I Ruined My Body

My guilt factor is sky high lately.  What if I hadn't had that surgery, what if I'd had another doctor do the such-and-such surgery, what if I'd had no surgeries at all?  What if I'd factored in my health first?

It's just overwhelming to live in constant pain, pain that's a direct result of (in)fertility treatments.  (Side note:  I feel like an imposter saying "fertility" treatments because I really only went through one medicated treatment cycle). 

When we were TTC, any guilty feelings were centered around what I wasn't doing:  not eating/drinking the correct things, exercising too much or too little.  I shouldn't have eaten that goat cheese! I probably killed my embryo!  Etc.  Or feeling wishing I had started treatments earlier.

I can't stop thinking lately about all the infertility-related choices I've made in the past few years.  I chose the crappy RE to do my initial IF workup.  Since the crappy doc suggested a laparoscopy to see how "messed up" I was inside (his words) and I didn't trust him to do it, I chose an outside endometriosis-specialized physician to do the surgery.  During the lap, the endo guy also did a hysteroscopy and said my septum wasn't large enough to be a fertility issue, and he didn't see any other problems.

Enter the good RE, who eventually found scar tissue in my ute and thought my septum was an issue after all.  Two surgeries later, my life was turned completely upside down by chronic pain.  I don't blame her surgical skills—I blame the damn balloon—but my life changed dramatically on 3/9/12.

I'm trying to forgive myself for everything.  For not seeing the good RE first, for not doing more research before I started having surgeries.  For trusting that any type of hysteroscopic surgery was minor.  After all, I'd had laparoscopic surgery already.  Why would I flinch at something less major than that?  It's like doing injectable IUIs after Clomid ones; eh, not that big a leap.

Now that my TTC chapter is closed, I can look at it as a whole and see the flaws and horror more clearly.  I'm not wrapped up in next steps and cycle days, which is AWESOME, don't get me wrong.  But reflecting on that period of time is rough, and I guess the TTC chapter is being drawn out in a way because I'm still physically feeling the effects of my treatments.

I feel like I've ruined my body.  I mentioned on my last post that I used to run half marathons.  Running was a huge part of my life throughout my 20's.  I ran 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons.  Before that, in high school and earlier, I was as dancer.  In my 30's, I took up yoga and practice almost daily.

That's where I was, physically speaking, on 3/9/12:  lean and mean from many hours of yoga.  I felt great when I practiced and was strong enough to do some pretty tough poses.  I was flexible for the first time in my life.

I can't even take a walk now.  I risked my body's wrath today by walking for about 20 min at lunchtime and I'll probably suffer the consequences this weekend.  I feel completely defective and it's embarassing to talk about; how do you tell your coworkers that you can't walk because your pelvic floor muscles are fucked up?  Who wants to say "pelvic" anywhere in the vicinity of work?

My body is mushy now and 5 pounds heavier.  My pants are getting tighter and tighter.  Surprising fact:  if you don't move around at all and keep eating as if you do, you gain weight.  I want to move.  I crave exercise.  I want to stretch and be flexible again and not feel my hamstring clamp up when I put up my leg while shaving.  I've tried stretching; I really have.  It turns out that your pelvic floor muscles are connected to EVERYTHING and hence EVERYTHING hurts to stretch.  Want to stretch out my pinkie finger?  Can't.  Connected to the pelvic floor.  My PT tells me to do what I comfortably can but not to do anything painful at this point, so I'm left with nothing to do except a couple of measly exercises she gave me.

So, to summarize:  my lady parts are fucked up because we tried too hard to get pregnant (see what I mean?  Impossible to talk about without getting into areas all sexual-like).  I hate my body and hate that I ignored the warning signs.  I already had pelvic pain before all the IF shenanigans started.  Why did I screw things up more down there?  Blah.

*****
Hmm, that was all over the place and not at all what I set out to write.  Funny how that works.

I'm tired of the headaches.  TENS helps with them so we're going steady again.  The headaches almost make me feel cross-eyed at moments, like I can't focus for a second because of the intensity.  It's really weird, but I can tell that the headaches are part of the neuropathic pain, and my doc concurred.  It's like the pain comes up from my pelvis (hate that word and must find a new one), through my core and spreads out in my head.  Caffeine and painkillers don't touch it.  Lyrica is pretty much the only thing that works, that and TENS.  I'm going through 9V batteries like a fiend.  It turns out that rechargeable 9Vs aren't as readily available or as high a quality as you might think.

In the interest of ending on a high note, I had a major victory today.  <drumroll> ...I did not cry at a coworker's pregnancy announcement.  I cried at her last one but shrugged off this one like a champ.  It helped that my pregdar went off big-time when I saw her this morning...it wasn't her body, it was her smug pregginess.  And I'm sure I will love the upcoming meetings when she will turn work-related conversations into something about her baby. 

But anyway.  No tears!  Victory! :)

Have a great weekend!

Singing, Cooking, and...Adopting?

Yesterday I heard something weird:  my voice, singing in the car with the radio.  It happened again today.

It's little things like this, realizing that I haven't sung in the car for months, that make me appreciate how shitty the past few months have been.  But this week has been different.  I think I've turned a corner, guys.

Last week was the worst one, emotionally speaking, in quite a while.  Cried to my pelvic pain doc for 20 minutes on the phone.  Sent tearful emails to my psychiatrist.  Insomnia.

I was still in a really bad place this past Monday, but everything shifted slightly on Monday evening.  I made myself cook dinner and realized the pain had decreased.  Tuesday was even better and I cooked dinner again—shocking.  The relief has continued, which is the longest stretch I've felt better in many months.

For the record, it still sucks.  My TENS unit is keeping me sane; we're going steady again since I overcame some trust issues.  I'm still not doing any physical activity to speak of, but I've at least rejoined my coworkers' lunchtime walking group for a few minutes before I have to turn around.

Not surprisingly, my mood has improved significantly.  Fewer problems sleeping, etc. 

Oh, and I almost forgot to explain what I think is responsible for my improvement:  my physical therapist.  After our initial sessions, I was afraid she was killing me because I felt worse.  Then we figured out it was probably because our initial sessions coincided with my Pill trial (epic fail), so PT was probably not to blame.  I stuck with it, seeing my therapist weekly, and her treatment last week (internal pressure points, if that's not TMI) was a revelation.  My pain was worse for a couple of days, which is to be expected, but then it was better than it'd been in months.

Please cross your fingers with me that this improvement lasts.  I feel like I'm starting to get my life back again and am desperately clinging to it.

*****
In the midst of last week's depression, my husband and I met again with our local adoption resource.  I can't say much more about the resource without divulging my location, but if you want more info, feel free to email me (see my "Contact" tab).

The meeting restored my hope that we can do this, that this can really happen for us.  The couple, who are adoptive parents themselves, gave us tons of information about the adoption process, from first steps to the legal paperwork after the baby is born.  The information on initial steps was key because I've been flailing, not researching anything at all because I've felt too overwhelmed (and, well, consumed by pain).

So, first up is getting fingerprinted.  The couple told us where to go to have it done...we can do this.  I have to keep repeating that to myself.

The hubster is not 100% on the adoption train yet but is game to start the process.  If (or, as I'm telling myself, "once") we commit to adopting, it will help if some of the initial time-consuming steps are out of the way.

I've been telling more people what we've been going through, from infertility to chronic pain to possibly adoption.  Nothing like a TENS unit stuck to my hip to shred any last bit of secrecy.  I've been happy to share more, though.

I am getting a lot of people telling me that adoption is wonderful and, well, you know what's coming: "Who knows, you might get pregnant in the meantime!"  Or that adopting doesn't mean that we can't pursue a bio baby later, since I'm "only" 35 (in my head, it's "35 is so close to death, and maybe I'll grow old and die before I can raise a child!" and that type of hysteria).  I tell people that I'm pretty convinced that a bio baby is out of the question, though, and that we'll be actively preventing pregnancy.  This usually leads to looks of confusion.

I need to write a whole post about why I don't want to pursue getting pregnant ever again, starting with seven months (217 days) of severe pain.  Post will include 2 miscarriages and my desire never to go through that again.  I'm not saying I'm incapable of changing my mind, but with each passing day of pain, and time off from TTC and all the BS that accompanies it, I'm more and more certain.