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.

Cramps. Yay! Yay?

So I've started cramping and (I think) a bit of spotting.  It seems my monthly funtime is on its way.  Yay!  But at least I probably didn't accidentally kill my non-existent baby! 

Tomorrow morning is my big appointment, where I will hopefully know a ton more.  I'm looking forward to it, not only to get the info, but also so I can sleep in a bit and get to work late.

Terrified

I had my MRI on Thursday.  It really, really sucked.  I am sort of claustrophobic.  It's not that small spaces scare me, I'm more scared of being stuck, so being in the tube wasn't too bad, since I felt like I could just reach up and pull myself out if I needed to.  It was FREEZING inside, so it was really hard to keep still since I was practically shivering.  I also had dye injected, which I did not realize was going to happen.

They made me take all my piercings out, which was really awful.  I've had my tragus (the little piece of cartilage by your ear, but is really attached to the side of your face, if that makes any sense at all) pierced for about 20 months.  I really didn't think it would be a big deal to take it out, but I couldn't get it back in afterwards.  I also couldn't get my nose ring (pierced for only 3 weeks!  I would have waited if I'd known!) back in, so I decided to wait until Friday and go to the piercing shop to have my jewelry reinserted, especially since I wanted to get a different piece for my tragus anyway.  Well, apparently the tragus is one of the locations where the hole shrinks really, really quickly.  She had a REALLY hard time getting it back in, and it really hurt.  And then two days later I woke up in the morning and it was so swollen I couldn't even see the ring.  I cleaned it really well, and it's fine now, but dang, that was a terrible experience.

And now I'm absolutely terrified that perhaps I actually did get pregnant this cycle and now our baby is going to be mutated since I had an MRI.  I haven't spotted at all, which is weird for me this far into my cycle.  But I honestly didn't think I had even ovulated yet.  I don't even know what's going on anymore.  Right now I'm on cycle day 25, so only a few more days and I'll know for sure.  Also I have my follow-up on Thursday, so I should know a lot more then.

Happy birthday to the wonderful man in my life

Today is my husband's 34th birthday.  He's the best thing that ever happened to me.  He's loving, kind, funny, handsome, and does so much for me that my heart just about bursts thinking about it.  Every weekend, he gets up early and goes and gets coffee and bagels while I stay in bed.  EVERY WEEKEND.  He's really the best.  Tonight we're going out for all-you-can-eat sushi and then fancy gelato, and this weekend we're going to a beer-fest and then having a barbecue at our place afterwards.

I'm excited because finally when I go to the doctor, they won't think my husband is 3 years younger than me when he's really only 2 years younger.  Also, I get all-you-can-eat sushi and it's not even my birthday!

So tomorrow is my MRI.  I'm not nervous, other than the fact that there's a 1% chance I might be pregnant and the MRI probably isn't good for that.  I don't think I'm pregnant, though, because as far as I can tell I haven't ovulated.  I don't understand how that can happen, but there you have it. I haven't had anything that could possibly count as a positive on an ovulation predictor test yet.  I don't even know what cycle day I'm on anymore, since it doesn't really seem to matter (I think maybe 19?  Yup, it's 19).  I have the follow-up with my doctor next week.  and then after that I can hopefully get surgery scheduled for early-to-mid November, and the maybe start trying for a baby before the new year.  If it all works out and I'm pregnant by December/January, I'll be extremely pregnant when it's over 100 degrees around here, which is the one thing I wanted to avoid, but at this point, if that's the way it's going to work, I'll take it.