: Temperature drops. Take another HPT. It is more than negative: it is antimatter. Google “Implantation dip low temps 8 dpo.” Start spotting. Charting software begins offering you facts about anovulatory cycles. Sob brokenly.
Day 35: See Day 1.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

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Nov

LMP (yeah you know me).

The title of this post has nothing to do with anything, except that after reading an article that kept referring to gestational age and age based on LMP, Naughty By Nature somehow became lodged in my head.
So. Ahem. People have hinted after my last entry that I need something to occupy my time other than playing matchmaker to local drunks (What, Google doesn’t count?).
The night after I posted, Billy’s friend called and left a message on our answering machine:
“Billy! I got yer weights. The free weights and the, uh, the dumbbells. You better pick them up, cause I don’t want nothing to happen to them.”
I spent 20 minutes wondering how I could use this message to lure Billy and Jeanie together—we could trace the call! And then the Nearly could call Billy’s friend, pretending to be Billy, and arrange for a meeting to pick up the weights, and we could somehow get Jeanie’s friend there, and…And I realized that perhaps you all were right, and I need a hobby.

“I think I’m going to start entertaining,” I told the Nearly this evening, setting my magazine down on my lap and happily imagining the dishes and hostess dress and new cd (for atmosphere!) I would have to buy.
“Are you going to dance?” asked the Nearly. “Sing?” I hit him with the magazine.
“No! I’m going to have dinner parties, and people over for cocktails,” I said, “That sort of thing.”
“Who are you going to have over?”
And that was the end of that. Because I do not have many friends, here, anymore. Most evenings find me reading a book or watching NasCat {Our cats racing each other at high speeds around the apartment–like Nascar, only with fur instead of mullets}.
So I’m still working on the hobby. Is wine a hobby?

In other news, I called the clinic yesterday morning, and the receptionist promised Dr. Doctor would call me right back. When the clinic closed and I hadn’t heard from her, I found myself becoming tearful and strident, the way one does in high school when a boy doesn’t telephone—I stomped home from work, muttering that I didn’t need Dr. Doctor anyway, and who did she think she was, not calling? and–sniffle–doesn’t she like me anymore? BUT…this morning, the phone rang, and it was she.

“Hiiiii,” I breathed, “I’m so glad you called!”
“Do you have some time to talk?” she asked.
I nodded vigorously before remembering that I was on the telephone and blurting:
“Yes! Absolutely! Now would be great!”
{Ed. Note: What is wrong with me?}
The gist of our conversation was this:
Although my glucose tolerance tests were normal—i.e. indicated that I do not have diabetes—Dr. Doctor is troubled that my one-hour result soared to 204 and then was slapped smartly back down to 84—almost as low as my fasting level–one hour later. I had called and left a message about this last week, and apparently her research confirmed that this was cause for some small concern. It at least explains my hypoglycemia and the embarrassing incident in a certain dressing room. She would like me to follow an insulin resistance/type II diabetic-y diet.
As for my thyroid, those tests came back unimpeachably normal, even to my jaundiced eye (negative antibodies; T4: 1.27). So it is still looking the most like PCOS, although Dr. Doctor isn’t comfortable diagnosing that definitively because my testosterone is not as high as she would expect. She expressed concern about my wonky LH behavior: two distinct LH surges–accompanied by all the expected signs—each month, neither resulting in ovulation. I mentioned Luteinized Unruptured Follicle Syndrome to her {I found this during my endo research—the ovary gears up for ovulation, but for some reason (tough ovaries, etc.) cannot release the egg, and later in the cycle tries again before giving up in disgrace} and she was intrigued and promised to hop on PubMed and see what there is to see.
In the meantime, I will be stopping progestin birth control at the end of this pack, in a week. That would be day 36 of my cycle, so hopefully I will get my period around then as well. I will then proceed to do nothing at all (although I may start charting again, just to make myself miserable) until my next day one (around Christmas) when I will call to schedule day 3 tests and an ultrasound. Dr. Doctor wants to have the testosterone, 17-OHP, LH, etc. run again at her own lab, as my last day 3 tests were done with the H&IBOML.
The rest of that cycle will be monitored, with frequent wandings and a day 21 progesterone level. Which reminds me—is this always done on day 21, even if one’s cycles are 36-ish days? I know it is supposed to confirm ovulation (or anovulation, in my case) but if I were ovulating (please stop laughing, now), it would probably not be until day 21. Does that matter?

So that is the plan. One cycle of nothingness, one monitored natural cycle, and then who knows?
But that is a whole other post…

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (6)

Nov

Billy and Jeanie Were Lovers…

The ringer on the phone in my apartment is off. It often is. This is because, when the phone does ring, it is the beginning of one of two possible scenarios:

Scenario One:

PHONE: Brrring, BRringg!
ME: Hello?
TRANSPARENTLY INTOXICATED MALE: S’Billy there?
ME: I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.
PHONE: Dial tone.

Scenario Two:

PHONE: Brrring, BRringg!
ME: Hello?
TRANSPARENTLY INTOXICATED FEMALE: S’Jeanie there?
ME: I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.
PHONE: Dial tone.

This has been going on for a year and a half, now—since the Nearly and I moved into this particular apartment. Always the same Transparently Intoxicated Male, always the same Transparently Intoxicated Female. They have become like family—or at the very least, furniture.
It is little things like this that add color to our hum-drum lives. Not as much color, surely, as the two fine citizens the Nearly found sitting inside our dumpster the other night when he was taking out the cat litter, one of whom had a knife and the other of whom examined the bag the Nearly placed in the trash before saying, in an accusatory tone, “Cat Shit!”–as if it were the soiled litter that was out of place in the dumpster—but I digress. Anyhow, the point is that I have been entertaining fantasies of a matchmaking scheme—of bringing Billy’s friend together with Jeanie’s friend and letting nature take its course. After all, they have common interests—drinking and the telephone—and successful relationships have been predicated upon less.
It is possible that they already know each other—Billy and Jeanie could very well have the same number, implying that they are, if not lovers, at least roommates, and surely that would mean that Billy’s friend and Jeanie’s friend have met—providing either of them ever managed to get ahold of Billy or Jeanie via telephone. Still, I have found that it is best not to leave these things up to chance. I haven’t gotten very far, just yet—I finally got up the nerve to say something to Jeanie’s friend, and here is how it went:

PHONE: Brrring, BRringg!
ME: Hello?
TRANSPARENTLY INTOXICATED FEMALE: S’Jeanie there?
ME: No, sorry. Hey, do you know Billy?
TIF: Jeanie?
ME: Billy.
TIF: S’at Jeanie?
ME: No, no, this isn’t Jeanie.
TIF: Sorry.
PHONE: Dial tone.

So—no, I haven’t been wildly successful as a matchmaker thus far. But I am only a beginner. How hard can it be? I’ve seen “Fiddler on the Roof” and that Law and Order episode about arranged marriages. Maybe tonight I’ll rent “Hello Dolly.”
And turn the ringer back on.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

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Nov

In a Nutshell.

When I arrived for my tests Tuesday I was informed that in fact it would be a three hour, rather than a two hour, glucose tolerance test. During my substantial time in the waiting room, I watched women and couples come and go, and found myself, a bit ridiculously, I know, jealous of almost all of them. The woman who left with a brand new Follistim Pen and a sheaf of instructions? I wanted to be her, needle-bruised flesh and all. Worst, though, was the couple there for a transfer. I eavesdropped as they discussed the details, huddled together in the chairs across from me, waiting for the nurse to call their name. When they emerged sometime later, the woman was walking slowly, a bit bowlegged, barely suppressing a grin, her husband rushing ahead to get the door and easing her out into the hallway.
Jealousy felt for people undergoing emotionally, physically, and financially draining medical procedures is not a pretty thing. I felt disgusted with myself. But it didn’t seem to alleviate the envy gnawing at my throat—the Transfer-Couple was not, after all, stuck queasily on the diagnostic tilt-a-whirl. They were moving forward, trying things, depleting their resources for clinic visits that might actually result in a healthy baby, while here I am, a new $500 bill in hand, and for what? Dozens of inconclusive blood tests and ultrasounds?
I returned from the clinic to find the Nearly in the kitchen making a sandwich.
“X and Y are having a baby,” he told me. I physically stepped backwards, trying to move away from the news. X is one of the Nearly’s best friends, and has been since they were just out of training pants. X and Y stayed with us last year, just before I found out that I was pregnant for the second time. They had some problems conceiving–Y was, the Nearly informed me “On hormones, or something” (injectables? He has no idea.) But here they are, pregnant! Due in May! We are young, the Nearly and I, and only a few of our friends have children. But the pace is starting to pick up, and I am finding it excruciating to hear that so and so is trying and then a few months later that so and so is pregnant, while I am still right where I started, plodding back and forth to the clinic, sticking out my arm for a blood draw, or climbing onto the exam table. My birthday on Monday was hard. Most people didn’t remember it, and I woke up that morning with the flu. I spent the day thinking about the year I had finished, feeling as though I had spent the past 12 months running on a turntable, my feet scrambling forward as I went nowhere at all.
Yesterday, when the clinic called (during the one hour I was not at my desk staring dejectedly at the phone), they left a vague message to the effect that my glucose tolerance test was normal. I think I lost it, then, and I called them back, shaking, and told the nurse that I spoke to–through clenched teeth–that I would need the actual numbers, please. She said she would call me back, but that if the doctor said it was normal, there was probably nothing for me to worry about.
Here is a partial list of things doctors have told me not to worry about:

1. Endometriosis (told for 10 years there was no point in doing anything for it other than remaining on continuous birth control pills)
2. My first miscarriage
3. Anovulation (told that as I usually had a cycle every 36 days I was “probably” ovulating despite not detecting it on my chart)
4. My second miscarriage

So…I wanted the numbers. The free t4 and thyroid antibodies aren’t back yet, but here are the results of my 3-hour OGTT:
Fasting insulin: 14.9
Fasting glucose: 79
1-hour glucose: 204
2-hour glucose: 84
3-hour glucose: 106
Dr. Doctor herself left me a voicemail message with the results. Even though my one-hour result was sky high, my other, normal, results indicate that my glucose tolerance is not impaired. Dr. Doctor also said that this means my high insulin levels are irrelevant, and can be ignored. I don’t understand this last bit, but am too tired to parse it at the moment. Also, my TSH came back at only 1.57 this time—perfectly fine. So I am doubting that my further thyroid results, which will be ready next week, will show anything.

“Basically,” Dr. Doctor concluded, “We still don’t know what is going on with you.”

I know that this happens, that people are “unexplained,” but with my string-of-pearls-wearing, Barbara-Bush-resembling polycystic ovaries and my multiple abnormal test results, I don’t feel like that is me. I don’t seem to fit neatly into a diagnosis, but I want to—I want there to be a reason that my body failed to care for the two embryonic charges entrusted to it. I want it to be something I can fix. As it gets closer to the time when last year I was pregnant, I am finding myself sadder and less optimistic than ever, and feeling like it would be…well, irresponsible for me to get pregnant again unless a doctor finds something wrong and makes it right. I feel that if I did get pregnant, and miscarried yet again, it would be my fault—my fault for not first making certain that my uterus is a safe place for a baby to grow.

December 3rd—the date of the 1st annual Barren Midwestern Cocktail Klatch—cannot come fast enough. Molly has informed me that there will be beverages served in the shell of a coconut. A blue-cheese stuffed-olive in my Martini is generally as elaborate as I get with a drink. Umbrellas, juices to lend a vibrant hue—I view these things as taking up space where there could be gin. But perhaps it is my self that wants a thing to be exactly what it is and nothing more that is getting the best of me, through all of this testing and uncertainty. Maybe what I need is to order something unfamiliar and frothy, served in the bowl of a shell, and trust that it will not make me sick.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

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