Show me the chocolate…seriously

April 4, 2015Leave a comment

I’m in a bit of a funk today. My Ovaries ache, and I’m also getting the odd sharp pain that makes me double over. I’m on Cycle Day 8 and finished the Letrozole last night, so I know I have a few more days of this sucky pain.

I think I am feeling like this because I just finished a big project at work, and finished two modules of school work, now that I’m in spring break I have nothing to mentally distract me. Well except today I went to a baby shower. Not the right kind of distraction I really needed to be honest. Plus this morning we had to get up super early to meet the water company who decided to change or meter yesterday without flushing out our pipes. This causef rubber, dirt and other crap to flow through our taps. Cheers for that.

We have funs planned tomorrow and Monday to see the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC, plus I start my new module so I’m sure tomorrow will be a new day and the funk will go. And another plus, tomorrow is Easter Sunday, a day of celebrations. Maybe a bit of chocolate too 🙂

Infertility Awareness: Sharing our Journey

April 4, 2015April 4, 20158 Comments

It’s national infertility awareness week soon, 19-25 April 2015. The theme is “You’re not alone”. There is a blogging challenge under this theme which I have been thinking about writing. I asked Chris if he thought it would be a good idea for us to write a joint blog post under this theme and post it onto our personal facebook pages. After all, it is the making people aware of infertility week – how better to make people aware than to share our journey so far? But Chris quickly pointed out that this would be too much to share. We would get more questions like, “Any news?”, we would be asked about our troubles at times when we just don’t feel like talking about it, we would also get the unintentional insensitive thoughts, ideas and suggestions (a great post about this “Pardon me whilst I burst into flame” I re-blogged here).

This all makes me so sad. Sad because I feel like we should make people more aware of the statistics (how common it is), the hidden suffering, the variety, complexity of infertility problems and the many options/choices of treatment.

Our journey is getting a bit rocky

The infertility journey is a rocky wild path, that will throw all types of extreme weather at us, it’s physically exhausting and mentally draining. We know the peak is high, we may come across false summits. Some of us may fall down, some of us may find shortcuts (we always hope to find shortcuts!) and sometimes the path simply becomes longer and windier than we ever imagined. We can ask directions from the experts along the way, they help us to see the path as a gentle winding pleasant route, but they can rarely help when nature creates that avalanche and cuts you off. If we have our friends with us, they can help us round and scale the new challenges that pop up…they don’t need to be there all the time, they can relay it up the mountain with us, but surely we are better off not going it alone?

In some ways this journey reminds me of the play we saw last year, K2. This is a story of two climbers who scale K2 but come across difficulties in their climb, death is near as they fight for survival together. The two contemplate the meaning of life, family, friends, God and our existential existence. Ultimately, if there had been at least one other person with them, they all may have survived. Is our infertility journey like this? If there were more than the two of us, if we fall, will it be easier to get up and keep going? Movies often portray climbers that find themselves like the K2 scenario as egotistical and selfish. But climbers are misunderstood, climbing is more than adrenaline or ego, big climbs are often an exercise of self examination, a chance to get away from the daily grind. I am not saying that in this case infertility sufferers are like climbers. But what I do wonder, is that we similarly are misunderstood. We are misunderstood because no one knows we are out here on our journeys. Should we make more people aware? How can we do this?

We are out here on this journey because the top is going to be beautiful, it will be worth it in the end, worth the financial burden, the mental exhaustion, the physical pain. I’ve heard it is amazing up there. I just don’t want to be alone. But I’m not sure we are ready to invite everyone to join us on our journey just yet.

Top of the world

Around ovulation time women prefer men without bodily hair

April 3, 20151 Comment

I’m back on to researching the weird science of ovulation again. I discovered research* showing that ovulating women prefer men with smoother, hair free skin. Our preferences change throughout our menstrual cycle, and indeed after the menopause.

The study examined the effect of male torso hairiness on women’s attractiveness ratings by presenting pictures of men before and after the removal of body hair. Findings showed that when the women’s fertility was at its highest, they preferred males with less body hair. In addition the study found that post-menopausal women demonstrated stronger preferences relating to male body hair than pre-menopausal women. This is interesting considering the belief that women are more likely seek out more ‘manly’ features in their male choice around peak fertility as hairiness can be seen as a symbol of high testosterone levels and masculinity. Personally, I’m not fussed about bodily hair. Well at least I’m led to believe I’m not fussed, I wonder if I could conduct my own experiment with Chris…..hmmmmm…….

Weird science of ovulation – you confuse me so!

* Rantala, M. J., Pölkki, M., & Rantala, L. M. (2010). Preference for human male body hair changes across the menstrual cycle and menopause. Behavioral Ecology, 21, 419-423

Work in Progress…ARTApp

April 3, 2015April 3, 20154 Comments

I successfully completed another module in my Data Science course! Woohoo!! Eight modules down, one to go. Now I have one week off of study, then onto the home straight. I can’t wait to finish it.

Part of my final project was to develop an online web App; I decided to develop an App that uses the data provided by the CDC on Assisted Reproductive Technology and presents the data in more user friendly way. I bit off more than I could chew for this project because the data the CDC provides is a bit messy and required some cleaning up in order that I could manipulate it easily. Now I have ‘cleaned’ the data, I need to spend a bit more time making the visualisation useful. I got 100% for my project so I passed with flying colours, but I have a lot more to do before I share it with a wider online community. You can have a sneak preview!

You can see my ARTapp here. It was supposed to look a bit more like this…

Screen shot of my ARTApp so far

My idea is that someone can select a state they are interested in, it shows all the fertility clinics in that given state, then the user can select a fertility statistic they are interested in comparing their clinic against the state wide average. There is also a map of the states that shows the statistic average for each state. This is just a prototype for now, I will keep working at it and include all data available from CDC, not just data for fresh embryos. Also add in some more interactive charts for looking at ART data over time.

Now, wouldn’t it be good to know what the IUI stats are like too?

Third time’s a……

March 31, 2015April 1, 20151 Comment

Three Times a Charm

I think I am getting the hang of this IUI thing now. I understand exactly what is going to happen each day, what drugs to take, what side effect will happen and when, who to speak to on the phone, who NOT to speak to on phone, how to ask for what I want, how to make myself understood, how to refill my various prescriptions, what bills to expect, even what emotions I am probably going to feel on this roller coaster of a cycle. For example, I am on Cycle Day 4, and having taken two 2.5mg of Letrozole last night at 7pm, I knew at approximately 4pm Today I was going to be mega sleepy. And I was! Where I work, if you have done something more than twice you are considered an expert, so I’m going to declare myself “IUI Subject Matter Expert” on my “CV of life”. I’m feeling quite chilled out about it all, that is except for one, teeny, tiny, annoying thing.

INSURANCE.

The thorn in my side right now. Needles have nothing compared to this pain in the….

You may recall before we started IUI that my insurance company wrongly stated that I did not need pre-approval for IUI treatment. It was only after I started my first cycle all became apparent that we needed pre-approval before any fertility treatment. Since then, we have been trying to get things straight with our insurance company. I am not entirely blaming the insurance company here. I am blaming ‘the system’.

It seemed so simple, our insurance company required copies of our medical records to determine pre-approval for our IUI treatment. Well that’s easy! No? Fertility clinic – please provide our insurance company with our medical records. “No problem, we will get the nurse right on that” they said. Well each week we chased them, they claimed no knowledge of this request, but wait, what is this? …oh there is a note in our records to do this. Hmmmmmm. At our last appointment 2.5 weeks ago, the nurse promised us the request to send the medical files was with their business team and they were going to action it that day. Well it turned out that was all bull. No medical records were ever sent because we had to fill out a release ‘form’. And after the number of people we spoke to try to make this happen, not one person mentioned a form. Things also got complicated when the fertility clinic realised that our insurance’s medical office is located in Belgium. This would be impossible! Sending medical records abroad – there are different laws for this. They were not quite sure how they are going to do it, come on, surely there is a form for that too! How about I google it, I bet google knows the answer.

So after we hit this road block, Chris tried a different approach. He has given the half completed ‘pre-approval’ forms to our insurance company to chase up with our fertility clinic. When my insurance company emailed me this morning to say could I please provide them with a contact number for my doctor, oh, by the way we would need approval for each round of IVF….I flipped! As you can imagine we had dutifully and carefully provided a contact number and address, but most importantly, it clearly stated on the form the treatment was IUI. I even provided them with a breakdown of all the costs for each procedure and medication. Aghhhhhhhhh!

I have no idea what is going on right now, but it is all now in the hands of the insurance company and our fertility clinic to figure our laws, methods of handling medical records, procedures, money and what not. Why couldn’t we have got to this stage two months ago? At this rate we will probably get our “pre-approval” for IUI after we have finished all three rounds of IUI!

Without pre-approval we have paid for our first round of IUI out of our pockets and hoping we will be able to claim some money back. Soon the bills will be coming in for the second round of treatment. It would be nice if they figured it out before then. My worst nightmare is that they deny the claim because there was a small test we had to do or form we had to complete before we started with the IUI. There is little advice the insurance company can provide us on whether we are covered or not until they have our medical records. Similarly, they can’t answer if we are covered for IVF until they see our medical records. This makes financial planning for the future a little challenging. But we are planning for the worst, just to be safe.

I should point out that we do have a rather strange insurance arrangement – because my organisation is international, Allianz, our insurance company, provides coverage for all staff across the various countries. Allianz uses United Healthcare as their service provider in the US to purely deal with admin for claims made in the USA and negotiate in network deals with providers. This makes things complicated for medical providers here in the US when we try to explain that they have to provide medical records to Allianz, not United Healthcare. I hope I didn’t lose you there!

Third time…

So to sum up today’s post – Insurance sucks and starting IUI cycle 3 is going to be a breeze. As the saying goes….third time lucky! Or….third time a charm! Let’s hope it’s not like the other google search term on the list above – third time out :-s

The big question – What if we can’t have children?

March 30, 20158 Comments

As we were about to head to bed for the evening, Chris quietly asked “What if we can’t have children?”. This is a question we have discussed before – several years ago in fact. It’s the kind of question you ask just after your boyfriend/fiancee asks you to marry him. It’s one of those BIG questions. And we had much time to talk about it back then. Chris proposed to me just 1/2 hr into our 4 day hike in the remote Italian mountains, the Dolomites. Of course I said yes when he asked me to marry him (If I had said no it would have been a rather awkward four days in the mountains 😉 ), but this left four days of ‘just us’ to talk about ‘the big things in life’, to double check that we were in fact right for each other. Well probably more of me doing the double checking, after all, he had been planning to propose to me for months, he had all that time to think about it. We concluded that love conquers all, you couldn’t really argue with that logic. Oh so naive?

This time around, Chris asked the question with a genuine sadness in his eye. With a little bit of wine in me, my eyes welled up instantly and hit some kind of nerve. Because yes, love does conquer all, but it hurts to think that this could be a reality in the not so distant future. I have thought about it a bit, but I haven’t really looked into it in depth. We discussed potential future options of donor eggs. donor sperm, gestational surrogacy, adoption and being ‘child free’. These discussions were brief and emotionally fuelled, with neither of us having much understanding about any of them. We concluded that we do not both agree on each of these options, we have our differences of opinions, however we recognised that these feelings are likely to change dependent on our situation and once we have done more research together. We did agree on one thing – that we would use all of our savings if we had to, but we would not get into debt.

The discussion was brief, we were tired and emotional, it was not the best time to ask this BIG question. But it is a question we need to be prepared to think about more if round 3 of IUI does not work. This doesn’t mean we are not hopeful about round 3, far from it, it’s just something we might want to start smarting up about. Education certainly never hurt anyone.

Lost: one unopened clear blue digital pregnancy test

March 28, 2015March 29, 20158 Comments

Today was meant to be the day that I unwrapped the ‘highly Gyn/Ob recommended’ Clear Blue Digital pregnancy test. But it’s currently ‘Missing In Action’, I couldn’t find it…I know it’s in the house somewhere, I just can’t remember where I hid it from myself. Incidentally, I bought it about 7 months ago. Do these things go out of date? Oh well…it doesn’t matter because Aunt Flo arrived anyway.

I would like to thank Aunt Flo for the big glass of Wine I shall enjoy this evening and the trip to Busch Gardens now planned for tomorrow – and I am going to go on ALL the rides, many times over, probably until I am sick and dizzy.

Infertility, you sure do suck, but today I am not pregnant and I am going to enjoy this short time of drug free freedom (except the good good Ibuprofen to help alleviate my period pains). Yes I cried with Chris early this morning, but now I am more determined than ever – whatever is stopping us from getting pregnant – we will overcome it, together. Round 3 – Ding Ding!

TTFN X

(TaTah For Now)

Can your cat tell if you are pregnant before you do?

March 27, 2015March 29, 20157 Comments

Several months ago I googled ‘can cats tell if you are pregnant?’. My female 3 year old cat, Sushi, was being overly affectionate just around the time I was coming close to pregnancy testing time. It turned out I wasn’t pregnant that month, so I kind of forgot about it and didn’t think much more of it. But two nights ago I had BOTH of my cats on my bed snuggling up to me. This is very unusual because Diesel, my male 9 month old kitten, tends to push Sushi off the bed as soon as he realises she is on the bed with me. So as it is close to pregnancy testing time again, I wondered about this question again and decided to research a bit more into it. So what did I discover? Can cats tell if you are pregnant?

The Research is thin. It is evident that cats can detect smells and vapours that are invisible to humans, after all they have 10 to 20 times more sensory receptors in their noses than humans (but not quite as many as dogs, who are far superior in this respect). But I have yet to find any evidence that associates a cat’s ability to detect pregnancy – I could not find anything that even looks vaguely scientific. I even tried google scholar, but found little of significance. There is, however, a lot of discussion online about the subject, and is well discussed in forums and pregnancy related websites, the evidence is purely anecdotal.

Cats detecting cancer. So what can cats sniff out? Apparently, cats can detect cancer. It turns out that there has been some research into understanding dogs’ talents in sniffing out cancer, but evidence for cats’ ability to sniff out cancer is again, anecdotal. This is mostly because you can train a dog, but it’s a lot harder to train a cat! So research can be difficult to undertake with cats in this respect. However, there are stories about cats who have detected cancer before the owner even knew about it. For example, Fidge the cat constantly lay on her owner’s right breast for two weeks. When her owner went to the doctor, they found a pea sized lump in her breast, which may have killed her if it had not been for Fidge.

Amazing stories of heroic cats using their nose. On my scavange for evidence I came across some other lovely stories of cats who have saved their owner’s lives with the use of their ‘spidey senses noses’.

Oscar. In time, staff at the nursing home began to rely on Oscar as an “early warning system” announcing to those present that it was time to notify family and increase hospice services for those close to death (More about Oscar here).

Basil. As gas fumes leaked from the kitchen stove top, Basil began to swat his owner’s face as she lay in bed, trying to get her to get up and recognise the problem. After an hour of his persistent behaviour, Basil’s nose saved the day.

Tee Cee. This cat can detect when his owner is about to have an epileptic seizure attack. Tee Cee sits next to his owner and stares at his face, indicating an episode is about to occur, allowing him and his partner to prepare for the attack in time.

So, my dear cats – are you clever enough to detect pregnancy before my pee stick does? Just a couple more days to find out for sure…Watch this space!

Diesel – the ‘Terrorquisitive kittie’

Sushi AKA ‘lady muck’

Reflections upon being pregnant in a war zone – what scares me

March 26, 2015March 26, 20156 Comments

The big question: why did I write about something that happened way back in 2007? Why did I open up some old wounds by writing and thinking about when I was pregnant in Iraq? For the most part, it’s because I drove for four hours on my own, so I had plenty of time to think. Very dangerous, I know! Thinking AND driving! But actually, it is because I have a fear, a fear of being pregnant again. It sounds rather silly writing it down on an infertility blog. But of course I want to be pregnant more than anything in the world, but this fear is about suffering the ‘side effects’ of severe morning sickness like I did before in 2007.

Hypermesis Education & Research Foundation

Hyperemesis Education & Research Foundation

Last time I was pregnant I suffered severe morning sickness (also known as Hyperemesis gravidarum) and horrific abdominal pains (compared to my normal Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) pains, these were what I considered to be horrific anyway!) The worst of the symptoms lasted for over three weeks and the nausea continued until the end of my pregnancy of 10 weeks. There was no way I could have worked during this period. But to what extent were those symptoms as a result of the environment and conditions I was experiencing at the time – heat, exhaustion, stress, poor food quality and choice?

When Chris and I first met with our Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE), Chris asked her if my previous pregnancy could be a clue as to why we were not pregnant yet. I didn’t think it would be so I hadn’t mentioned the severe morning sickness in my questionnaire. The RE did confirm that it was not likely to be associated. But, now that I think about it, perhaps it wasn’t such a silly question after all. Because quite frankly, any explanation to our fertility troubles would be nice right now. I’m quite bored of asking ‘Why me??’

Today I am 12 Days Past IUI number 2 (12DPIUI#2), and so far potential symptoms of pregnancy:

Short sharp cramps just around both sides of my ovaries
Sharp cramp like pains under the left side and right side of my ribs.
Sore boobs, but not tender to touch, just achey.
Today I have felt a little nauseous, but Chris has had a funny tummy today, so potentially we ate something funny.

And that is it, not much to go by, but the sharp pains reminded me of my previous pregnancy so I have been more positive about this cycle so far. Just two more days to go til the big test.

I am afraid to be pregnant but want to be pregnant more than anything.

And that sums up my emotional roller coaster right now 🙂 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/——

On Being Pregnant in a War Zone Pt 2

March 23, 2015March 23, 20152 Comments

Spring 2007 continued

Finally, two days after discovering I was pregnant, I received my ‘Call Forward’ to fly to a US Military Hospital in Kuwait. By this point, I had made my excuses to colleagues (An Ovarian Cyst that probably needed surgery), eaten just two crackers, hid under my bed from another five rocket attacks, slept a lot, caught up on several episodes of 24 and thoroughly read up on pregnancy and ectopic pregnancies. I was exhausted and feeling weak. I could barely pick up my daypack, body armour and rifle; the bag was packed for only 2 nights – that officially made me pathetically weak.

I waited for my ride to Kuwait in the helicopter departures lounge. I was the only one there waiting. A crew member called my name and asked me to follow him, he took my bag from me (he probably thought I was actually a real medevac patient). My pre-deployment training was running through my head. How to get on and off a helicopter, depending on the type of helicopter, depends on where you can and can’t load/unload. This helicopter, a lynx, had its engine off anyway, so it didn’t matter. There was no chance of getting my head chopped off or sucked into the intakes. The crew member showed me to my seat, he was overly jolly considering it was 0130 AM. It looked like I was getting the helicopter all to myself. The crew member turned out to be the door gunner. The two pilots arrived shortly after and introduced themselves. They were HILARIOUS, typical Army Air Corps pilots. I was given a headset so I could listen in to all their intercom chatter.

As the engines started, I began to feel nervous. Last time I flew into Iraq, we got shot at and rocketed. A nice welcome from the Insurgents. But suddenly my nerves were overtaken by pain. Pain in my shoulder. I read about this in ectopic pregnancies. Just as I started to worry and think the worst, the gunner handed me some night vision goggles. He pointed out the window. I looked through the goggles and I could see the shimmering lights of Basrah City, and the oil fields. It was magical. It was bitter-sweet.

As soon as we crossed the border into Kuwait, the gunner closed the door and removed his body armour, indicating to me I should do the same. The comedy pilots debated where they should land in the US base. Is this not something you would know before taking off??! We flew over at least 25 parked up black hawks. Do we even have this many helicopters in the British Forces?? After a few laps of the base we found somewhere to land. No one was there to greet us. Well it was 0230AM, I wasn’t too surprised at this! Whilst I received a comedy show, one of the pilots managed to call through to the hospital. We were at the wrong helipad. No shit Sherlock! Of course, this base was big enough to have two helipads. We were told to wait there and a nurse would come pick me up. I could have been sleepwalking at this point, the next hour was a blur.

Somehow, I woke up lying down on a hospital bed, trying to answer the doctor’s questions. I was immediately put on an IV drip as I was severely dehydrated. Wow, I felt almost instantly better, but it was temporary. Next was the vaginal ultrasound. The whole reason I was in Kuwait. I had no clue what to expect, no one really explained what was going to happen and that the nurse would be male. The nurse told me I was about 6 weeks pregnant, and he printed out a picture of the ‘blob’. Because that is all it was, I wasn’t really experienced in ultrasound photos at this stage of pregnancy. He reassured me that everything looked just fine. No ectopic pregnancy. Phew!!! So what now?

Well I had a few more hours with the IV drip, and I was ‘quizzed’ by one of the nurses – what was I going to call my baby? Had I thought of names? Would I name the baby after him? Would I email him to let me know how the baby was? He was genuinely excited for me. Bless him, because he seemed to be the only one. I was given a prescription for the nausea (no idea what the drug was called), some folic acid and vitamin D and told I HAD to eat, for the sake of my baby.

I was taken to a temporary bunk where there was one other British female who was recovering from surgery from Appendicitis. She was an Officer so I kept myself to myself. The next day, I was driven to the ‘weekend spa resort’. This is where battle weary soldiers were sent to from Iraq at least once in their 6 month tour to get a break. It had a makeshift Jacuzzi (more like a paddling pool), sunbed loungers, massages, decent internet, volleyball, and computer games. Lots of computer games. Everyone was in civvies (civilian attire), I had not packed any civilian clothes, so I walked around in my pyjama shorts and a T-shirt. I felt free! No, body armour, rifle or rocket attacks. I still felt nauseous so I didn’t even get to enjoy one of the ‘two cans of beer’ we were allowed. I tried to eat, I really wanted to, so I took one of the tablets I was prescribed. That seemed to do the job, and I managed to get half a plate of food down me. The nurse would be proud of me. Despite the ‘spa’ environment, it was lonely and I tried to get on the earliest flight back to Iraq, I missed my squadron, I missed my friends and I knew I was letting them down right now. After one more night in Kuwait and I was back in Iraq, feeling a little better, but the pains were still coming. This sucked.

Back in Basrah, I had an appointment at the medical center to discuss what next. I had a completely different doctor, so had to start my story from the very beginning. I think this doctor was the first to show any compassion. He also told me that I was lucky to get the prescription for the nausea because it was not allowed in the UK, it was up to me if I wanted to keep taking it. To date I still have no idea what this drug was because I threw it in the bin after the British Doctor told me this. Of course the next step was to ‘medevac’ me back to the UK because I was not allowed to be in the theatre of operations anymore, it was too dangerous for my unborn baby.

A total of seven days had passed since I discovered I was pregnant. The only person who knew I was pregnant was my boyfriend (and of course the doctors and nurses I had met). As I sat in the hospital’s morale, welfare and recreational area waiting for my pre-flight checkup, I read many letters from random people wishing our soldiers well. It’s amazing so many people care to take time out of their day to write to ‘unknown soldiers’. Although the letters were clearly not aimed at pregnant female soldiers, their words were comforting. But this comfort slowly turned back to guilt. And the biggest guilt was yet to come. As I boarded the C-17 aircraft to fly home with the other 20 ‘Medevacs’, I sat down amongst people who had broken arms, missing legs, wounds and scars to their face. Then there were the two bed patients, one of whom was in a controlled coma so that he could fly back and be with his family. He was probably not going to live for much longer.

I hadn’t told anyone I was flying back to the UK, I couldn’t; I was shamed, confused and exhausted. I just needed some time on my own to figure out what was going on. My life was never going to be the same again.

On Being Pregnant in a War Zone Pt 1