THE GOOD AND THE BAD

My period finally came, yay. I called the RE office and had my initial blood work done yesterday. I start the clomid on Thursday and go in for my second set of blood work on Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed for me, we are hoping for a low number. The nurse also suggested we take advantage of the fertility drug and get some ovulation predictor kits so we can see if/when I ovulate. Then its...well, I think you know :). She said they have had people get pregnant because of taking clomid during the test. I am not getting my hopes up, but, wouldn't that be fantastic.

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I have lost 7 lbs as of last week. I am hoping that I am approaching, if not already reaching, the magic mark where my periods will start naturally occurring on their own. That's the goal for right now. Eventually, I hope to lose enough so that my hormones regulate on their own and I can get off the Metformin.

Now, the bad news. If T and I haven't had bad luck, we would have no luck what so ever. Our luck just can't seem to turn the corner in a good way. After months of harassing my dear husband, he agreed to go in and have a full physical. T had been having issues with reflux and that was my biggest concern. I also wanted him to get his cholesterol checked because he has been medicated for it being high and heart disease runs in his family. T comes home today from the physical and tells me he has to go see a cardiologist, the EKG shows he may have had a small heart attack. Talk about being floored. Then, I was soooo mad. Very unreasonable, I know. T does not talk about his health with me. If I look at him and think he doesn't look like he is feeling well, and I ask him, all I ever get is.."I'm fine" or "It's OK." I have been on him for months about taking his meds (which he wasn't) and getting a check up. All I could think was, that SOB, if he has a heart attack and dies on me, I am going to kill him. Very unreasonable.

After this goes through my head, I start crying. Then, I call T's mom who is a nurse. I figure, if T isn't going to listen to me, maybe he will listen if his mother and I both tag team him. It worked. Dirty pool but I will do what ever I need to to make sure he is healthy and with me. T's mom has had bypass surgery because of the family heart disease issues and she insisted that T get a referral to her cardiologist.

T is very aware of the seriousness of the situation. The doc has told him he needs to lose some weight and get some more exercise. Thankfully, T was able to tell her that we had already started the GI diet. He promises me that he is going to stick to it and take it seriously. He also said he is going to get more exercise, even going so far as to promise to do some of my Yoga DVDs with me. Being a man, I am sure the pounds will melt right off him now that he has put his mind to it especially since the guy doesn't have that much to lose to get to a healthy weight. I hugged him and told him I love him and am willing to play dirty pool to keep him around. I also told him if he has a heart attack, I will nurse him back to health and then make his life miserable :).

This past year has been brutal to us. I keep thinking, we have to get a break soon. I hope it comes soon because I am so tired of nothing but bad news. It gets you down and makes for a very negative attitude.

Provera, we meet again

I had blood work done yesterday because my period still hasn't started. Surprise, Surprise - my progesterone levels are low again so I get to start taking Provera again. The upside is that it will start my period and then I can get my Clomid Challenge Test. The downside, it will probably be about another month before that will be done. This waiting is so torturous. I can barely stand it.

I did take the opportunity to ask the nurse a few questions about some of the results from my previous blood work. My biggest concern was my AMH level (Anti-Mullerian Hormone). A very basic explanation is that AMH blood levels indicate the size of the remaining egg supply - the ovarian reserve. Normal AMH levels are over 1.0 ng/ml. My level was 0.2 ng/ml. This is very low, dismally low. It looks like I have an egg quantity issue. The nurse, however, said that they can still help me as long as my FSH levels (Follicle stimulating hormone) are low. FSH is the hormone that helps produce mature eggs by stimulating the ovaries to get follicles to develop. Immature eggs rest inside follicles, stimulate the follicle and you stimulate the immature egg to develop. Higher levels mean the body is having to work harder to get the follicle to develop. High levels are not good. So if I have low AMH and high FSH, it means I would have poor egg quantity and quality - premature ovarian failure. You normally see high FSH levels in menopausal women. The higher the FSH, the likelihood of responding to infertility treatments like IVF is poor. As long as my FSH levels are within an acceptable range, I could still respond to fertility drugs, though I would probably have to take inject able drugs as opposed to the oral kind. The inject able drugs (inject able gonadotropins) are the same hormones as FSH. So very scientific. Basically, I have an egg issue in addition to a hormone issue. How bad the egg issue is will determine if fertility treatments are even an option for me. The Clomid Challenge Test will determine my FSH and where we go from here.

Now, T and I are practicing patience and playing the waiting game. I want to know my levels BUT, I don't want to know. T says hope is still alive right now and we need to hold on to that. Unfortunately, I am having trouble staying optimistic. T is a glass half full kind of guy and I am the glass is half empty fill the damn thing up kind of gal. Optimism has never been my strong point. I have all these scenarios going through my brain, none of them good. I am afraid to hope, I think. Because if I hope and we get bad news, it will crush me. As long as I believe it is going to be bad, if we get good news, I can be surprised and ecstatic. If it is bad, then I have already started preparing myself for it. See - glass half empty but with the expectation that it can be filled up.

I think I need to back off on my research for a bit and take a breather. Reading all this stuff that can happen or what things might mean is just stressing me out. I am filling my handy dandy note book up with so much stuff to ask the RE that he is going to freak when he sees me walk in with all these pages. I remember when I went to one of our early pediatrician appointments with B and I was full of questions I had gleaned from various parenting magazines and books. I was so worried about milestones and her development and kind of freaking out. I remember the doctor sat me down and said the first thing we need to do was throw away all those books. Charts and levels and standards do not make a child and each child is an individual and they don't develop on a time line. I think I need to adopt that philosophy to this situation and step back, take a breather and wait for all our results to come in. Easier said then done. I guess I need to work on my practicing patience.