Getting Back On Track

Well, nothing like diving right in. I've been a little neglectful of the blog these past couple of weeks as I have been processing the news of no news which I was given at my last specialist appointment, adjusting back to life as a full-time working woman and playing hostess to one half of my in-laws. Its all been a bit overwhelming.

Last week was a huge adjustment. Aside from the change in my schedule, getting up oh about three hours earlier everyday and asking my brain to focus on a thousand different things from what it has been accustomed to these past months, I was back to speaking Italian everyday with my father in-law and staying up too late every night so a lot of the time I felt a little like I was having an out of body experience with so much sensory overload. Last week we celebrated my husband's birthday with friends at a local gastropub one night and ate half a head of one of these, I had a work event another, dinners out with my father in-law and then once he left with a childhood friend who came into town. Its been so much fun but absolutely exhausting. I wasn't at all prepared. Too much coffee and alcohol was consumed which added to that never ending feeling of running on empty. My only respite was getting away from the office for lunch and focusing my attention to one thing - reading my book (I'm on the last book of the Millennium trilogy and I am so sad its got to end).

This weekend though I feel like I've gotten myself back on track. I've caught up on my sleep and yesterday I went to acupuncture and had a half hour massage which made me feel like I had taken a tiny vacation. They also sold me on a supplement which is supposed to help with stamina and strengthen the body its a mushroom called Cordyceps. Which means at the moment the daily supplements I am taking in no specific order are: folic acid, black cohosh, cordyceps, fish oil, selenium and zinc, a prenatal multivitamin, royal jelly, ginseng, Coenzyme Q10 along with spirulina and wheatgrass and when I can (ie make myself a smoothie so that I can withstand the taste) brewers yeast. I shouldn't be drinking alcohol or coffee and I intend to cut down/ out as much as I can.

I also need to go back to eating nourishing whole foods and thankfully most of the foods I need to eat according to my TCM symptoms are warming Fall root foods which I love in any case, as well as legumes, fish, yams, cabbage, beets, carrots, kale, turnips, cauliflower, soy, etc. So back to the balancing act of doing my job and doing it well and not depleting myself so badly that I am hardly recognisable. Health comes first. Healthy body, healthy mind and eventually healthy baby.

Oh, and in other good news our chromosome tests finally came back and we both have normal sets which is a huge and happy relief.

Back To The Drawing Board

Yesterday I met with the recurrent miscarriage specialist. I met with a different doctor than I saw at my last appointment and at my private appointment. He was nice, spent a little more time with me going through all questions and my slides. He got a little off topic at times talking about how humans were the most infertile mammals of all species, um I guess that's useful knowledge?

Going through my x-ray he was, much to my shock, absolutely adamant that I don't have a septum or even a partial septum. I questioned the use of HSG to diagnose the difference between an arcuate uterus and a partial septum he said perhaps if the HSG isn't taken correctly if would be difficult to tell but he assured me that the technician who gives the x-ray is the best. And from the slides he could see with no doubt in his mind that my uterus is normal so no need for a hysteroscopy. I also tested negative to Lupus so all the blood tests except for the chromosome test have come back and are normal. We won't get the chromosome test back probably for another few weeks. I gave blood for Factor V Leiden tests and was told to start trying again after my next cycle.

To say that I was more than a little shocked is an understatement. I suppose I should be grateful that everything is seemingly normal but obviously worried that we are no closer to finding any concrete answers and therefore concrete solutions. As happy as I am to go forward I feel a little like a tightrope walker performing without a net.

If the Factor V Leiden test comes back as positive apparently its treated with heparin and baby aspirin which they would then put me on as soon as I find out if I am pregnant. They'll also check I think at least one of the thrombosis tests again as levels change during pregnancy. Also I qualify for a test group to be given early progesterone which means I might get progesterone or I might just get a placebo. At the moment this RPL clinic doesn't believe in the benefits of progesterone treatment for early miscarriage as its "closing the barn door after the horse has run out" but I guess that there is significant evidence from other clinics that they are looking at it again so it can't hurt, might help or might be more of nothing. I also asked about NK cells and apparently they don't believe in those either and therefore don't test for them.

I'm going to go back to acupuncture and talk to my acupuncturist about alternative treatments. I've also started reading the Infertility Cure by Randine Lewis which is very similar to The Baby Bible in its philosophies and Eastern/ Western approach. Its about taking things into your own hands as well which I guess at this point I need to if my doctors can't seem to find anything to help me and tell me I need to get my confidence back and saddle up! (No, I'm not exaggerating this was my doctor's parting advice). Although both books are mostly geared towards women who can't get pregnant my thought is that recurrent early miscarriage must have its roots in some of the same problems, implantation and poor egg quality both of which lead to early embryonic demise and must be one or both of my problems. Unless its a mind/ body problem, or how about stress? Maybe I just need to learn to relax? Says the woman who has taken off six months from work and is ready to give a black eye to anyone who kindly suggests she is anything other than completely and utterly zen. I have earned my patience through this muddled minefield and I know that it will come in handy once we finally do become parents. Sigh.

Post In Which I Admit I Had No Idea How To Take A Picture of My Hair

S. has grown a beard. He told me that he's not going to shave again until we have saved a certain amount of money. I said, great, then maybe I shouldn't cut my hair. (I haven't had a hair cut since the beginning of the year). He said, well, maybe we should scrap that idea.

That Which You Know Now, You Always Knew You Didn't Know

There I was minding my own business, brushing my teeth at an ungodly hour, because you know I am still on vacation and my husband doesn't work until the early afternoon most days, so we seem to watch movies until the wee hours of the night like a couple of college kids. So there I was, brushing my teeth thinking about how the Matrix trilogy seemed to get worse with each movie (we've watched all three this week). Thinking about how much I used to love Keanu Reeves and how many times did I watch Point Break? Probably so many times that if saw it right now I could recite a large part of it, ah time well spent, coveted brain space well occupied... Trying to figure out if there was a point to the Matrix or if the writers themselves gave up by the third movie. S. and I kept turning to each other after every long winded speech and in our best yoga instructor voice we'd recite, Do you know the question, if the answer is one you haven't already asked? Or will it be if it was? If you were here did you remember that you weren't there? That which you know now, you always knew you didn't know And other such nonsense which we seemed to crack ourselves up over. Anyway, there I was thinking deep thoughts like should I floss? When S. called me over to the computer and read me a post my brother had just left on Facebook.

Basically he was cycling, blah, blah, blah, passed out, threw up, cycled home!!! Um, who does that after they have passed out and thrown up??? blah, blah, blah, hospital, HEART INFECTION. These are not words you want to read about your brother at 1:30 AM when you live on the other side of the Atlantic from him. Or even if you don't and even if it wasn't 1:30 AM. So I sort of panicked, I'm a lickle bit of a worrier. I called him and his wife was laughing because she told him he should send me an email and he was all, she won't be up at this hour! Aha! I was and I was fucking worried. Our father had a stroke a couple of years ago and I'm a renowned passer outer and had a heart murmur which thankfully seems to have corrected itself so heart attack is not out of the realm of possibility in our family. But he's fine, I guess. They ran a bunch of tests on him and his heart is strong, he's got a resting beat of an athlete and as he's been cycling competitively for over a year his blood pressure, etc are all very good. They prescribed him Ibuprofen. FOR A HEART INFECTION. I don't know if it just sounds more serious than it actually is or if my brother is underplaying it but he's back at home and taking it easy. This is pretty much the biggest thing I hate about living abroad. That and being mistaken for a Canadian. I kid, I kid, some of my fondest childhood memories were spent canoeing in Canada, well because of my brother.

We went to canoe camp in Ontario for several years for six weeks in the summer from the age of eleven to sixteen. A couple of weeks ago my brother posted this video on Facebook (because yes we only communicate to each other through Facebook, obviously). Its absolutely shockingly beautiful and as he reminded me reminiscent of lots of skies we'd see those summers canoeing out in the middle of a lake in the outback of Ontario. Funnily enough, this exchange was another one which made me realise how much I hope I have children to add onto the memory chain of S.'s and my family's history. Because all my brother had to do was write a couple of words in reference to the video and I knew exactly what he meant. And isn't that what family is about? And scaring them in the middle of the night through the internet.

Summer's End?

Oh August how you have forsaken me! Two more weeks until I go back to school, I mean work and the cloud cover has settled very nicely thank you very much over London Town and isn't interested in moving. There was a break yesterday and I sat in the Park for an hour in the late afternoon sun, soaking up every last ray, topping up my freckle ratio until the next sun burst. Please say that there will be one more!

This weekend S. and I had great fun with friends celebrating S.'s best friend's birthday. So much fun that we spent all of Saturday recovering. We stayed in all day except for a trip to the supermarket and watched bad movies and cooked a Spaghetti Bolognese, ah just what the hangover ordered. On Sunday we managed to get out and go to see a couple of exhibits at the Tate Modern. One was a photography exhibit called Exposed which chronicles the evolution of privacy or private space within photographs over the past 100 or so years. There were photos from Weegee, Nan Goldin, Walker Evans, Larry Clark and Helmut Newton to name a few. It was pretty interesting to see how much societal attitudes have changed over the years as we are constantly under surveillance and as everyone has access to digital cameras so everything has the potential of being filmed or photographed.

I got a call from my GP this morning. Apparently our blood samples were sent to the wrong lab for the Kyrotyping. I can't say that I am surprised, this has been the biggest organisational nightmare of all the tests I've had to take. When we had the blood samples taken at the only hospital it seemed would do it I even asked the nurse who took our blood if they would be sent together and to the Hospital my GP had written on the form. Yes, yes... well obviously they weren't. Another week until we meet with the specialist again. In the meantime this weekend we are going to try to go away for a bit of R&R at the sea, I'm looking into lovely B&B's and countryside pubs, let's hope the weather cooperates a bit.

Are We There Yet?

I've really been so lucky to have this time to myself between jobs to be able to straighten myself up a bit. Some days I feel like I have arrived, I get it, here I am, this is me, I am finished, a work in progress almost completed! Then other days I feel like a bumbling idiot and full of odd insecurities which I should somehow be over by now at this point in my life. This point in my life. What point is it that I am up to?

Somehow it helps me to think of my progress as a human being making her way through her life (albeit in my own privileged compared to the rest of most of the world way) in a zig zag rather than in any sort of linear ascension. I mean I like to think that I am ascending, I am certainly getting older, I'm getting the white hairs to prove it, hopefully as I do I am rising towards something but I think that there is plenty of zig along with the zag before I get there, where ever that may be.

Today I made a chart. A progress chart in a way. It was to help me visualise certain goals my husband and I have for our family for the next few years. And then I laughed to myself and thought of course I know what the likelihood of all these goals being met in the x number of years I'd written in the chart will be. Then I gave myself a break and I thought well if we achieve at least half of those goals I will be happy. And then I ate a bowl of cereal for lunch because we don't have anything else in the house to eat and I didn't go grocery shopping yesterday. And then I got back to vacuuming because I finally figured out what was wrong with our vacuum, oh that the bag needed to be changed. And then I sighed thinking about the shock my brain will have once I go back to working in an office in September.