Nov
17

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 |