Pre-op

So I had my pre-op appointment this morning.  I was right on time, but the doctor was 40 minutes late.  He told me that they no longer give him any say over how long appointments are, and they don't usually give him enough time.  He did an ultrasound, and we got to see my fibroids again.  One is definitely an issue, and two are quite questionable.  I also had a large cyst on one ovary, and a small cyst on the other.  We looked at my MRI results again, and he told me he was definitely taking out the big centrally located fibroid, and the other two were maybes.  He doesn't want to remove too much of the uterine lining all at once, and the other two are definitely smaller and not in the way as much, so he might want to take them out in another surgery.  However, one of the smaller ones is so close to the big one that may have to come out as well, and he may end up having to go in laproscopically because it is so close to the uterine wall.  All of these maybes!  I'll just be happy to have the procedure over with.  Afterwards, I'll be on vicodin, antibiotics, anti-nausea meds, and estrogen.  I'll be a veritable pharmacy!

I will also have a stent, aka balloon, in my uterus for a week.  Apparently, this is likely to cause cramping, and possibly nausea as well.  Hooray.  And Halloween is Friday and I'm determined to something sorta fun.  We've been invited to a party.  I want to go, but I'm not sure D is as excited as I am.  It will (probably) be a pretty low-key party, so I really want to go.  Lots of my nerdy friends will be there.  We can have nerdy conversations.  It will be awesome!  I will probably not feel like partying, though.  I'm guessing I will also not be allowed to drink.  Which is probably good for me.

I've been told to be at the surgery center at 9:45, and my doctor told me that my surgery is scheduled for 11:30, although he thinks his first surgery will run long.  I would really, really like to not get stuck in commute traffic on my way home.  That's all I really want.  I'm missing our work luncheon tomorrow, and this is the first time everyone voted to go to my favorite restaurant, but I'll be ok with missing that as long as the ride home is traffic-free.  But I'm guessing I'll be so out of it that I won't notice anyway.

OK, time to get my timecard done and submitted so that I don't have to worry about it while I'm out. 

Pre-pre-op

So tomorrow is my pre-op appointment and surgery is Wednesday, so today is my only "normal" day of the week.  The one thing that I'm REALLY happy about is that I get to stay in bed for three days without feeling guilty at all.  Assuming that my animals aren't too annoying, it's going to be great.  I'll be SO happy to get this over with, especially since my period this time was fairly heavy.  I can't wait to have better periods.

I had bloodwork yesterday, and I'm so glad I chose yesterday to go in.  The phlebotomist told me that the day before, the wait to get blood drawn was an hour!  I was the only person there when I arrived.  I just got a few results back.  The main blood counts all look pretty normal, and apparently the doctor checked my progesterone.  It was CD3, so I'm not sure why he did that, but the result was less than 0.2.  (Apparently I can't use the "less than" symbol or my blog goes haywire.).  Anyway, I have no idea what that number means.  It seems awfully low, but it's only CD3, and I'm hardly the expert.

My husband took both Wednesday and Thursday off.  I'm not sure it's the best idea, considering how slowly he earns time off, but he's looking forward to it too.  I'm sure it will involve a lot of xbox.  Oh, how I hate the xbox.  He says he will spend Thursday working in the yard.  I hope he means it!

I keep forgetting that today is my "short" day at work, so I get to go home at 4.  That also makes me happy.  As well as all the work I did this weekend on the house, which included cleaning out our closet and really straightening our bedroom, building a "dog door" between the sunroom and the dog run (because another neighbor is complaining, and I am SICK AND TIRED OF OLD WOMEN WHO STAY HOME ALL DAY), and hanging the giant projector screen we bought with a gift card we got for the wedding.  Also, I managed to locate most of our wedding presents!  It's only been 4 months since the wedding, so probably time to get those unpacked and find homes for them.

Cramps

So I started today.  Or I guess yesterday.  I had some light flow yesterday, and my cramps got worse towards the end of the day.  I can't take any painkillers other than tylenol.  I usually take 3 Aleve to start, and then another one or two every two hours until my cramps subside to a manageable level, but now I'm stuck with Tylenol because of my upcoming surgery.  Today is not going to go well.

My husband and I were going to ride our motorcycles to work today, since it's supposed to be 80 degrees, but when we got up it was cold and foggy.  Combined with my cramps and our exhaustion, we decided to just carpool instead, and I'm so glad we did.  People were driving like maniacs!

So our dog run has not proved as successful as we had hoped, at least so far anyway.  I left work early on Wednesday to get my fall garden in before it started raining and then I had surgery and then it would be too cold/wet to do anything.  I arrived home to discover both dogs napping on the patio, on the wrong side of the dog run enclosure.  They had chewed through the end of one of the boards that make up the gate until they managed to dislodge it, and then they were free!  The next morning, D and I added extra boards so they wouldn't have room to squeeze their heads in and chew on things.  Arrived home yesterday to Apollo running around the back yard.  Apparently, he managed to squeeze through somewhere, and Lola is bigger so she was stuck in jail still.  This morning, D reinforced the entire fence with some extra pallets we have, a temporary measure until we can figure something else out.

More gratuitous pictures of Apollo.  This is the day we brought him home from the shelter.  He was skin and bones:

Here are a few picture showing how absolutely ridiculous he is:

He will fall asleep in the WEIRDEST positions.  He's a lot chubbier now, so I'm a little surprised he can still squeeze through the fence, but I guess that's something we're going to have to deal with, considering that on Sunday, while we were out buying supplies for the dog run, he got into my garden by squeezing through the fence and then went on a destruction spree in the lettuce and kale.  I was NOT happy.

Anyway, I'm disappointed but not at all surprised that I'm not pregnant this cycle, but I'm SO happy that I'm having surgery now and I don't have to wait another two months.  My doctor kept mentioning how all of these women he's treated had fibroids and he removed them and they were pregnant within 3 months.  So I'll just be keeping my fingers crossed.

Surprise!

I just got a phone call from the surgery center.  I was expecting them to say that December was open and they could schedule me, but they had a cancellation next week!  And I'm taking it!  I just had my phone appointment, and I'll have my pre-op on Tuesday morning, then surgery Wednesday.  As much as I really, really, really don't want to have surgery, I'm SO happy that I can get it over with and hopefully get back to normal.

I think my monthly funtime may also be starting a bit early, so there's that.  Weird.  But yay!  Surgery!

Spotting :(

I had a bit of spotting this morning.  My rational mind is telling me that it's the precursor to my monthly funtime, which is scheduled to start this weekend.  My ridiculously hopeful mind thinks "maybe it's implantation spotting!"  So yeah. 

In (m)other news, my mom fell AGAIN yesterday afternoon.  My sister had to drive back to her house and enlist a neighbor to help get my mom up because she insisted on not having 911 called again.  She thinks the new painkillers her doctor gave her are too strong and causing her to not be able to walk.  I just don't know.  At least she starts physical therapy next week, which I am SO grateful for.  She doesn't get any exercise at all, and has apparently gained 30 pounds in the last year or two, and she was obese before that.  I called her last night and got an earful about how my brother is so much better than I am because he's already called several times, and then we got into it about Christmas and how I'll be going to my husband's family's house for Christmas Eve because they don't celebrate Christmas Day, and my mom's family celebrates both days, so D and I will spend all of Christmas Day with her.  Considering I work on Christmas Eve, so I will only be spending a few hours with D's family, I think she's getting the better end of the bargain.  She demanded both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and when I said no, she suggested the D goes to his family's house and I go to her house.  I tried explaining that D is also my family now, but she wasn't really listening.  ARGH.

Anyway, this is not a family issues blog!  So continuing on with my story of Monday, I finally bit the bullet and bought new jeans.  Since I got engaged, or even before that really, I've put on 10-15 pounds that I haven't been able to get rid of (well, I actually put on 20 pounds, but I lost some and then plateaued).  I can't fit into my pants anymore.  I've been wearing skirts and dresses not-stop for over a year now.  It's bad.  I don't have time to exercise more, although I ride my bike to work almost every day, 8.6 miles round trip.  I don't eat a lot (at least, I like to think so, but really, we don't keep junk food in the house, I rarely snack, and I think my meals are pretty healthy most of the time).  My cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and BMI are normal, although my BMI is inching closer to overweight.  I know I'm getting older and my body isn't going to be the same, but gosh darn it, it's driving me crazy!  I just want to fit into my clothes!

Just went to the bathroom.  Still spotting.  Huzzah.  I think I will try calling again about my surgery that may or may not ever happen.  Even though I think it's not the only problem, and quite possibly not the problem at all.  I wish I could get a total idea of what is happening with my cycle.  

Quick Update

Because this isn't a blog about What I Did With My Weekend!  Right now I'm on CD 25, as far as I can tell, hence the title of the previous post.  In the last 11 months of being on birth control, at least after the first few cycles, I've always started spotting before my monthly funtime, often as early as CD 21 or 22.  So far this cycle, there hasn't been ANY spotting.  This makes me happy!

What doesn't make me happy: My mother.  She is emotionally abusive, narcissistic, manipulative, and selfish.  She's also getting old and not taking care of herself.  It's a very long story, and I'm not going to get into it right now, but she's getting to the point where she CAN'T take care of herself.  It makes me angry that she's let herself get this way, but I can't force her to take care of herself, so there's not a lot I can do.  I spent a long time putting off what I wanted in order to make her happy, and I'm not really ok with doing that anymore.  She was actually the person who caused me to think that I never wanted kids.  When I was very young, probably around 6 or 7, I was scared of getting blood drawn, and her response was "well, then you shouldn't have kids, when you get pregnant they'll be putting needles in your arm all the time".  Who says that to a little kid???

The reason I bring this up is that my sister just told me that my mother fell and couldn't get up and the fire department had to be called to help.  Obviously the situation is deteriorating.  My husband and I aren't wealthy, and I'm at a complete loss about what to do.

CD 25

My monthly funtime is due at the end of the week, assuming I'm not pregnant.  I started feeling what might be the beginning of cramps this morning.  Eh.  I'm not feeling as hopeful these days as I used to.

My weekend was NUTS.  Saturday, we took the dogs to the dog park and they ran around and had a GREAT time, but as we were getting ready to leave, I was holding onto our larger dog, Lola, while D tried to corral our (slightly) smaller but more rambunctious dog, Apollo.  Once he got a hold of Apollo, Lola decided to try to take off , and as I held onto her leash, I stumbled and landed on big pointy root that was sticking out of the ground, bruising the bottom of my foot and twisting my ankle.  Luckily, it wasn't that bad, but wearing normal shoes still hurts a bit.  I've been wearing sandals and flats for the most part, but it's so cold in the mornings!

Gratuitous picture of our puppies (sorry it's blurry, my phone sucks):

Apollo is the tan one lying on his side, and Lola is using his butt as a pillow, which is a rather dangerous place to be considering how gassy he gets.


We spent Sunday prepping to build a dog run on the side of our yard.  We bought all of the materials then D started digging the post holes while I cleaned up the area where the dog run would be and started working on the fall garden beds.  The previous owners of our house sure buried some WEIRD things in the yard.  Luckily we had arranged for a bulky waste pickup this morning, so we managed to throw out all of that junk.

By Sunday night, we had only gotten the posts in and constructed the gate - the fence was still in pieces though.  I dragged the saw out to the backyard and starting cutting the boards while D screwed them into place.  A friend of mine who moved to the City over the summer stopped by to visit and somehow the topic of D's last name came up.  He has a hyphenated last name, and the DMV in our state doesn't allow hyphens, which for some reason makes him REALLY angry.  Somehow we got on that topic and he got irate and started yelling, and I could tell my friend was worried.  I need to talk to him a bit about his anger issues.  Generally, he's very easy-going and doesn't get mad easily, but having issues with his name can cause him to lose it.  I'm tired of explaining to people that he's not really a jerk, he's just sensitive about his name.  Sheesh.  And we only got 3 out of the 10 cross-pieces up before the battery in the drill started dying and we had to turn in for the night.

So I had yesterday off from work, which was sooo nice.  I went to the mall with my sister, which I almost never do on a weekday.  It was so empty!  I can get kind of panicky when there are a lot of people in an enclosed space, so it was heavenly.  And I was returning some wedding gifts, so I had money to shop with too.  The only downside to going on a weekday was how many pregnant women there were :(  But a significant portion of the kids were there with their fathers and not their mothers, which made me smile.  We also went to Home Depot to buy more soil for my garden, which I was hoping to get finished yesterday.  Hahahahaha.  But we did get the fence finished!  The dogs are locked up in their very own dog run today!  Don't worry, they have PLENTY of room.  We have what is basically a double lot, and since we're at the back corner of a cul-de-sac our front yard is tiny and our backyard is HUGE.  The area that we've sectioned off for the dogs is almost as big as most of my neighbors' entire yard, and we'll barely even miss it.  But let me tell you, my back and legs are killing me.  It was all I could do to bike to work this morning, I'm not sure how I'm going to get home.

Anyway, taking a few days off from writing really seems to get me writing a lot!  In other, more baby-related news (since dogs are not babies, after all), my best friend started trying to get pregnant a few months before we did.  She's a year older than me, and her husband is 46, and they now have a 3-and-a-half month old.  My sister told me yesterday that she has been wanting to offer some of their extra stuff to me, but she's worried about upsetting me since I don't have a baby.  I'm not sure what to say.  On the one hand, I'm not really that upset and I appreciate the gesture a lot.  On the other hand, we don't have a baby, there's no baby in sight, and we don't have a huge house, so I hate storing stuff for the merest possibility.

OK, I think this is long enough, time to wrap up...

Still nothing

I hate dealing with scheduling things when no one answers the phone or ever calls back.  So I just called again, and someone answered!  Turns out the regular scheduler is away and someone is filling in and she actually answers the phone.  Unfortunately, there are still no appointments open.  So I will continue waiting.  Hopefully by the end of next week I will either 1) have an appointment for surgery and/or 2) be pregnant naturally (HAHAHA).  Keep your fingers crossed!

Oh, so I temped for a few months and then did OPKs for two months, using cheap testing strips I got from the interwebs.  Temping was somewhat inconclusive, but my temperatures at the end of my cycle were definitely higher than the beginning, and there was a definite drop-off right before my period, indicating that I had in fact ovulated (I think).  Based on my charts, the first doctor I saw, an ob-gyn resident, seemed to think I was ovulating around CD 24 or 25.  I asked her if that was normal, and she had no idea.  I never got a positive using the OPKs, but I don't know if that was user error, the fact that they are a cheap internet purchase, or because I never in fact ovulated.  I'm a fairly rational, scientific person.  I want to continue testing, both temperature and using the rest of my leftover pee sticks and/or buying better ones (Clear Blue?) online.  My husband is adamantly against this.  He thinks we should just let the doctors figure it all out for us and stop worrying about it.

I guess I'll wait until I have surgery and see what happens.  But I hate not knowing what's going on.

I am an idiot

It's payday for my husband, and we often leave the house early and go to our favorite coffee shop on payday, get our favorite coffees (I get a mocha thai - it's unbelievably good), and hang out for a while before work.  Last night, I was super exhausted by 8:30 so I went into the bedroom to read for a bit before bed.  After a while, my husband managed to corral the dogs and get them settled for the night, and I didn't want to disturb them in case they woke up and started making a ton of noise again, so when I realized I'd left my phone in the other room, I decided to not worry about it since my husband's alarm would wake me up anyway.

So this morning I remembered that I had that super long off-site meeting and I checked my phone to make sure the battery was ok, and it was really low so I plugged it in to charge while I was getting ready.  When I was ready to go, we went and got coffee and spent longer than we should have at the coffee shop, and as we were leaving for work, I realized that I had forgotten my phone.  And we don't live far from downtown, but it's raining so traffic is awful and we definitely didn't have time to go back.  And I've been hoping for a return call from Kaiser, and I don't know if they will call my work phone because of privacy issues, even though I keep leaving them the number (I have a direct line!).  So now I will have no idea if they called until after 5.  DRAT.

OK, that was a long story to explain why I'm an idiot.  In other news, I had a dream last night that I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.  But then I realized that I was looking at it upside-down and when I turned it over, it was negative.  I have no idea how they might actually happen in the real world, since that's not really how pregnancy tests work.  It was a little disappointing.

And my "different" feelings have disappeared, notably my recent back pain and things tasting really weird.  I have a REALLY retroverted uterus, so I feel womanly pains in my back in addition to my lower belly area.  It's awesome trying to decide which area needs the heating pad more!  But seriously, the heated seats in our car are especially nice at that time of the month when my back hurts so bad.  If we ever get another car, the only thing I really care about is having heated seats.

At least my garden is doing well, my husband and I have definitive plans to build a dog run this weekend to keep the dogs from destroying the back yard, and I had a free health assessment at work yesterday and all my results were good.  So yay!

Trying to schedule surgery

The surgery coordinator/scheduler told me two weeks ago to call back in 2-3 weeks if hadn't heard from her.  I haven't heard anything, so I tried calling today.  As usual it went straight to voicemail.  I doubt I will get a call back, so I will try again tomorrow.  Her hours are on weekdays from 8:30 to 12:30, and I have an off-site meeting tomorrow from 9 to 11, which has a high probability of running long, so we'll see what happens.  I'll bring my cell phone in case I have a chance to call, I guess.

I'm hoping that we won't need to go this route.  I really don't want to have surgery.  I especially don't want to wait until December to have surgery.  I wish my doctors were more open to more tests before immediately resorting to surgery.  I wish I had more options, but our health insurance system makes that impossible.  So I'm hoping for a nice, easy, natural conception sometime in the next two months, because it's totally worked out so well in the last 11 cycles...

I finally had a good weekend

Not that I've had bad weekends per se, but I've been working so much lately, including on the weekends.  This weekend my husband and I dropped the dogs off for their first stay at a dog hotel, and headed off on our motorcycles for a wedding brunch and then camping on the coast with his parents.  The coast was beautiful, and I'm excited to know that motorcycle camping is not only doable, it's easy!  It makes me feel good that if we aren't able to start a family, we'll still have good times together.

We returned home yesterday to a very quiet house, since only the two cats stayed home.  Well, I should say when we returned home it WASN'T that quiet, since I opened the door and heard water running and just about freaked out.  Luckily, it wasn't a leak, but the kitchen faucet was running full blast.  Apparently one of the cats has figured out how to turn it on.  In the middle of a drought.  So now we have to dog-proof AND cat-proof.

My husband worried quite a bit about our older dog, Lola.  She's almost a year old, so she's not really older, but she seems to have had a traumatic time before we adopted her from the shelter, and when she gets scared, she won't eat or play or do anything really.  He thought she might be traumatized by being in a shelter-like environment, but both dogs were super happy when we picked them up.  Their report cards said that Lola was a sweetheart and spent a lot of time just hanging out with the people or relaxing during playgroup.  Apollo, our 7-month-old, had to have a time-out because he was harassing other dogs.  I'm not sure if he was humping them or just being annoying, but he can get very exuberant at playtime.  He's not aggressive or mean, he just REALLY wants to play.  A bonus was that they slept all night out in the sunroom, so we got a good night's sleep.

In other news, I feel like I might actually be ovulating right now.  Maybe.  I had a dream the other night that I was pregnant (with a girl, btw, and I was disappointed, but I don't know if I was disappointed that I knew the sex or that it was a girl.  I don't think I'll be able to talk my husband into it, but I'd prefer not to learn the sex if we ever do get pregnant).  I'm hoping it was a prophetic dream.

I got back in!

I somehow got logged out and couldn't remember my password to get back in.  I entered every password I could think of, but nothing worked, so I gave up for a bit because I've been SOOO busy at work (14.5 hours on my day off!).  I just tried again, and I'm back!  Woohoo!

So I saw the doctor two weeks ago about the MRI.  It was a strange appointment in a way.  I definitely have fibroids, and he definitely wants to take them out.  He also mentioned that he could see follicles.  That seemed awfully weird for the end of my cycle, so I emailed him later, and he said follicles were good.  So I just don't know.  Maybe they're the shriveled up follicles that didn't mature? 

I also have a cyst in my liver.  Awesome.  Could potentially be dangerous if I get pregnant.  Super awesome.  He called another doctor while I was there, who said they usually ignore asymptomatic liver cysts, so I guess that's that for now.

So the surgery scheduler called me a week ago and said that they were pretty much booked for November, and December wasn't open for scheduling yet, but she'd see if she could squeeze me in.  She asked if I would be willing to take a cancellation and how much notice I would need, and I told her one day.  She said she'd finish scheduling everyone who was ahead of me and see where I could fit in, and I should call her back in two or three weeks if I hadn't heard from her.  If I don't hear from her by next Wednesday, I will probably call.  I really, really don't want to have surgery, but if I DO have to have surgery, I want to get it over with.

Just keeping my fingers crossed that this month is the month.  That would put delivery at the end of July, when it's hot as hades around here (but thankfully not humid), but at this point I'll take it.  I'm tired of feeling like we're in limbo.