Depression...Back

My longtime companion is here to visit me again. No, not AF, but DEPRESSION. You would think that passing my stone on Tuesday would have me so relieved that I could just enjoy feeling good. But no, once again my brain rebels. For the last two days I have tried to tell myself, "Noelle, you are NOT getting depressed. You just passed your stone! You have a week of vacation coming up. You just need to get through this one week. You are not weird to not have a baby at thirty-three. You are so lucky that you have gotten to spend thirteen years married to your husband. This whole thing is making you realize just how lucky one is to have a child. You are going to be okay. You just need to focus on grading papers and going back on wei.ght watchers and decorating your living room and cleaning the house. Maybe you can work on the front yard? You're going to be okay...You're going to be okay..."

But then tonight, after trying to ignore this pain in my heart, I finally gave into it. And it felt good.

My due date was December 18, which means that it could not possibly be at a worse time of the year. I loved Christmas. The lights, the trees, the wreaths, the smell of pine coming from my fresh wreath. But now I hate Christmas. Everywhere I go I am mocked by Christmas. Going to the mall and walking around has always been a fun thing for me to do, but now every time I go I curse the gigantic, beautiful trees in the courtyard. I curse Santa sitting there with a line of kids. It is hard enough to have to get through a due date, but with a due date around Christmas it is impossible not to think of what I should be doing right now.

I was just on face.book, otherwise known as baby.book, and I saw a picture of my half-sister holding her baby, and her baby was in a bear costume with cute little ears on her head. This is the half-sister who is ten years younger than me and got pregnant in order to keep her ex-boyfriend who was leaving her. This is the half-sister who does drugs and this is also the half-sister who accused me of never even being pregnant. When I get to heaven, I can't wait to ask God how He justifies giving babies to complete morons who don't deserve it, yet He often keeps babies from couples who are so incredibly deserving.

Today while taking my Zo.loft, I looked at the bottle which warned of consuming the stuff if one plans to become pregnant. Whatever. I can't even imagine what I would be like without the stuff.

I think I would be better equipped to deal with this crappy situation if my life hadn't sucked so hard a lot of the time. My childhood was shit, which in turn gave me some pretty bad depression, OCD, and fu**** way of looking at my life. Dealing with this depression my entire life has been horrendous. I always knew that getting pregnant would be hard for me, because God forbid if He grants me something easily. But I never, in a million years, anticipated getting pregnant easily, miscarrying, going through severe depression, and not being able to become pregnant again. This was a scenario that I never could have dreamed up, and I dream up a lot of things that *may* happen.

For anyone who reads this who is offended by my anger at God...I am sorry. I don't want to hide it. He knows. I have unfortunately lost a lot of my faith in these last seven months. I have become a bitter person.

I don't think it is healthy for me to pretend like I am not sad. I think that I just have to face it-This is going to be a heinous month and a half until Christmas is over. I will have to find a way to make it through each day. Tomorrow, I am not going to exert the energy to pretend to myself that I am not depressed. I am going to wallow in it, and see how that method works. This is just too tiring for me.

Decisions And Thoughts On TTC

On Tuesday, I woke up crying. I was crying from the tremendous pain that felt like a knife gauging me in the lab.ia area. I know that sounds so strange that a kidney stone causes pain in that region, but it does. My husband had to take me to work because I had taken tylen.ol with cod.eine. All the way to work I cried and asked why God would allow me to continue being shit on. I cried like I have not cried in a long time. And it felt good. Once I got to work I decided that I was going to have the surgery to get the stone removed. At this point, having the stone pulled out of my urethra with a roto rooter sounded pleasant compared to having the stone in there any longer. I was going to call my urologist and ask for surgery the following day. My husband had agreed that having the surgery was more important than my possibly being pregnant. At lunch, I used the restroom. I normally pee into a strainer, but I decided to just be daring since there was no way "Big Prick" was going to pass on his own. I started peeing, and I felt it come out! Sadly, I had to pull it out from the toilet (ewwwwwwww.......). It was ginormous! I came out of the bathroom yelling and screaming and I grossed many people out when I showed them. They were especially grossed out that I had reached into the toilet. (Apparently these people don't pee on a stick as much as I do and aren't close with their pee). I measured the stone, and it was indeed the big one that we had seen in the CAT scan. FIVE millimeters! That is HUGE! If you are really interested in being grossed out, I noticed that you can click on the picture from my previous post and you will be able to see the stone close-up. It is fascinating to me to see how the stone formed, with the brown parts, which I am assuming is the oxalate, and the white spearhead looking part, which I am assuming is the calcium.

I feel so free. I feel tired because my body has exerted so much energy trying to pass this stone for two weeks.

On to a different subject. So, yesterday I went to my gyno for a post-op appointment. I asked him what our next step should be in this ttc process. Since the miscarriage, this is my 5th month trying with good timing. I told him that I was considering doing IUI with the fertility urologist that my husband went to. My gyno said that he would like me to wait two more months. He said that we can then do Clom.id with coi.tus or Clo.mid with IUI. He said that they do the IUI's in his office, which surprised me. I don't know...I think I would rather have one done with a fertility specialist, but then again, it would be nice to be under the care of my doctor so that I could do the Clo.mid too. On a funny note, when my doc said that we could do Clo.mid with coi.tus, my hubby said, "What?" and I said, "S.ex, honey. S.ex!" He then claimed that he hadn't heard the doctor correctly. Yeah, right.

I know that it hasn't been long. I know that it is very common for it to take up to a year to get pregnant. However, for me, I feel like I need to get the ball rolling so that I feel like I am doing something productive. I am 33, which is not terribly old, but it is on the cusp I suppose. In two months that will be seven cycles in which I have not fallen pregnant. I feel like it is a decent amount of time to wait. Since I am paying out of pocket, there is no need to wait the full year. Also, my hubby's aunt gave us a small amount of money to pay for our kids' college, but I think she would approve if we used it on having a kid.

I go from desperately needing to be pregnant RIGHT THIS MINUTE to being okay with it taking a while. That is a big improvement for me, as I used to have the desperate urgency twenty four hours a day. I guess this is a sign of my healing. I have also been thinking about God's timing. I know that when I finally do have my child, i will realize that it was God's perfect timing. The thought of having gotten pregnant sooner, which means that I would not have this particular child, will mortify me. A few years back, when I was not ready to ttc, one of my friends told me that when I look at my beautiful child I will cry at the thought of not having him/her. That God has the most perfect sperm and egg in mind and only He knows what month that will be. He only knows if it will happen naturally or through IUI or IVF. I wish that I could trust Him. I go between trusting Him and being angry with Him. Most of the time I am angry. I hate that. I hate what I have become. I hate what bitterness and grief does to a person. I like to think that God is molding me. I do know that when I got pregnant so quickly at first, I was excited. I was happy. But I wasn't nearly as appreciative as I will be when it happens again. I was worried about gaining weight and I weighed myself every day and I worried about what I would look like as I got fat and gained back my weight that I had tried so desperately to lose. When I get pregnant again, I will be so appreciative. For those of us who have strugged with getting pregnant or having a miscarriage or both, we get the gift of knowing how lucky we truly are when we are pregnant. There are so many pregnant women who have no idea how fortunate they are. In a sense, we are the ones who are fortunate enough to understand how much of a gift it really is.

I hate the two week wait. Especially when my timing was not the best. Especially when it was not my fault that the timing was not the best. I feel like I am just waiting for the inevitable-my period. At least when I get it I will be on Thanksgiving break and I can have a pity party without if effecting my work.

I have heard this time and time again...TTC is just a waiting game. We are constantly waiting. Waiting to ovulate...waiting for our period or a positive HPT, and waiting to ovulate again. I hope that I can someday just enjoy the NOW.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hall-e-lu-ja! Hall-e-lu-jah! Hallelujah!

Can I Get Off Of This Ride?

This morning I awoke with an icky feeling. I felt physically ill from my stone poking me. (By the way, we have named it "Big Prick.") I felt emotionally ill because I have been fighting with my husband. This week, my fertile week, he goofed up. He played tennis during two very important days and was not able to perform. This happened last month when he played tennis. He gets tired and then he gets nervous and has performance anxiety. We tried everything to get it to work, and it didn't, and that made me very, very sad. It made me mad that he, once again, made tennis his priority. I chart and pee on a million sticks and check mucous and take my temp, and all he has to do is not play tennis during those times, and he will be okay. It is interesting...Our first few months he was able to play tennis and BD, but as we have grown more anxious about not getting pregnant, he has not been able to perform on a few occasions. So, we BD'ed every other day. I researched and researched, and found that every day is better, but that every other day is okay. Of course I keep obsessing over it. I need to remind myself that lots of people do it every other day and still get pregnant.

Not that any of that matters, because with the pain the stone is causing me, it will be a miracle if I was able to get pregnant. I called my urologist today, who happens to be fabulous, and she wanted to get me in the operating room today. I told her that I was one or two days past ovulation, and asked her if we could please wait two weeks to see if I am pregnant before we operate. She agreed, but ordered an ultrasound for me on Wednesday to see where the stone is located and if it is causing blockage. Having a stuck stone could be very dangerous. If it is causing blockage, then I will need to have a ureteroscopy. Which is a real bummer. She also said that if I cannot take the pain anymore, to call her, and we would get the stone out right away. She made me feel so taken care of. A few months back I apologized for being so annoying and needy, and she said that I was her nicest patient. That was so sweet of her. I asked if we should set a surgery date for two weeks, and she said that she would get me in even if it has to be at night. I love this women.

So I am waiting and taking Tylenol with codeine. If the pain gets too bad or if I get an infection, they will have to operate. I guess that would mean no pregnancy for me. She did offer to do the ureteroscopy without general anesthesia, with only my bottom half numbed. I SO CANNOT IMAGINE THAT. Lying there with my legs in stirrups dangling from the ceiling, watching them roto-rooter my ureters. Yikes. They stick a basket up my urethra. Do I really want that vision to be burned into my head for the rest of my life???? I don't know.

I do know that I would really, really like it if life would stop shitting on me. I have about had it. I am trying to look on the bright side...I was so worried about this big stone being in me while pregnant. Now, if I get it out, I won't have to worry about it.

In my last post, a blogger commented and said that things have to get better for me from here. You know, she is right. Life cannot continue to be so shitty, right?

Watchful Waiting

This is the term that urologists use to describe watching their patient for a kidney stone to pass. Every year for the past eighteen years I have dealt with a stone, and I have endured the "watchful waiting." Typically, I am in pain for three days, and then the stone passes. Last year the pain lasted a week, a week in which I thought I was going to die. It finally passed and I was amazed at the size of it; it was probably a good four mm. Tomorrow is the two week mark for this stone. Stones that do not pass within one month are generally not going to pass on their own. Two years ago I endured horrendous pain for one month, at which point I went to my urologist without even making an appointment. I begged the receptionist to talk to him. Within three minutes he came out to the waiting room and said that he was booking me for surgery that evening.

I just had my fertile time, and I managed to BD regardless of the pain. This pain I am having is not a screaming pain, but more of a lingering pain that is constant. It is colicky and feels like contractions. I am sure that most people enduring this pain would be in the emergency room. I am so used to it and have gone to the emergency room countless times, only to be given pain pills that I could take at home. So I wait. Because we BD'd I cannot get a CT scan because I may have a baby brewing in there. I highly doubt this, as I cannot imagine a baby growing in this environment of pain. I will call my urologist tomorrow and we will come up with a plan of action. I will find out if she will put me on Flo.max, which is a men's prostate medicine which relaxes the ureters. Of course if it is not safe for someone who may be pregnant, I will not use it. I really put myself in a crappy position, but I have high hopes that it will pass. If it does not pass in two weeks, I will be scheduled for a ureteroscopy, which is an incredibly painful surgical procedure where a basket is passed through the urethra up into the ureter. After the surgery, a stent (tube) is placed in the ureter so it does not collapse after being prodded. The stent is left in for a week along with a string connected to the stent that hangs out of the urethra. After a week, a doctor pulls the string and out comes the stent. I cannot even begin to explain the horrendousness of this procedure. I am unable to go to work for a week, and with my untenured position, I cannot afford to take a week off. My principal already sees me as a walking illness.

I know where the stone is based on the pain. It is in my distal ureter on the left side. This causes pain in the la.bia. Strange, I know. At this point in the ureter, it becomes very small, one to five mm, and this is where stones are most likely to be lodged. The stone which is lodged there is five mm. So it looks like a snake swallowing a large rat, but the rat has tons of pokey spines on it. The stone is at the point right before the bladder, so my hope is that with the gallons of water that I drink, it will help to move it along.

I don't understand why God has allowed this to happen. If you read back in this blog, you will see that I have had a string of bad luck. Crappy things happening to me over and over again. I beg and plead with God for a break, and He doesn't seem to hear me. I am angry at Him. I am sad. I am depressed. I cannot endure this much longer. With pain, one's mental capacity breaks down. I don't even feel like praying, but I do. I continuously beg and plead to God to help me pass this stone. If I can pass this, I can maybe start to feel normal emotionally.

As for getting pregnant, I always knew that it would be a struggle. It was shocking when I conceived the first month trying, but not shocking at all when I miscarried. It is definitely not shocking that seven months later I am still not pregnant. I don't know what God is doing here. Dealing with a miscarriage is bad. Dealing with severe depression is bad. Dealing with a kidney stone is bad. Dealing with a dead aunt is bad. Dealing with the fact that I may not have a job next year is bad. Dealing with chronic pelvic pain until it becomes so painful that you have to have surgery is bad. Throw them all together and it just plain sucks. I don't want to keep complaining, but this is my outlet, so I am so sorry. I know that people have it worse than me. It just doesn't feel like it right now.

So, at this point, I am "watchfully waiting" for this stone to pass and I am also "watchfully waiting" to see if and when God will bless me with a baby.

Poo'ing in the Woods

Camp was such an adventure that I will need to do two posts in order to cover it. In this post I will tell you the very funny story of my adventure in the woods. In my next post I will tell you about our BD in the woods. Warning: If you are squeamish about bodily functions, I recommend that you do not read this! The word "Poo" will be mentioned several times...Okay, you were warned!

It is a requirement that I go on an all day hike with students during camp. If I didn't do it, I would certainly catch some flack from my co-workers, who tend to be very judgemental. So I scheduled my hike to be during the first full day that I was to be there, so that I could get it over with and it didn't interfere with ovulation.

Tuesday I woke up and was till having tremendous kidney stone pain. Not only that, but I was severely constipated. So much that it was uncomfortable to walk. My all day hike was to begin at 9:40, or so I thought. In the cabin, I decided to use a suppository because I could not imagine doing an all day hike being this constipated. Usually, when I do a suppository, it takes about fifteen minutes to take effect. (By the way, please note that I do not normally use suppositories, but it is a necessity at times due to my irritable bowel syndrome.) It was 9:15, so I knew that I would be cutting it close, but since I would have until 9:40 to use the restroom, I figured that I had enough time. Right after the suppository was inserted (sorry...ewwww...), I had a bad feeling regarding the schedule. I called the front office and was told that I was five minutes late to the hike and my group was waiting for me!

I immediately went to the bathroom and tried to expel the suppository, but had no luck. OH NOOOOO! This was my worst fear. My friend, another teacher, told me that I was going to have to just poo in the woods. She instructed me to hang back from the group, squat behind a tree, and make sure my pants were out of the way. I told her that I could never, in a million years, poo in the woods.

I ran to meet my group. I immediately felt the bubbly feeling in my behind. I cried a little bit and tried to pretend that it was my stone that was bothering me. Oh lord, I was so scared of being in the woods for eight hours with students and without a toilet! My hike leader told me to stay home, but I stupidly insisted on going, as I knew that my co-workers wouldn't cut me any slack. I was so relieved when I learned that they were combining two groups and I would get to be with my teacher friend. I call her "My Xan.ax." We boarded the bus, and were then told that we would be exploring new territory in a desert region. The bus reached its destination and we unboarded. The first thing I saw was miles and miles of short dried grass and small cacti. NO TREES IN SIGHT. That meant no toilet. Where the heck was I going to poo? We started our hike and I felt so sick. I don't know if you have ever done a suppository, but they are brutal. I know that after fifteen minutes I will be poo'ing through a screen door. I don't know how I even managed to walk. I wasn't even conversing with my students. We stopped for a snack where I sat down and tried to squeeze. I finally couldn't take it anymore. I asked my teacher friend to take me somewhere to pee. My stone was bothering me tremendously and I at least wanted to get the pee out. We didn't tell the leaders because we thought we would be right back. Oh boy, were we wrong. We walked far away and I went behind a bush. I squatted, but couldn't pee. I had to poo. So I did. Diarrhea everywhere. Thank goodness I brought toilet paper. I was so afraid that my students were going to see me. I could not get up. Every time I did, I had to go more. It was freaking AWFUL! A NIGHTMARE! Twenty minutes later (I am not exaggerating) we started walking towards the group. Unfortunately, we could not find them. We walked for about thirty minutes, and then we saw one of the leaders coming our way. She was NOT happy. Rightfully so. We explained what had happened, and made our way back to the group, where the other leader greeted us with a lashing for being left behind.

I still felt horrible though, and knew that there was more to come. We stopped for lunch, and again I felt like I was going to explode. My friend and I walked away and went behind the mountain. I found a small bush and let loose again. The kids were so close and I was so afraid that they were going to see my poo'ing! Diarrhea again. We went back to the group, where the kids start questioning why we kept leaving. Then the leader decided to take the girls to potty before we start back. Guess where she takes them? Right to my spot where I just ruined the bush. I was so embarrassed. There was toilet paper everywhere, hanging off of the grass. Thank goodness she had the sense to take them to another bush.

We made it back and I wanted to kiss the toilet back at the cabin. I took my shower and the floor got totally wet, so I decided to change in the room. The blinds were open, but I didn't even think twice about changing in there. So I opened my towel and my cute male co-worker walks up to the window. I scream! He screams, "Oh God!" I was humiliated beyond belief.

What was so weird is that I am normally constipated on these trips. After I poo'ed in the woods, I was able to go poo every single day after that. It was as if all of my inhibitions had been lifted.

In my next post I will tell you of my BD'ing adventure. Good times. Yet another reason to despise camp.

At Camp and Hating It

I am here at camp, and I desperately want to come home. It is very hard for me to be around people twenty-four hours a day. I am also so tired, and I am tired of seeing 200 kids shovel food into their mouths. My room is cold and my bed is hard. I am also still working on passing that kidney stone, and it is so painful. I am pissed because it is almost my fertile time, and I surely won't be able to get pregnant with the pain that I am in. I am sure my cortisol hormones are through the roof. Of course, last month when I wasn't trying as I waited for my laparoscopy, I was fine and healthy. I am so tired of my life.

What a pathetic post.