Me in the Year 2010

This new year has been strange in a million ways: the fact that my father is lying in the cold ground under a Christmas-decorated tree, the fact that I am not pregnant and have no children, and the fact that I am not an ethnobotanist.
Perhaps I should explain that last one.
When I was in my 4th grade gifted class, I had to draw a picture entitled "Me in the Year 2010." Of course I can't find the masterpiece now, but it was the kind of thing I saved, along with my brilliant pre-adolescent poetry and my endless conjugation of romance-language verbs.
In the picture, I was living in a bubble with my husband and four children. (Yes, even as a child I was obsessed with dystopias, which perhaps explains my profound love for the literary talents of Margaret Atwood.) And, because I developed a very detailed story around my life in the picture, I remember that I had projected that in the year 2010 I would be an ethnobotanist.
I was telling my husband about this in the supermarket just before New Year's Eve. He asked, "How were you studying the uses of the plants of other cultures if you were in a bubble?" I had to think about this, but I think I remember that other families lived in other bubbles and we could get from bubble to bubble in some sort of walkway system, which presumable led to places where people had not yet ruined the environment and had important things to teach us about the medicinal uses of plants. I'm not sure. But I am sure that my services as an ethnobotanist were in very high demand, VITAL to the health care of the dystopia of 2010. And that I projected that I would have four children of various ages well before this year.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, on December 23 of 2009, I learned that the embryo I was carrying had died in my uterus.



So we canceled our plans to go visit my in-laws, and scheduled a D &C for December 29.

This is what I wrote the day of my surgery:

Most of my dreams last night were about food, specifically not eating it.
In a few hours I go in for a D &C. That’s right, those of you who know what that means. I was pregnant, but now I am not. Since the day before Christmas, I have been in a between-place, where I know the embryo I am carrying is no longer alive, and I carry it around to church on Christmas Eve, to decorate the trees around my father’s grave, to the gym, and I wait for this day, when my dead embryo will be taken from my body to make room for someone new.

So, as usual with anesthesia, I cannot have anything to eat or drink today, and, as usual with my sub-conscious, I processed a variety of my anxieties in my dreams.

-I dreamt I was in an Italian restaurant and ordered a beautiful plate of pasta, a delicious salad with balsamic vinaigrette, and when it arrived, I remembered I was having surgery and had to apologize to the chef and leave the restaurant.

-I dreamt I was in a car being driven by a friend who has just had her second child. My husband was sitting next to me in the front seat and there were three or four people in the back seat (No, I do not know what kind of car it was.) My friend announced that she was pregnant with her third child, and everyone in the car was looking at me to see how I would react, so I said, “Well, you should give that one to me to even things out. And everyone frowned and shook their heads. “It’s a joke,” I said. “I’m trying to make a joke.” And even my husband shook his head and said, “that is not appropriate” and that is when I knew I was dreaming.

-I dreamt I was walking through a stone courtyard filled with fine green grass. I was walking with my father. We were in a hurry to get somewhere, but since I realized I was dreaming, I stopped and turned to look at him. He was at a healthy weight, not emaciated as he was at the end. He was wearing a black and yellow plaid shirt, and a brown suede jacket over brown pants. And I wanted to look at him forever, to memorize every detail, but I realized I was dreaming and might not have this chance again, so I hugged him tight and I said, “Daddy, I love you so much. I’m going to miss you so much when you are gone.” And he said, “There will be plenty of time. We don’t have to talk about this now.” But I knew we didn’t have time, that we would never take the time, that we would run out of time. And then I woke up, and there were tears on my face, but those moments with the dream of my father were the best Christmas present I received.


Me the in Year 2010.
No baby, no ethnobotany. And a great deal of grieving still to do.

what with leg waxing, migraines have to do, or how to consolidate pain

So, a few weeks ago, Nayla asked me what I will do about my migraines if ever I am pregnant. Well, although I doubt I'm pregnant, there is going to be, at least until the big drugs and needles and pricy doctors are involved, that week before the most expensive five inch plastic stick to ever grace a drugstore shelf can tell me whether or not it's ok to take a Relpax. And because apparently I STILL haven't learned not to tempt fickle fate, I didn't plan ahead and therefore found myself with a minor migraine on Sunday night that by Tuesday night was a six flag ringer, complete with flashing lights and hours of vomiting and even a near constant right eye watering trick that has never happened before, but emerged with this migraine like one big unwelcome party trick. And I did not take my Relpax, surely the worst of the worst teratogonic drugs, right up there with thalidomide and DDT. (Just kidding. Actually Relpax is a pregnancy Class C drug, which means that nobody knows the effect on a developing fetus). But as anyone who has ever gone to Catholic School, much less sat through an embryology class knows, spinal cord and limb development happen in the precarious first few weeks, usually before the majority of the non fertility obsessed population becomes aware that they are pregnant.

Wednesday morning I broke down and called my neurologist. I was immediately transferred to "Jennifer," a nurse who is truly an angel. If I was the boss of the world, I would make every medical professional take lessons from her. I explained my situation and she offered to give me a blood HCG draw STAT. If that came back negative, I could take my Relpax with impunity. If it didn't, they would give me the regimen they usually prescribe to pregnant woman, which is Tylenol-3, Tylenol with codeine. Between two and four tablets, adjusted for height and weight. Safe during pregnancy? Perfectly, apparently. Actually I was going to wait out the results of the HCG test and then stick with the Relpax, but then I found out that the lab draw center, which sends samples out for analysis, considers STAT to be 4-5 hours. So I picked up the T3 prescription and drove to my office, where I sat through not one, not two, but four meetings. But that was perfectly fine. Because I work in a state building, the bar for general cognition is not set high.

And the verdict? A most effective pain killer. Next time, I'm going to multi task those pain killing properties and schedule a leg wax for the same day. If I can just get past my fear of phthalates in the wax.

Way #457 in which trying to get pregnant is going to be the death of me

I am typing this while periodically checking the tip of my left index finger, which won’t stop bleeding in the way that skin sliced by glass often does not. All because this morning I tried to take my temperature, a project that involves keeping in one’s mouth- not a digital thermometer, the type sensible people use because otherwise it really sucks to bite down on one of the glass ones, an unfortunately likely scenario if you:

a. are preoccupied, because the key to an accurate basal body temperature reading is taking your temperature before doing anything- getting up, talking, cognition, and so

b. might be therefore prone to forget that you also have small protruding orthodontic attachments, which then cause you to bite down and shatter the stupid thing in your mouth.

As far as a way to start the morning goes, I can’t recommend it. I was taking my temperature in the first place because this is my first month off birth control, which means that I am morally obligated not to consume my usual pharmacological pharmacopoeia in the second half of my cycle. A precaution no doubt pointless, but I don’t tempt fate. There’s this great line in the memoir by Christopher Buckley, referring to his sick father’s medication schedule, and says something to the effect of “enough to give Hunter S. Thompson pause.”

Although certainly not the type to elicit his post mortem envy, consisting as my intake does of:

-Claritin (the real stuff, with pseudoephadrine and not that silly phenylephrine (sp). Here “sp” refers to spelling, and not some sort of fancy time-release capsule. I need somebody to please explain to me how it would be cost effective for the methamphetamine makers to buy Claritin at nearly $16 a box, distill the pseudoephadrine down, and then sell the final product as street crack for what, five bucks? It doesn’t make sense. Even if methamphetamine dealers aren’t the savviest group. Honestly, fellow allergy sufferers, I could take this straight to Capital Hill.

-Wellbutrin SR, which I weaned myself off a month ago but is nevertheless a dearly missed friend, and last but not least

-Relpax. Relpax is the only thing, short of a medically induced coma and general anesthesia, that touches my migraines.

And therein lies the necessity of knowing exactly where things stand, ovulation wise.

My husband considers the ability to tolerate otherwise easily medicated medical conditions to be a barometer for personal character. I disagree. I don’t abuse drugs and because I have severe control issues that require me to be aware of everything all the time, I never have. But I have no problem taking them when indicated, which leads to weird juxtapositions like being perfectly happy to gulp down an entire endoscope, yet taking a Xanex or three for certain pelvic procedures. Which, in my mind, is perfectly acceptable. Certainly I suffer from vestigial psychic heebe geebes regarding these procedures, and that’s for me to work out with my therapist if I so chose, not to be gotten through with a brand new OB/GYN resident and the dreaded tomcat catheter.

But at the moment, I was more concerned about my mouthful of broken glass. Luckily, I knew exactly what I needed to evaluate the pieces of glass, but unluckily, we don’t have any of those black velvet covered jeweler’s flats lying around the house.

Several things happened at once. I opened the door, and the cat (who waits at the door, no doubt certain of the eventual inevitability of a day like today) darted into the bedroom, a place where her presence is strictly forbidden. The dog barked wildly in his crate, my husband slammed the door to his study, and I stubbed my toe on corner of the bathroom sink, causing me to speak one or two words that I normally do not.

In the end, after a careful forensic reconstruction of the thermometer (Germar, Mercury Free, printed on the back, the mercury free substance being in any case encapsulated in a separate container within the thermometer), it appeared that what was missing amounted to glass dust, probably lost in the bed or in the exclamations that followed after I stubbed my toe. I did confirm that the broken shards were glass and not, in fact, safety plastic, if there is such a thing. I figured this out by jabbing my index finger with one, an act that was, I have to admit, not too clever.

But in any case, I don’t really know of anyone who has actually died from eating glass. Come to think of it, the only instance of death by glass eating I am familiar with occurred in a V.C. Andrews book. Nayla, please take note. If I do die and you decide to capitalize on that with a ghost ridden Coordination and Fertility Impaired Flowers in the Audi, please take note: I am a fourth generation Daughter of the American Revolution and lots of bad karmic legacy stuff already happened to my family. Please, please don’t lock us in any attics.

more on this later

Star Trek and the Two Week Wait

As some of you already know, I am a big fan of Star Trek. It was through an episode of the original Star Trek series entitled Mirror, Mirror that I first learned of the concept of an alternate reality. In the alternate reality of that episode, Spock had a goatee, and Lt. Uhura was dressed in a very slutty ensemble, and torture and assassination were legitimate means of career advancement.

You may be wondering what this has to do with my current situation.

Well, today I had the blood draw that determines whether I am pregnant. I will not be posting the results of this test on this blog for a while. So, for you dear reader, there will exist two realities, the one where I am not pregnant and am very sad, and the one where I am pregnant, and am not sad, but worried about miscarrying, as happened last time.

A few days ago, my mother asked me whether I felt the same as the last time I was waiting to find out whether I was pregnant, and I had to remind her that the last time I was waiting to find out whether I was pregnant, my father got his terminal diagnosis. Maybe that is why I feel a little sad, a little angry, and a little tired, all at once. It has been a difficult nine months since that time.

So for now, I offer you the two realities. And if it amuses you to picture me pregnant, and in a slutty Star Trek uniform, so be it.

The Christmas Spirit Will Not Be Taking Calls This Afternoon

The Christmas Spirit Will Not Be Taking Calls This Afternoon

After a day of firing off emails to my sister (first empathetic and gentle, later accusatory and cheapshotish, a word that I really would like to see translated into German or some other sturdy case language), I received confirmation that the rumor I heard from my mother was true- “K” is not coming home for Christmas. I wasn’t surprised but I wasn’t happy, either. Christmas, in our family, has not been a particularly life affirming holiday for the past several years, and last year was downright miserable. But this year my mother has already volunteered to work at the hospital on Christmas day, and my husband and I just spent Thanksgiving in a restaurant, and I don’t care how nice the restaurant or how well executed the menu, there are only a few good reasons to eat out on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Personally, I think that trusting oneself around people not immediate family is one of them, but I do now get why at the Grateful Dead shows there was always an area cordoned off for the “sober” people. Sometimes it helps to be with people in the same situation. In my situation, that would mean a table full of seemingly normal individuals who at any given moment break out into tears and scratch their faces. Clearly it is too early in the morning for me to be writing this.

But my sister has a medium good reason for not flying from Chicago to California, and then back again, and that reason is that she is leaving on December 27th to go to Mexico City. For…vacation? I’ve been told that it’s tacky and disrespectful to joke about the illegal organ traffic of other cities and so I’m not going to do that anymore. This trip follows on the heels of her recent fall “bicycle tour” of Detroit and nascent interest in outsider art, and I have to wonder what might be next. Birdwatching in the DRC? I attribute some of this to the fact that our father was a bit overprotective, when it came to physical security, but I keep telling her that there has to be a happy medium, and because I am seven years older and she doesn’t have to listen to me, well, she doesn’t.

In other news, the annual state employee office nativity scene reenactment is under way.

way #456 in which It Could Always Be Worse

So my psychiatrist thinks that no matter what happens in the next few months (in an effort to be more superstitious, I’m intentionally leaving the possibilities vague), I must not delay IVF again.

And (you might think this would lead her to take less of a hard line approach to the situation, but you’d be wrong) she thinks it’s weirder than I do, the whole fertility mortality situation (or rather, assisted fertility treatments concurrent with imminent mortality). I guess that’s a more direct way to put it. I think it’s not so weird at all. If the sandwich generation is taxed by the bizarre situation of taking care of their children and their elderly parents, it stands to fallow (follow! follow!) that there should be a subset of that generation who are still trying to have those children. I think that most of the friends I made as an adult have married and had their children in their thirties- and many of them haven’t even started trying yet. So this sort of thing is probably going to be a whole lot more common. And maybe it’s because I’ve been so wrapped up in the weirdness of it (by that I mean thinking about it objectively, constructively, a development for which I am grateful beyond words,) for, oh, say, the past month or so (thank you Nayla), that I haven’t noticed how in this month a whole other subset of friends seem to be having the proverbial mid life crisis, a process which hasn’t seemed to exclude any of the traditional behavioral caricatures (new car, new spouse, in one particular case, a weird obsession with roller derby and a –unrelated, I’m sure- switch in sexual orientation). So, I’m not going to say too much more about this, because the situations are obviously agonizing and not funny at all to the people going through them, but it did occur to me that those of us who put the Clomid in a separate cupboard from the one where we kept the Xeloda and post chemotherapy Compazine, are probably not going to buy outrageous new cars or have a marital crisis predicated on some guy who mucks out horse stalls and isn’t even old enough to drink, for goodness sakes. I’m trying to figure out if mail order fertility medication is cheaper (but how exactly are those FedEx trucks temperature controlled…because I know what happened once to a batch of measles vaccine in Sierra Leonne and it was not good), while my best New York friend is bemoaning his alimony payments and booking a trip to Fiji with a pole dancer (hi Jay).