Effects of flying and jet lag on fertility pt 2.

December 6, 201521 Comments

In my previous post I described some research that indicates fertility may be effected by the disruption to the body clock as a result of travelling across time zones (or any other job that requires shift work). There is one hormone that may be taken as a supplement to help overcome and regulate the problems our bodies face as we fly in to different time zones – melatonin.

Melatonin is not new to me. Some of my US colleagues have told me about the use of Melatonin to help them overcome their jet lag quickly when they are in Europe.

Last year I landed in Germany with a terrible headache that had lasted more than two days, pain killers just didn’t touch it, and I couldn’t sleep – which was probably perpetuating my headache. So my US colleague suggested I took some melatonin to help me sleep and kick start my body into a natural rhythm. He warned me that melatonin can have side effects, such as vivid dreams. I already dream a lot normally, and I had problems in Afghanistan with Anti-Malerial drugs causing vivid dreams and hallucinations; so I was very cautious of taking melatonin. But I was willing to give it a try as by my third night in Germany I was consistently unable to fall asleep until about 5AM, then working all day with this awful headache. So I took two of the little melatonin pills, and they helped me to fall asleep before midnight. Bliss. I did have some vivid dreams, actually they were more like nightmares, but at least I got some shut eye! My headache didn’t disappear though, so I decided not to take any more melatonin. I was more afraid of my dreams than my headache.

I didn’t know much about melatonin at that time; I didn’t really look into it. But since suffering from infertility I have been educated more into melatonin and its purpose. I came across it in the book “It starts with the Egg” by Rebecca Fett, but I didn’t pay it much attention.

So what is melatonin? It is a hormone that helps regulate many other hormones in the body and helps to maintain our body clocks (or circadian rhythms). During light hours of the day, our natural melatonin production drops and when it is dark, the body produces more melatonin. If we are not exposed to enough light during the day or too bright artificial light in the evening this can disrupt the body’s natural melatonin cycle.

What does melatonin have to do with fertility? Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in the brain, but it is also produced by the follicles within an ovary, the mass of cells that surround the follicles, and in the immature follicle itself. It is here where melatonin acts as an antioxidant which supports cellular health and protection of the immature egg from oxidative stress, especially at the time of ovulation. Melatonin has beneficial effects not just on eggs but also on embryos. Mouse embryos grown in a lab with melatonin showed an increased rate of forming bastocyst-stage embryos [1]. As a result of this success, clinical trials were undertaken. A study of 115 women showed that melatonin may increase egg quality by reducing the level of one oxidising agent called 8-0HdG in the ovum, which is a natural product of DNA oxidation [2]. Women who were given melatonin had a fertilisation rate much higher than their previous cycle and nearly 20% of the melatonin treated women became pregnant. Whereas only 10% of the non-melatonin group became pregnant.

Melatonin also helps to control body temperature, the timing and release of female reproductive hormones and possibly egg quality.

Finally, melatonin is known to act as an antioxidant during early pregnancy. In addition, melatonin in the mother’s blood passes through the placenta to aid the creation of the fetal suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) where the central circadian regulatory system is located.

Melatonin levels decline with age, and as a result the ovaries lose their natural protector against oxidative stress; hence could be an additional contributor to age-related infertility.

If you are going to consider taking melatonin as a supplement when trying to conceive you need to be careful and should ask your doctor, because the melatonin supplement may disrupt the natural hormone balance and interfere with ovulation. If you are going through a controlled hormone cycle with IVF this is less of a concern. In addition, melatonin can cause side effects, such as daytime droziness, dizziness, and irritability and may worsen depression. Melatonin can also interact with other drugs, so this is why it is important to check with your doctor before taking it.

If you are going to take melatonin as a supplement whilst travelling it is also important to know what time to take it. You should take the supplement after dark the day you travel and after dark for a few days after arriving at your destination. In addition, taking melatonin in the evening a few days before you fly if flying eastward. Again, there is caution to be made here because the long term effects of taking the supplement are unknown. Therefore this is not overly helpful for airline attendants or shift workers, and only for those who travel infrequently.

For me, personally, I am undecided as to whether or not I will take melatonin as a supplement for either my next IVF cycle or when I am on my next international trip. But I will certainly be asking my doctor next time we speak.

Have you taken melatonin as a supplement? What are your experiences with it?

[1] The effect of melatonin on in vitro fertilization and embryo development in mice. Available here: http://hera.ugr.es/doi/15015646.pdf

[2]. The role of melatonin as an antioxidant in the follicle. Available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296634/

Effects of flying and jet lag on fertility pt 1.

December 4, 2015December 4, 20154 Comments

I am just returning from yet another trip to Europe, Belgium this time! This has been my 9^th transatlantic trip this year. Last year I made 10 trips, and the year before that 11. With an average of a trip every 6-8 weeks I spend a lot of time either sat in a plane or at an airport or, trying not to fall asleep in meetings whilst I try to get over the jet lag!!

Travelling like this is stressful. I always have a connection to make in the US because I do not live near an international airport, and sometimes I have another connection in Europe as I travel to cities that do not connect directly with the USA so I can often end up with 2 transfers…it can be very stressful making these connections when flights get delayed or security lines hold me up. For example on this particular trip to Belgium, due to a series of unfortunate and unrelated disruptions it took me 9 hours longer to reach my destination (on top of the planned 14 hours of travel).

I am simply sick and tired of it. Yes, I get to go visit some cool cities, I am grateful for that opportunity, but it is physically disruptive to my life. As this is my last trip of the year and I already have 7 trips planned in the first 5 months of next year :-s I am beginning to wonder whether it is such a good idea to do all this travelling. I am not sure how many of these I will be able to commit to with my next round of IVF coming up.

This got me thinking about how little I know about the effects of flying on my fertility. Is it even an issue? Should I be concerned? So I did a bit of research and here is what I have found so far:

There is currently no overwhelmingly strong evidence that flying has a direct cause of reduced fertility. However, there are a few studies that indicate that there may be some correlation.

One study I found to be compelling used mice to investigate whether shifting the body clock has an effect on their fertility [1]. The results of this study showed that there may be serious implications for a woman’s reproductive health if her work involves shift work or time zone changes.

To understand the outcome of this study, you need to understand the body clock. Our body clocks are called circadian rhythms, these are physical, mental and beahvioural changes that follow a roughly 24 hour cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness in the environment. Your circadian rhythm is produced by your body, but it is also influenced by the environment. Light is the main thing that influences circadian rhythms – it turns on or off genes that control your internal clock. Your circadian rhythm can change your sleep-wake cycles hormone release, body temperature and other important bodily functions [2]. (I know travelling certainly screws up my body temperature because I discovered this last year when we were trying to conceive the good old way and I was actually bothering to monitor my temps.)

The researchers of this study found evidence suggesting the severity of circadian disruption may be linked to the severity of pregnancy disruption: mice subjected to advances of the light-dark circle had greater circadian clock disruption and lower reproductive success. This group’s pregnancy success rate was only 22% compared with the control group of 90%.

WOAH. That’s quite a difference!

So what does this mean? This means that if this affects mice, there is a good chance it affects humans too – but to what extent remains unknown, more research is needed before conclusions can be made confidently. ….but I couldn’t find anything taking this research further forward.

Now, there have also been a large survey study of flight attendants to examine fertility….there are two interesting conclusions, first that flight crew were found to be more likely to suffer from irregular periods, and also more likely to suffer a miscarriage. But I find the study designs less compelling, so I’m not even going to write about this in much detail (but you can judge for yourself here).

So is there something that can be done to prevent suffering from the effects of flying and jet lag? No one knows for sure, but we do know that Melatonin is an important hormone that regulates other hormones…this can be taken as a supplement, but it can also have negative effects on fertility too when taken as a supplement. And this is what I will talk about in some more detail in Part 2 later this weekend!

Am I less fertile because I travel trans-Atlantic a lot?

[1] Summa KC, Vitaterna MH, Turek FW (2012) Environmental Perturbation of the Circadian Clock Disrupts Pregnancy in the Mouse. PLoS ONE 7(5)

[2] Circadian rhythms fact sheet on the National Institute for General Medical Sciences website

Period after HSG and miscarriage

December 2, 20153 Comments

If you are not into reading about periods and period blood you should stop reading this now and come back tomorrow when I will be talking about less gross things in life 🙂

This is my first period since my recent Hysterosalpingogram – HSG – test. This is also (probably) my second period since my miscarriage. And it’s a weird one!! It is on schedule – for which I am truly grateful for (isn’t it funny how we celebrate the little wins on this journey!!). But this period is weird so far. The pains are different, I cannot explain what is different about them, they don’t hurt so much, but the pain ‘rumbles’ inside me rather than the typical’radiating’ and ‘sharp’ pains I get from my normal period. The blood is a heavy watery-pinky-mucusy mix. Normally I get dark brown or red, thick and clotty blood.

So I got onto my friend google (like you do in a situation when weird stuff happens to your body). I extensively searched for possible causes and whether this is normal or something I should call the nurse about. My biggest concern is that my uterus lining won’t be up to scratch in preparation for our next round of IVF.

The best and corroborated explanation for this unexpected weirdness is that it may be an indicator of anemia or low iron stores and/or unbalanced diet/suffer from poor digestion. Both of these things are plausible in my case, but can be easily resolved with some supplements.

I was worried it could be associated with the HSG procedure or the miscarriage, but it seems to not be the case. So nothing to worry about or to call the nurse about specifically, but I will mention it when I speak to her next.

Crisis averted, thank you google! Now….pass me the liver and spinach 🙂

November: My blog therapy month #NaBloPoMo15

November 30, 2015December 1, 20152 Comments

I challenged myself to write a post every day in November as part of National Blog Posting Month 2015. Well, I certainly wrote more posts than I thought I would, but I didn’t quite manage to post every day. I managed 22 posts out of a possible 30 :-s If you posted every day, kudos to you my friend!!! It isn’t easy. The thanksgiving holiday and travelling to Europe for work has limited my success in posting every day/ The days I didn’t blog were the days I yearned to write; just had little physical time to sit down and write it. I got withdrawal symptoms when I didn’t write. And I still have a long list of things I want to write about. Fortunately, I never experienced writers block, I always had something to talk about. Which is surprising, because I am not much of a big talker in real life!

I have written about some things that perhaps have given you more insight to my ways of thinking – an insight to the inner Dani! If you are still here reading – Thank you for sticking with me!!!!

I have written about infertility related issues, and explored some broader topics about becoming a parent. I have written about things that have bothered me and simply writing about them has helped me get over them.

I have also killed some time; time until our next cycle of IVF cycle. I now have a new countdown – Christmas!!!! And I even have an amazing 3D Christmas Tree advent calendar that my granny gave me which will help. I bought Chris a Birthday present – a daily lesson of couple’s massage for a month. Basically he gets to be the stooge whilst I learn how to massage properly. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!!!! Not only does Chris get a mini massage on a daily basis (assuming I don’t hurt him whilst learning the massage techniques!), it brings us closer together through the power of relaxation – AND this daily lesson will be another count down to Christmas! Then, after Christmas it is only 3 days until my Birthday, which will also most likely be the start of my IVF Diary Vol. 2. Whoop whoop!

Time has flown this month, NaBloPoMo15 has signified a lot more to me than just exploring my ability to write and blog. I have discovered that writing is therapeutic, something very much needed. It has helped in my recovery to positivity. I am feeling ready to start afresh. January 2016 is going to be a rollercoaster ride. But I have a feeling that we are going to have a great start to the year.

What-ifs? And Bias in Diagnosing Ectopic Pregnancy

November 29, 2015November 29, 201512 Comments

Yesterday Chris and I were talking about the ‘What-ifs’ of the future. We tend to find ourselves having these kind of conversations regularly. It’s difficult to plan anything when dealing with infertility. Not only because of things we can’t do ‘when we are pregnant…’ but, also what to do with our savings. We want to buy a house together, but it’s difficult to have these conversations with little knowledge of where our infertility journey is going to take us. For example, if we bought a house now, we might not be able to keep our options open to afford egg donation, surrogacy or adoption. So we hold off on making these big decisions for now.

We talked about what we would do if I am pregnant again and we face a similar scenario that we faced after our first round of IVF – slow rising hCG, nothing seen on the ultrasound (Pregnancy of Unknown Location), suspected ectopic pregnancy. Chris said that at least we would know what to expect! This is very true. But, I think I might do things differently. There is a small part of me that feels guilty for giving in and taking the methotrexate treatment. Part of me wonders – what if? What if I hadn’t taken the treatment. Would I have just prolonged the inevitable? Or would I be into my second trimester by now? I actually feel sick writing those words!

We made the decision to take the methotrexate treatment after 5 doctors from our clinic had suggested we should do that. Our doctor had spent 20 minutes meticulously looking for an ectopic pregnancy on the ultrasound, said she couldn’t see anything that looked like an ectopic, and concluded that I must have miscarried already (I had started bleeding two days before) and then effectively released me from monitoring. The next day she phoned to say she changed her mind. What made her change her mind? Did something not fall into place? Did another doctor tell her she was leaving herself exposed to liability for misdiagnosis? Did the other 4 doctors tell her she had made the wrong call? How did she make her decision? Did she review the evidence afterwards in a more objective manner?

It got me thinking – FIVE doctors told me I should take the methotrexate to terminate the {ectopic} pregnancy. That should be enough to qualify for my ‘second opinion’. But I never really thought about it until now, that organisational bias may have come into effect here. All these 5 doctors work together every day. They all make decisions on their own every day, but sometimes they ask each other’s opinion when making a decision or a diagnosis. Not only do doctors face their own personal biases but they face bias that becomes systemic in their clinical practices.

I am not a stranger to these biases – I teach methods and techniques to the military to help them overcome all kinds of biases when they make decisions.

There are many opportunities for a doctor to become biased in their own decision making or diagnosis, here are some of them:

Confirmation bias: The tendency to over emphasise data that supports an existing hypothesis rather than data that refutes that hypothesis.

Overconfidence Bias: Over-reliance on the opinions of the expert that can before (the attending or consult etc)

Availability Heuristic: this patient has whatever your last patient who looked like this has or whatever is commonly discussed

Premature closure/anchoring: the tendency to decide that the patient’s current problem is related to the first thing we diagnose rather than more than one issue.

Commission Bias: the tendency to need to do something rather than stand there.

Hassle Bias: the tendency to take course of action that is easiest or exposes the physician to the least amount of grief

Regret Bias: the tendency to take course of action due to guilt from a missed diagnosis

Commission Bias: the tendency toward action rather than inaction. An error arises when there is an appropriate committal to a particular course of action. It is more likely to occur in someone who is over-confidence, and reflects an urge to ‘do something’. It satisfies the obligation of beneficience in that harm can only be prevented by actively intervening. Commission bias may be augmented by team pressures or by the patient.

One or more of these biases may have played a part in my doctor’s decision making process for my diagnosis*.

In addition to the individual and organizational biases doctors face, there are also the established guidelines that doctors follow. Every clinic will develop its own guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of ectopic pregnancy, generally based off national best practice and research – my clinic is within a medical school so I like to think they are up to date on their practices. Guidelines will vary from clinic to clinic because they have the freedom to do so. However, in the UK, the NHS is very transparent about many of these national guidelines by publishing them on the internet, and so I know that if I was in the UK I probably would have been treated very differently to how I was treated by my clinic. In the UK I would have been sent home and told to keep taking home pregnancy tests until the date for next ultrasound scan or until I received a negative pregnancy test or if my situation changed to go to the hospital if I had developed any signs or symptoms of ectopic pregnancy.

I can’t help but wonder “what if”….I know the chances were slim that my pregnancy was going to be successful – the statistics told me that. But I have read about a very small number of cases of women having slow rising hCG level after IVF, with nothing seen on the ultrasound up to 9 weeks and delivering to full term healthy babies. There is a facebook group called “Misdiagnosed Ectopic Pregnancy Given Methotrexate”, and I have learned that research in this area is lacking, particularly for women going through IVF and women with retroverted/tipped uteruses.

I don’t regret my decision to listen to the advice of 5 doctors to take the methotrexate. But it does make me think about how difficult a doctor’s job is to make that decision, the biases they face on a daily basis when making those diagnosis decisions, and the overall lack of research in this area. I hope I never have to face this scenario ever again.

If you have found my blog because you are facing this situation, please feel free to contact me: dani@thegreatpuddingclubhunt.com because I wouldn’t wish this upon my worst enemy and will try to offer you a hand through it.

*If you would like to know more about bias in clinical decision making there is an excellent website that provides more information: http://www.improvediagnosis.org/?ClinicalReasoning

Balancing Work and Infertility Treatment

November 23, 201513 Comments

I have been mostly open with my colleagues about the infertility treatment that we are facing. I told a small number about the three IUIs, but in preparation for IVF I decided I needed to tell a few more of my colleagues in my team. In fact, my team gave me a gift card for a nice restaurant as a I was about to take four days of sick leave for the Egg retrieval and embryo transfer for our first round of IVF. But it’s not something that everyone is comfortable initiating a conversation about it all with me. They don’t know where the line is, so I try to be open about it as much as possible and help them to feel comfortable asking me whatever questions they may have.

This ‘open’ approach has mostly worked in my favour; but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. It is coming up to almost a year of treatment and my boss has known about my appointments and treatment for the majority of that time. He has been accommodating, caring and supportive to my needs. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how supportive your peers and bosses are, there is the issue of the work that still needs to be done.

I feel unreliable, I feel flaky, I feel selfish and I hate not being flexible. I feel like the weak link in the team. I hate that it is almost impossible to plan long term projects and work travel – a key part of my job. I feel helpless, sometimes I feel useless. I try to compensate by being overly proactive in areas that don’t require long term planning; I try to over achieve on short term goals and tasks. But ultimately this impacts my career. I feel like I have taken a career break.

Juggling work with infertility treatment requires meticulous planning – and yet what are you told when it comes to IVF treatment? Always expect the unexpected. So planning for the unexpected becomes an overly stressful burden to your sanity.

For me, the first time we went through IVF it was a quiet time of year for us – August. Many of my colleagues were on their summer holidays, so all was good. This time around we are expecting to start stimulation in the New Year. Things start to get a whole lot busier at work at this time of year. I have already had to say no to travelling to Europe in January because it is likely my egg retrieval will be in that week. Not attending this meeting in Europe may impact my involvement in the project overall. Or simply just add another layer of stress even if I do pick it up afterwards from playing catch-up.

Then, there is the added problem of being physically at work; suffering from pain and tiredness as a result of the hormones and your body coping with the side effects of the drugs. I tried to hide the pain. I must have gone to the toilets about 25 times a day to hide. Sometimes I just spent 5 minutes sitting there taking a timeout. And it wasn’t just the physical pain, the emotional strain plays a part in all this too. Simply put, the infertility treatment has also affected my mental focus on doing a good job. For example, I was not satisfied with my output around the time of the IVF (I had a deliverable due just before the start of the IVF cycle – this was a terrible terrible idea!), although I know I am very self-critical and set high bars for myself – no one has actually complained about my work thus far. I just hope that is because what I delivered was satisfactory, and not because people were afraid to upset me!!!

I just hate this.

And I am lucky that I do not have to lie to my colleagues. I cannot imagine having that added pressure of guilt and keeping up with lies in addition to the stress of the treatment itself. Some people need to keep their treatment a secret either for job protection or it is within their nature to keep family life private.

So what have I learned? Second time around, I will schedule in a combination of annual leave and sick leave into my diary for the start of stimulation. Fortunately it’s a new year of leave, so I will be able to do this this time around. Who knows what would happen if we have to do IVF all over again after this round. But this time, I’m going to try to focus on the treatment rather than juggling it with work.

Maybe I’ll take up some knitting or do some oil painting to keep me occupied. I’m going to need to find something to keep my mind busy!!!

:-s

As for the long term impact on my career, well, I will just have to not worry too much about it just now. Maybe if we get to summer next year and still no pregnancy, how I feel about my career is going to really influence my decisions about what we do next.

The cost of a suspected ectopic pregnancy

November 21, 2015November 21, 201511 Comments

You can’t put a price or a value on having both your fallopian tubes intact. In fact I imagine that anyone who has lost one or two of their fallopian tubes wouldn’t be able to put a price on how much they are willing to pay to have them whole and functioning again. Without a doubt. And so when the doctor told me that there is a risk that I had an ectopic pregnancy and a fallopian tube could rupture at any point, you simply don’t think about the $$$ money.;

After I found out that my pregnancy was non-viable, the whole process of determining whether or not I had an ectopic pregnancy was absolutely soul destroying and mentally exhausting. I tried to research what the likelihood was of having an ectopic pregnancy was with IVF. I tracked my hCG levels to try and determine what my odds were. I even joined several online groups to talk to other women who had experienced what I was going through. (I have probably mentioned this before, I dislike online forums because you get exposed to some real stupid, dumb, insensitive and simply irritating people. And you just can’t get rid of them.) All of this led me to some tiny hope that I was going to be one of those women who was going to beat the odds and carry a pregnancy despite the slow doubling hCG levels.

The doctors cared a lot about my wellbeing and were concerned of an ectopic. I mostly followed their recommendations: We both dropped everything to come in to the clinic for blood tests, consults and ultrasounds. What they didn’t tell us was how much it is all going to cost. Like I said, when there is a risk of losing a body part or even worse, your life, the money doesn’t matter. And now I can finally say how much it all cost.

I am not complaining about the cost because we are lucky, we have amazing insurance and we can afford to pay the bills. What I would like to know is what about those people whose insurance wouldn’t cover the costs? It’s just another slap in the face if you have saved up or taken on debt to pay for IVF. Of course, most insurance companies cover the cost for maternity healthcare, but the treatment of an ectopic or any other type of pregnancy loss doesn’t come for free. Remember I told you about the woman who couldn’t afford to have an ‘abortion’ to end her life threatening pregnancy at her hospital because of a CRAPPY law? (You can read about it here).

When you save up and take on debt for IVF, no one tells you to save a little bit extra in case things go slightly wrong. I have discovered, however, that most hospitals and healthcare providers will negotiate the costs if you can’t afford this type of care. There are also some charities out there that can help. I also believe that friends and family will be there too to help out. We have helped out some friends in the past when they got caught out with unexpected medical bills. It’s not only a difficult emotionally, it can quite quickly become difficult financially.

So how much did it cost? Luckily for us, not much. The total cost was $3,107 of which our insurance covered most of it, and so cost us $140. I have updated my ‘Cost Lowdown’ page with the breakdown of where the biggest costs lie here. But this has made me think about putting aside more savings specifically for unexpected healthcare costs.

My appreciation for the UK National Health Service has simply sky rocketed.

A voice of the child free family

November 19, 20153 Comments

Yesterday I talked in quite some depth about our goal to become parents and how we are struggling with infertility with someone who lives child free by choice. He is a very direct and to the point person (He is German after all and told me that there is no word in German for ‘Polite’ – he’s a funny guy). So, I tried not to be offended by his probing about why we want children. He wasn’t trying to convince me that we shouldn’t have children like him and his wife, but he was pointing everything out about the benefits of being child free.

And now as I write this, although he was probing, blunt and direct about his thoughts and questions, I wonder if actually he was ultimately being kind and thoughtful to me. He was trying to tell me why being child free is a good thing, he was telling me it’s OK if we don’t succeed at this. Life without a son or daughter of our own is not going to be the end of the world. He explained to me how their decisions have ebbed and flowed over time. Although at first I was pretty uncomfortable talking about why Chris and I are ‘chasing’ fertility treatment, it was refreshing to listen to a different point of view.

He hasn’t changed my mind, but I thought it came at an interesting time, particularly after some of my recent blog posts have mentioned living child free (The childless analyst, The Uncertain Future of the World, Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world).

The Childless Analyst

November 18, 2015November 18, 20158 Comments

I don’t really talk about my job much from the pure and simple fact that it is quite a dull subject to talk about. But today I wanted to share with you something that happened this week.

I was observing a student class who had a task to describe the ‘persona’ of an analyst. They had a template to fill out that included things like: name, role, tasks, products they produce, skills….their family and draw a picture of the analyst. Now considering this is meant to be a ‘typical analyst’….there was always going to be some stereotyping involved with this task.

And here is what the students came up with:

They filled in the box under ‘Family’ a big fat X…i.e. no children. They then discussed that in actual fact the analyst probably has a cat and some fish instead. Well, apart from getting the name DAVE wrong, if they put DANI in the name box they would have been pretty accurate and I would have given them full marks!

But I simply sat there in disbelief as the students discussed why they put a big fat X in that ‘family’ box.

So, today I decided to give up Trying To Conceive because I have a greater desire to fit the stereotypical childless analyst in the eyes of my peers. I haven’t discussed this with Chris yet, but I am sure he will be pleased that he can now get some fish again (he misses his fish)……

……….IN OPPOSITE LAND……..!!!!!!

Random happenings on our first night out in a while

November 16, 2015November 16, 201511 Comments

I am trying hard to keep my eyes open, but I don’t want to miss out of NaBloPoMo15. I have a bit of jet leg confusion going on with my body right now….it has no clue what time zone it is in. All I know is that I am currently in Germany and am due to start working in approximately 8 hours :-s

Speaking of confusion, we went out with friends to have a couple of drinks on Friday evening, at our new local brewery. It opened up at the end of our road which is perfect because we can both drink and not drive! During the evening, I went to the toilet only to discover blood in my knickers. Not much, but enough to make me wonder what the hell was going on. I was on cycle day 11. That’s not supposed to happen! I had a pad with me so it wasn’t a big deal.

—–Note——Last night I fell asleep at this point whilst writing this post! I woke up at midnight with my laptop still on my lap and I had slept sitting up in bed for an hour!! There were random sentences and words typed after this point. Who knows what crazy things I was thinking semi-asleep! So I never made it to posting this on Sunday. Whoops- there goes my blogging every day in November promise to myself! Oh well good intentions and all that…anyway…back to the story!!!——

After freaking out a little bit, realising that there is nothing I could do, and I wasn’t in any pain, I returned back to my friends. They were talking about going to a strip club. I’ve never been to this kind of club before, everyone else had. I panicked – I didn’t want to go far from home just in case I started bleeding heavily. So I made up an excuse that I couldn’t possibly go to a strip club with my husband because it would be weird! As you can probably imagine, this excuse wasn’t a sufficient enough reason to void the trip to the club. (although it is true that it would be a little bit weird to go to a strip club with my hubby!) Eventually, I explained why I really didn’t want to go. And it was kind of weird because I couldn’t explain it well.

My friends are lovely and understood, but really I couldn’t understand it myself. It was the first time Chris and I had been out for a couple of drinks together in quite some time. Why did my body have to go and ruin it?!

The bleeding stopped the next morning. Who knows what it was and why it happened. Perhaps it was a delayed response to the HSG test. One thing I do know is that I am getting used to the unexplained!!!