Brevet

To write the story of Alex, I have to start with the story of Harvey.

Harvey was an australian shepherd that was my first dog as an adult. I got Harvey about 2 seconds after I got married the first time and we secured a little house in San Diego to which we were moving. As I grasped wildly at things that would prove that I had a family of my own and I all but begged for someone to love me Harvey, fit that bill.

It’s easy for me to see now how grossly unprepared I was for both wife and dog and my suspect motivations shame me a little, but it was what it was. Harvey was destructive in spectacular ways and never really listened much for reasons that I understand much more clearly in hindsight. I loved him fiercely though as I found that I really liked being depended upon by others. 

So Harvey and I “grew up” together a bit. He became more independent as I grew to become a man. By the time I was 32 and my marriage broke apart I left it with a washer/dryer, a computer, my books, more debt than money, and Harvey. Harvey and I slept on a friend’s futon for a couple of months until I could get into an apartment that would take a dog bigger than 25 pounds. I found one in Pittsburg (which is a terrible place to live and really far from work). It was not a great situation for either of us as we were both trying to adjust to this new life we had.

Incrementally, I rebuilt my world into something better than I had before. I got a new job that had a future. I found Amy (with whom I  also had a future). Together, we moved into a condo in Vallejo that was better than either of our apartments – and even though it still didn’t have a yard, there were two of us to take care of his needs.  She got off around 3:30 back then so his day cooped up in the condo was relatively short. Not ideal, but getting better all the time.

A couple of years later we were finally able to get into a house with a yard and Amy and I still talk about how happy Harvey seemed just lying in the sun in the back yard, with his eyes closed, alternately sniffing the wind and napping.

I finally felt like our life was matching the needs of those that depended on us and my guilt fell away. Without the guilt, though, I could see Harvey more clearly as a willful dog that had no respect for our authority. It was impossible to get Harvey to do anything that didn’t have a tangible motivation explicitly for Harvey. You could train him to do almost anything using “treats” but he never stopped looking for the food in your hand if you wanted him to do something. This started to become frustrating as we realized we now had a life that had a structure to it that we wanted him to fit in to. I didn’t blame Harvey for being the dog that he became – I took responsibility for what I had done as a I learned about the proper raising of dogs from the Monks of New Skete and others over the years. At the same time, I felt that it was too much to ask a 9 year old dog to be something different than the highly independent dog that he had become. It just wasn’t a battle I was going to fight.

Amy and I both felt, though, that Harvey would benefit from having a companion during the days while we were at work and that we would certainly approach the raising of a dog differently at this point in our lives than I did in my unsettled 20’s.

So we got a friend for Harvey – Alex.

Alex was a border collie we got from Tunnel Hill border collies in Fort Bragg, CA. It was a good 4 hours from where we live. There were a hundred reasons not to get a border collie. We took a bunch of those online personality tests and we scored very high as a match for “labrador” and some other dogs that were somewhat less driven by a desire to have a “job” to do to be happy. The problem was that we just didn’t really like labs that much and in spite of his willfullness, Harvey was really smart and we definitely valued that. Plus we really liked the look of border collies….and the heart wants what the heart wants.

In Amy’s online meandering she found out that Tunnel Hill had a recent litter of puppies, the pictures of which she smartly posted online. They were, predictably, impossibly cute. By that weekend it was memorial day and we found ourselves driving the four hours to check them out.  Little Alex, as he would become, seemed to give as good as he got in playing with the other puppies. He had a great personality, but was also very sweet so we threw down our money and made the long trek home.

We both felt terrible as Alex got very car sick on the drive home (it’s the windiest road I’ve ever driven on coming back from Fort Bragg) as this was not the positive bonding experience we wanted to start our lives with him with.  (As Amy details elsewhere, it took well over a year to break the car sickness associations with Alex).

What we did want to do, though, was create a proper pecking order in our pack with Alex so he would see us as pack leaders. We did this in a variety of ways – but the first and foremost was that I took a week off of work and kept Alex on a leash tied to my belt. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he had to pay close attention to what I was doing so he didn’t get dragged around. It also had the added benefit of not letting him sneak off to pee in the guest room if he so desired. We bonded a lot in that first week and he never questioned his role in the pack.  We did other kinds of dominance excercises designed to reinforce the role as well, and they worked like a charm.

He and Harvey also figured out pretty quickly which was more alpha between them, though. Even before Alex could reach all the way up to Harvey’s head, he would get up on his hind legs so he could wrestle more effectively with Harvey. It wasn’t long before Harvey would lie down and wrestle from his belly, seemingly accommodating Alex. Harvey never made the obvious move to snap at Alex or to show Alex who’s the boss, so Alex became the boss by default.

It was a nice situation – Alex deferred to us, Harvey deferred to Alex and would mostly follow Alex’s lead outside of competitive situations like ball or frisbee throwing. Harvey was very fast and virtually always beat Alex to the ball when we played in the backyard. We felt bad for Alex, but you can only do so much to try to fake Harvey out so Alex could get a turn. Harvey would also bark at you in frustration if you screwed around too much with the machinations and didn’t throw it when you were supposed to.

Harvey passed very suddenly when Alex was less than 2 and Harvey was only 10. Fluid filled the sack around his heart (pericardial effusion) putting a lot of pressure on it’s ability to pump. We had it drained, but it filled up again less than 24 hours later. They said there was nothing they could do and so we let him go.

It was devestating. We had gone through so much together and though he was idiosyncratic, at least, we loved him very much. The feeling of loss was profound.

We moved on, though. Alex didn’t seem overly depressed and adjusted pretty well to the change. In fact, now that he finally was able get to the frisbee without another dog in the way, he became quite a frisbee dog. He was a 65 pound dog - but a graceful 65 pounds – as he always chose to leap into the air to make the catch more spectacular rather than wait for it to come down as Harvey always did. I think he took pride in his frisbee skills.

Amy talked about this on her blog, but we also figured out a way to keep him busy when we didn’t feel like throwing the frisbee any longer by teaching him the names of a dozen or more different toys (plushy, monkey, foxy, bear, yeti, little red, big red, rabbit, chippy, rocky, stumpy, kitty…come to mind). Initially we got toys that have a little sound box inside it so when you pushed on the monkey’s belly he would make Monkey sounds. He really loved the way he could make his toys make sounds, but he would usually crush it relatively quickly from excessive exuberance and to keep him interested we started playing a bit of hide and go seek with them. He learned the names quickly. You just had to repeat it to him a few times with emphasis and it usually stuck. Any time he started looking a little bored, he would see me gather up an armful of toys to take upstairs for hidning. He figured out very quickly that the game was on and would get very excited, often racing upstairs to wait for me. He was joyful.

We dropped into regular routines all throughout the day. He would often wake me up just before my alarm was about to go off so I could take him down to do his business before I showered. He would usually lick the shower drops from my shins which I thought was charming and so would thank him. Once I was ready he would head downstairs with me where he went out to get the paper before I made our breakfasts.

When I headed out in the morning he would go to his bed and lie down so I could back out of the garage without worrying about him scurrying under the car, or something dangerous. There were getting home routines and going to bed routines. If there was anything Alex liked it was a job to do or a schedule to keep.

When Alex first got sick a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t even think he was sick. One eye was kind of squinty and I assumed he just poked him self with a branch from a bush as he was searching for a frisbee. Amy insisted on taking him to the vet anyway and they couldn’t really find anything wrong with him after running some tests. He was still squinty two days later though and he seemed more bothered by it. He wasn’t “smiling” any more as he usually did when he was happy or content. The vet didn’t have anything more to do for him so she suggested we take him out to UC Davis so they could look at him. Amy took him the next day and they thought it was Horner’s syndrome (it wasn’t) and the vet thought he might have hypothyroidism (he didn’t).

That night, and for the next ten days, he was up almost every hour with extreme thirst, extreme need to go potty, and otherwise needing of comfort. We went back to the vet in the morning with the new symptoms and they referred us the Animal Care Center in Rohnert Park. He saw an internist there who did an ultrasound on him that was clean. Then he saw an neurologist who wanted to do an MRI and a spinal tap. The results weren’t good – there was a mass in the lower part of his brain. They weren’t sure if it was cancer, inflammation, or infection. They prescribed a steroid and antibiotic which would have worked if it had been inflammation or infection.

We were briefly optimistic as he seemed to perk up just a little when we first started the drugs, but a few days later, 11 days after the first symptom, he could no longer eat his food. His lips were sagging and he couldn’t work his jaw properly.  His tongue still worked and he was able to lick much of his food into his mouth, very gradually.  The decline was apparent though – he wasn’t getting better, he was getting worse which meant it was cancer after all.

Amy and I knew that this was one of the things we were looking out for as a sign of things to come. We called the doctor and they assured us that there was nothing left to do. Chemo wouldn’t buy very much time relative to the potential quality of life so we decided that we had to say goodbye to Alex as well, 4 days shy of his 5th birthday.

Actually putting a dog “to sleep” as they like to call it is just a terrible thing to go through. The moments as you wait in the examining room with your dog, trying to provide comfort to him are full of portent as you know what’s coming even as you know that they don’t. Although you know you’re doing the right or really only thing that you can do, actually saying goodbye to someone you love and being the agent for their demise as well are both equally terrible.

So, they gave him an injection of anesthesia to put him to sleep (literally) and then enough of an overdose to stop his heart. I can remember holding his head in my hands whispering to him that everything is going to be ok, trying to hold back the tears, as he was overcome by the drugs and went down. I laid his head down on the blanket and broke down as the doctor informed us that his heart had stopped beating.

Now that most of the tears are gone, our house is painfully quiet. I realize now, more than ever, what a partner Alex was to me in almost everything I did around the house. I can’t even sit in a room without finding myself scanning for his presence. I eat breakfast alone now and go to get the paper alone. When I get up in the morning there’s no one depending on my rising and as I drive home I know there’s no one that’s that interested in my arrival. His loss weighs on me.

Looking back now on both of them, I think they were each the dog that I deserved for that stage of my life.   As I grew up I had earned the right to have a great dog like Alex and I feel cheated that I didn’t get more time with him.  I think he would have been a fantastic help with the twins once he knew what we needed from him and I think he would have really appreciated the kids as they grew up together.  He would have been a great playmate and guardian….but that will never be. 

Farewell, Alex. We’ll always miss you.

Tags: Life // 2 Comments »

We had our second official prenatal appointment today.  At Kaiser they have a system for these things and today’s appointment is a sort of class/lab day.  You see videos about eating right and the nature of testing for various birth defects.  They do a urine and blood test and you fill out a bunch of paperwork that gets inputted into their computers.  They also give you a general calendar of the steps you are going to go through with the various appointments throughout the pregnancy.  A lot of it was not particularly new information, but some of it was and it was generally useful.

Also, I’m a sucker for efficient systems so I have to hand it Kaiser for figuring out a way to cover a lot of ground with a bunch of people at once in a one-size-fits-all format.  Probably the most useful part of the program was put on by the guest speaker, Isabelle.

Isabelle was the 2 year old daughter of one of the participants of the class.  It was kind of interesting having this little girl in there as it made it all seem more tangible.  It was the reminder that this is more than a blood test and a video, but that if this goes right you’re going to have a tiny person that you will be responsible for.  It probably helped that she was very, very cute.  I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’re all hoping for cute.

On the other hand, she was 2 and it seems that 2-year-olds have their own ideas about things.  The desire to be entertained seemed pretty important to her and tended to run in opposition to what the rest of us were trying to accomplish.  I think it was the second time that her Sesame Street doll started singing its happy Sesame Street song and her mother got a little mortified that I realized that this job is probably harder than they’re letting on in these classes.

Anyway, she was the highlight of the class/appointment until about an hour ago when Amy called me to let me know they had called her with the test results.  Everything was fine except that the protein level in her urine test was quite a lot higher than it should have been.  Although the lab tech that gave her the results was not helpful in terms of explaining this, after a bit of research it’s not hard to see the possible connection to some pretty serious conditions.

If this were the 20th week and the elevated protein levels were accompanied by elevated blood pressure, chest pain, headache, swelling, rapid weight gain, brisk reflexes and/or visual disturbances then you’d have pre-eclampsia.  This is what no one wants to find out and would mean that a best-case scenario is a very risky pregnancy (to both Amy and the twins) and months and months of bed rest.  Worst case scenario would be a pregnancy that might not remain viable.

Anyway, this is scary to find out and gives us both plenty to worry about, but the likelihood is that we’re going to be asked to do the urinalysis again before they even start going down this road.  It could easily be some kind of urinary tract infection, or kidney infection, too, and not necessarily anything to worry about – though of course we will.

Tags: Pregnancy // 1 Comment »

I kind of don’t know where to begin.  Our whole year had built to a fevered pitch of tension and stress.  Disappointment after disappointment was the order of the day and it was hard to even know how to think about what lay ahead back in August or so. 

Amy and I had conversation after conversation about, essentially, what we want out of this life.  Would we be able to enter that next phase of being human – to raise another to live and prosper and, ultimately, replace us on this earth…..or would that chapter of our lives  be denied to us?  As IVF number one failed, and then IVF two never even got off of the ground, we faced IVF number three having decided that this was going to be the last attempt.  We wanted to leave the stress of trying and hoping and failing (and driving us into financial ruin) behind us. 

So we decided to embark on this final attempt privately.  On one level, I had enjoyed documenting my thoughts and feelings on this crazy process, and I knew I would appreciate (much) later being able to read about what we went through.  At the same time, though, we were both weary.  I didn’t know what more I could really say about the actual process, certainly.  I couldn’t even tell you what I was really, really feeling.  Schizophrenic is probably the most accurate descriptor as I didn’t know if I had a right to feel my usual optimism.  I know Amy didn’t feel that way so even when I felt brief optimism, I didn’t feel like I should share it.  I was increasingly pessimistic or realistic or trying to be optimistic about the possibility of not having children….but none of them felt right for more than a day at a time.  Sometimes I would try to make jokes about how we’re going to be able to travel so much more since we wouldn’t be having kids, but I think God or Fate or whatever saw through my thinly veiled attempt at a reverse-jinx.  Anyway, you get the idea.  It was ugly and we were both barely holding on, trying to just hope for the best every step of the way while trying to prepare for the seemingly inevitable worst.

The first hint that things might be breaking our way was when we got the fertility report post-egg retrieval.  There had been more mature eggs this time, so something like 10 out of the 12 mature eggs were fertilized and they all were still alive on day 3 – our transfer day last time.   We were going to move into the select group that got to go to day 5 (blastocyst stage), and implanted blastocysts are way, way more likely to actually result in a baby.   This was so unlikely of an event, I had never even bothered to research it  (hence, my use of “way, way” in lieu of a percentage). 

On transfer day there were two “for sure” good shape blastocysts still in the running and a third that was a maybe (that turned into a “for sure” and is now a popsicle) eliminating any conversations or arguments over whether we would try to implant 3 in the hope of ending up with 1 or possibly 2.  It was a gigantic can of worms that we got to just skip.  This was also good break.

Things were still pretty tense in our day-to-day lives as we both still hoped, but had no real reason to believe, that we would luck out.   Amy documents the process of finding out pretty well on her blog.  For me, it seems like we have had to be told over and over again that it’s true for us to really believe it.   First it was the four consecutive days of  positive home pregnancy tests, in which we were shocked each day that a little line was not only appearing, but gettng darker each day.  Of course we were still worried about the blood test though.

Then we got three consecutive positive blood tests where the number grew the appropriate amount each day.  We were on pins an needles as we waited for each of the test results as finding out that the number had dropped would have been terrible, but apparently it happens all the time.   We were pretty happy after the third test for a few days, but worry or the habit of worrying started to set in and we waited for the first ultrasound.  We didn’t even know if we could find out anything at the ultrasound as it was right on the borderline of seeing a heartbeat and without a heartbeat who knows what’s going to happen….

There really were heartbeats for not just one but both of them, though, and this was a really important step.  We were told that there was only about a 5% chance of miscarriage once you get the heartbeat, though still 20% chance of losing one of them due to “disappearing twin syndrome.”  We had another ultrasound at around 8 weeks and by then both twins were big enough that disappearing twin syndrome was no longer a concern.  UCSF sent us packing, pregnant and satisified…..and I think it was only then that we started to really believe it would all work out for us.  

It really is still early.  The second trimester doesn’t start until January 1st, 2009, and we both still worry a lot, but I think it’s a more normal worry than what we were experiencing before.    People have been asking me for what seems like weeks now, though, whether I was excited…and I have never really known what to say.   I was scared, and worried, and skeptical, and hopeful….but excited imbued the feeling with confidence that I did not feel.

But I have to say, that I am starting to get excited.

Tags: Family, Fertility Efforts, IVF, Pregnancy // 1 Comment »

We have family in Las Vegas, Lake Chelan-Washington, and on the Big Island of Hawaii and we try to visit all of them as often as possible.  We also try to take vacations on our own every now and again.  The plan that we have tried to work with over the last several years is that we would try to do one of each, every year….which sounds fair, until you realize that you’re visiting each parent every three years and that isn’t so great.  We’ve never really solved this as it seems unworkable to take more than a couple of vacations a year (max) and visiting family isn’t quite the same as having good relationship bonding time at a new locale.

One way that we’ve tried to mitigate the problem is to carve out extra time on our own on some of these family vacations.  When we went to visit my mom in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, we also spent a couple of nights at THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay.  We both still speak longingly about the spa facilities there and pine for a Eucalyptus Steam on a tough day.  Our best vacation was probably Hawaii in 2005 where we spent the first two days in Honolulu at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki for two very full days before popping over to the Big Island for Thanksgiving and an island tour.  That resort was amazing – we saw tropical penguins, the USS Arizona memorial, the Dole Plantation, rode on a submarine, and had our first and only tableside caesar salad that was just out of this world.  The room was perched right over the beach and the view right outside our balcony could have been from a movie.  We still talk about that trip, too, though we only had a couple of days to pack in the action before we switched gears to family time (also good, just different).

So we’re pretty lucky that our families live in places that give us this kind of opportunity to kill two birds with one stone…and we’re due for another Hawaii trip this Thanksgiving so I started up the research machine to see what we could do.  Thanksgiving is usually a pretty optimal time to vacation because there are two “holidays” that week, so if you cough up 3 vacation days you end up with 9 straight days off (including the surrounding weekends).  Last time we went from the Saturday before Thanksgiving to the Saturday after….spent the first two nights in Honolulu then 5 nights in Hilo.  I started working off of that same template, but with the hope that we might swap it up to more like 3 + 4, so we don’t feel quite so rushed on the couples end. 

We had already kind of “done” Oahu so I started looking at Maui.  Kauai is supposed to be beautiful, too, but in doing some research some of what I was reading indicated that Maui was not only the “best” island in the Hawaiian Islands, but one of the very best in the world.  I read some at Travel and Leisure’s website and both Frommers and Fodors and concluded that the best place in Maui to stay was Wailea as it seemed to have the best hotels, the best beaches, the best shopping.  There’s probably other great parts, it’s just that I like to have a lot to do on vacation and  like to stay someplace nice if I can swing it.

The “three jewels” of Wailea are The Fairmont Kea Lani, The Four Seasons Maui, and The Grand Wailea.  They are all in a row sharing the same stretch of beach and each have disney-esque pools, amenities, waterslides, flowing rivers through the property, spas, etc.   It just sounds out of this world.  Of course all of this comes at a price….

Mind you, when we booked in Oahu our hotel was 500/night.  We didn’t end up having to pay that, but we were willing to do so if it meant staying someplace nice.  So it’s not like I’m not familiar with the extreme cost of doing business in Hawaii when I say that I found the price of hotels in Maui kind of shocking.  At the Hilton Hawaiian Village we wanted to have something facing the ocean (in Hawaii it seemed important) and we wanted to be in the concierge tower as it was supposed to be a little quieter and the service a little better (and it was….it’s a gigantic hotel and it never felt like it to us.  We were well taken care of).  At the big three you can get a garden view room (a nice way of saying the room is faced the opposite way that you really want) it’s 595/465/640 at the three hotels.  An ocean view room would be 725/600/860.  

So….obviously this gave me pause.  How do I feel about taking a vacation someplace that is that expensive?  On the one hand, people do.  When I read forums about it, people are writing about their week or two weeks they stay at Resort X.  Maybe if you want to vacation in someplace like Maui, that’s just the price you have to pay….or maybe I’m just picking too nice of hotels.  Maybe there are hotels in Maui that are acceptably nice that wouldn’t be quite so expensive.  I looked and there is a Marriott that’s a little older but in that general area that came it about 425 for Ocean View, so there’s that. 

I was still mulling this over when I realized I should price airfare.  I know at least one of the Hawaii airlines (Aloha?) that went out of business so that’s not going to help the prices and I need to know how much “extra” the cost is if I add in the leg between Maui and Hilo.  I punched in my Saturday to Saturday dates (not counting the extra hop) and airfare came out to 1300 roundtrip.   Each. 

I did a spit take with my coke zero and came to the conclusion that we’re not going to Hawaii.  There’s just no way!  I mean, if family wants to be visited they’re just going to have to move someplace cheaper….

Then I calmed down and started digging into the numbers a little.  It turned out that those two Saturdays were by far the most expensive days to fly in that two week block of time (650 each person/leg)  If we wanted to fly on, say, Tuesday to Tuesday, it’s less than half of the cost (300 each person/leg).  Perhaps the thing to do would be to fly into Hilo on Tuesday and see family the first four days, then go and stay at a resort for Saturday/Sunday/Monday and then fly home.  It’s not as good of a maximization of vacation time, but way cheaper.  Still expensive, but not “Maui expensive” to coin a phrase.  Oh, and it’s an extra 100 each to fly between the islands.

Still, though, with the extra puddle jump and my inability to grasp at what level I should be exploring Maui, I had the revelation that the Big Island has the whole Kona side that we didn’t even explore on the last trip.  If I could find a resort on that side of the island that we could enjoy, it would save 200 bucks and some travel time right off of the bat….and would bail me out of the Maui conundrum.

A little research later and I found out that the Kohala Coast near Kona is a very nice place to stay.  The beaches aren’t quite as nice as Maui, but still nice.  The best and 2nd best hotels were familiar names (The Four Seasons and Fairmont Orchid) with familiar prices (775/400 for garden view; 1155/679 ocean view).  However, in this case there was a third option that had some appeal to it.  There is a Hilton Waikoloa Village  that, gosh, seems a lot like the Hilton Hawaiian Village we stayed at in 2005….that we loved.

It’s gigantic (62 acres), which is nice for me because there’s always at least one day we really just want to stay on property and it gives us the advantage of having plenty to do near our our temporary home.  You can swim with dolphins on property or snorkel in their own lagoon.  There’s tons of restaurants and shopping and a world class sports club and spa (Kohala Sports Club) on propperty where you can work out and take a steam even if you’re not going to do the whole massage thing (which I also love, but they can get expensive).  So there’s a lot going on and best of all, the pricing is way more reasonable – 323 for ocean view on the executive/concierge floor.  For the price at the other hotels I looked at we could get literally get a suite here or else save hundreds of dollars over all of the other choices I was able to find.

I would still like to go to Maui, of course, and I’m sure we will, eventually.  Just need to talk it over with Amy to see where we go from here.

Tags: Family, Oh the Places I've Gone! // 4 Comments »

It’s been about a month since I tried my hand at this.  Most days I would at least consider feeding the blog – emptying my mind of what was going on inside me.  Each day, though, I would look into the void and I saw nothing but darkness.  I could not quite grasp how I was to feel about this situation.  It was as if I was on a road that had dropped into a valley –  and as I look ahead to see the road rise up and over the hill, I have no idea what I will see when I get there.

Does my road lead to a family with children?  Dare I still hope for this?  I am optimistic by nature, but it was easier assuming success at the beginning of the journey than where we are now, about half way to the end.  Is it safer not to hope, for fear of having it crushed or is that counter-productive?

I feel I should prepare for the possibility/probability of a life without children.  How do I do that, though?  If this were something less important, it would be easy to embrace the upside of the “life without children” possibility.  I would “spin” the positive aspects in my head and to Amy:  “We would be able to afford to travel as much as we would like.  We could afford nicer cars…”  I might come to believe that this version of our life would be equally good – just different than originally planned.  That however it worked out, we would be equally comfortable with the outcome. 

I just can’t spin it, though.  I am well aware that I really want this thing – this thing that may well not happen.  I can’t talk myself into believing that I don’t care.  I care and the dread of the possibility of failure hangs on me like wet clothes, chilling me to the bone.

The process starts anew this week.  We write the big check today and FSH starts on Friday.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

And……we’re back.  After a bit of a self-imposed hiatus trying to wrap our heads around exactly where we are and what we’re supposed to do in light of the (perhaps) expected and (certainly) disappointing negative results of the first IVF cycle.

We went on vacation.  We talked to family.  We talked to each other.  We saw a couple of movies.  We talked some more.  I think we had to talk until we could figure out how we were supposed to even “feel” about where we are in our lives with all of this going on.  To try to determine to what lengths we were willing to go to in order to expand our family by one (or more). 

It was good and healthy and difficult to talk about sometimes – exploring the limits and how we would or could handle the worst case scenario – that we crap out (using my gambling metaphor again).  I think we came through this failure stronger, though…we both refuse to let this define us.  We are not going to spend the rest of our days trying to find the missing piece for happiness – we’re already happy. 

I think we would make great parents, and Amy in particular would be a great mother, but if it’s not in the cards then we’ll be ok.  We’ve got a great relationship and we would just end up having a lot more money to take vacations, etc. as the years go by.  That’s not what we want, of course, and I think it would be sad to have to face that reality, but face it we would.  From reading a few of Amy’s IVF blogs that she forwards to me, not all relationships survive this kind of trauma, but neither of us are concerned about us, and that’s a pretty good place to be and a good thing to realize as we are facing our last best chance at my future nobel prize winning, football star son.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // Add Comment »

We had our follow up appointment with Dr. Rosen today.  As we waited and prepared for this post-failed-first IVF appointment, we reasoned that we were just going to be told the process for the “frozen transfer” since we were well aware of the the two frozen embryos we still have in reserve. 

Interestingly, he took a slightly different tack today, instead making the case for going straight back into another fresh cycle.  Here’s the thinking:  if you might want to have a  second child (assuming you didn’t get a multiple), doing the frozen transfer now would use up any embryos you have.  If the frozen transfer is successful, then Amy will be pregnant for 9 months, then wouldn’t be up for IVF with a newborn…it’s probably a 2-3 years before we’re even having the conversation. 

In 2-3 years, though, Amy will be pushing 39 and while there is already a bit of an issue with ovarian reserve, it stands to get significantly more serious in these next few years making it increasingly unlikely that there would be another trip down this road.  So choosing to do the frozen transfer now (and assuming success) instead of another fresh cycle is choosing the strong likelihood of only one child. 

We are not greedy – I think all along we would have been ecstatic to know we could have even a single child.  Assuming the first child, though, I imagine we would want a second if there was a way and I didn’t expect to have to face the decision today of exactly how big of a family we really want.  We’re supposed to get back to him soon.

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I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that it was always unlikely that we were going to be successful on the first go-round through the IVF process.  As you go through it, though, and overcome so many hurdles of the different appointments and master the drug regimen, you’re not thinking that the odds are against you.  As you pass each landmark, the hope grows until it feels like you will be rewarded for doing everything correctly.  You kind of expect that it will work out, to a certain extent. 

By the end of the first week of The Wait, and Amy started testing regularly with the home kits, it was hard for me to figure out what to do with that information.  I had reason to doubt it for most of the early ones, but as negative after negative mounted, most of my hope had been extinguished – say around day 11 or so.  There was still a glimmer of hope and part of me thought that we would, or at least could, hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth and all the worrying would have been for nothing…but that’s not the way it worked out.

So, I can’t say I wasn’t prepared for the confirming blood test that we are negative – certainly I saw the headlights coming our way – but I wasn’t prepared to feel like I felt yesterday.  I felt a genuine sense of loss – and not about the money either, in spite of wife’s gallows humor. 

When they gave us the picture of the embryos it made everything so much more real to me.  I have a friend who went through IVF and ended up with twins.  On the first page of the twins baby book is her picture of them when they were embryos still.  I kind of figured it was just one of the upsides of going through the process that we get our “first picture” at a much earlier age, so to speak.  Anyway, let me tell you that it makes it so much worse now.  What happened to them?  Why didn’t they stay where the doctor put them?  I just don’t understand what went wrong.

I’m already better than I was yesterday as I reeled trying to understand emotions foreign to me.  I sense that I’m already turning the corner a bit, as is my way.  We have an appointment already scheduled for next Friday, May 30th with Dr. Rosen – I imagine to plan the attack for the next run.  I’m not quite, quite ready to go there yet, though.  Not quite ready to let go of the place we were just a week or so ago.  I was so ready for it to have finally worked out for us.  So ready to name our child(ren), and make sure they were going to get a good education, and have a home that was prepared for them, that I’m not quite ready to set it all aside again and turn this all back into a chemistry experiment again.  I will.  Soon.  But not today.

Tags: Fertility Efforts, IVF // 4 Comments »

In the past few weeks I have read “The Perks of being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky,  “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” by Haruki Murakami and “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen.  As I have mentioned before, I am not very comfortable offering any kind of critical review of authors that are so talented.  I want to memorialize my reading them, though, so here are my impressions.

I read “Water for Elephants” first and had been looking forward to it for longer than any other book in my reading list.  When I started school, I realized I had to set aside reading for pleasure since I had so much other reading already.  When my wife talked me into dropping my environmental science class (I didn’t really need it anyway), a lot of time opened up for me and this was the first book I chose.  Amazon had it at 4.4 stars and  it came up as a “recommended” book when I bought “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, a book I really, really liked from last year.

Anyway, so I was looking forward to it.  It was told from perspective of a 90 plus year old man.  That was kind of new….and I like new.  It was told in a flashback from the time he worked on a circus in the depression.  Well, I don’t think I’ve read about life in a circus before either…though I enjoyed Carnivale on HBO.  Anyway, also new!  Aside from the two time frames that flip back and forth, the book has a further “envelope” of foreshadowing that leads the book off.  A tragedy or disaster that happens that you know is going to be coming for the rest of the book, creating tension as you think you see it coming.  Anyway, couple the cleverness of the time shifts and the foreshadowing with learning about the very interesting life in a small time circus and that would have been enough for me.  The relationships were just ok – perhaps a little simple, but there are a couple of very clever turns at the end of the book that made it all quite satisfying.  It lived up to the hype.

Next I turned to the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami.  I read another of his books last year called “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” and I was looking forward to seeing what else he had done.  He’s apparently HUGE in Japan and I’m becoming a pretty big fan as well.  “The Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” is really two stories.  The stories flip back and forth each chapter (odd and even).  You would think it would make them hard to follow, but they are very different stories, so it wasn’t.  Ultimately, it’s a bit of cleverness that makes you realize that these two stories and worlds are connected and that was cool.  You figure this out about 3/4 of the way through the book…and then the last 1/4 of the book is, upon reflection, kind of a mess.  Stylistically, though, Murakami creates such an interesting world and populates it with such unique characters that it’s hard to mind too much that you just don’t see the point of a lot of it – the ride is so much fun.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was largely the same – there were some very interesting and compelling plot-lines….for a while…and then they almost become de-emphasized as they become increasingly arcane and subservient to the characters and the world and the tone of it all….and all of those are brilliant, but the plot?  If I tried to explain it, (either of the two Murakami books I read) it would make it seem like less of a work than I thought it to be. 

Finally, I read a short book entitled “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.  Amazon readers have it at 4.5 stars which is quite good.  I can’t remember what led me to this book, but I’m awfully glad I read it.  A little bit like “The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight” as it’s told from the perspective of someone that seems just a little affected.  He may not always understand some of the things that are happening, but we as readers do.  He’s a freshman just starting high school and he’s a pretty isolated guy, though since it’s from his perspective, it’s hard to be sure of why.  The story as it unfolds is told in the form of letters that he writes recounting his freshman year in high school.  The things he learns about himself and we learn about him made this a facinating read.  You grow to care very deeply for Charley and you feel his pain and his small joys even while you realize that you cannot entirely identify with him.  By the end of the story you understand.  Everything.  Charley still feels very real to me and I’m a little sad that I don’t get to read how his sophomore year went. I’m definitely going to see if Chbosky was able to do anything else interesting.

I’m trying to decide what’s next for me.  I have ”A Spot of Bother” on my bedstand but have heard good things about “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”  We’ll see.
 

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Today is T minus 4 days until we get the official blood test to tell us if all of this effort is going to pay off for us.  The wait has been a little harder on Team Jensen than I thought it would be, but perhaps I was being naive.  It has certainly been a little less zen-like and a little more filled with the anxiety of what might (or might not) be. 

We still don’t know anything, of course.  Amy has done a couple of store-bought pregnancy tests because the waiting was just too hard.  Those were negative.   Every day, Amy comments on or I ask about the myriad of physical aches and pains she has.  We both wonder if they might be indicators of pregnancy, but neither of us knows the answer.  We just don’t know anything.

We are emotionally steeling ourselves for bad news so if it comes on Tuesday it doesn’t overwhelm us.   Yet we continue to hope, looking for some morsel of information that would tell us that this is breaking the right way for us.

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