Christmas: A Recap

So I drove home for Christmas (about two hours from where I live now).  And I forgot to bring my Clomid.

I FORGOT TO BRING MY CLOMID.

Sooooo here is how my Christmas morning went down.

I got up early and called my gynecologist.  Turns out he does not work on Christmas.  Wonderful.

I called the office and asked for the on-call nurse.  She did not want to help me.  She also clearly did not want to be working on Christmas.  I am not her biggest fan.

I called again and asked for a different on-call nurse.  She was very helpful and told me that she could tell a local pharmacy to page my gynecologist and ask him to authorize filling my prescription there.  I said, "Excellent.  How long will that take?"  She said (basically), "I dunno.  Some amount of time.  Have fun not being able to do anything with your Christmas while you wait!"

I called the pharmacy, and I got put on hold.  FOR HALF AN HOUR.  Finally, someone answered and I quickly explained my situation and asked whether they had been able to page Dr. Angry Eyebrows yet.  Silence.  Turns out the call was dropped as soon as someone answered.

I broke some things.

I called the pharmacy again, and the cheery automated voice let me know that there were about six callers in front of me.  Last time I called there were only three.

I rage-screamed, "SCREW THIS!" and drove to the store to give them a piece of my mind in person.

It is very important to me at this time that you know that I looked like this:

I didn't get to have any Christmas spirit the entire month of December thanks to finals, so when it was actually Christmas Day I may have overcompensated a bit.

But anyway, I'm waiting in line, looking like that, FOR AN HOUR, and I finally get to the front.  I explain my story for about the sixteenth time that day to the nice man behind the counter, and he looked up my information for me.  They did not have my Clomid ready yet.  Not even close.  Also I am fairly sure that he looked at me and thought, "Really?  YOU want to procreate?  You look like you are 14.  Also an insane person."  I tried to act as mature and child-ready as possible, but in pigtails and an ugly Christmas sweater it's pretty tricky.  He told me to come back in an hour.  I told him to go die.

No, I did not.  He was very nice.

But I did get right back in line again and wait for another hour.  When I finally got to the front for Will You Give Me Drugs Now: The Sequel, I was rather grumpy.  But I was not as grumpy as Miss I'd-rather-be-home-drinking-eggnog-than-anywhere-near-this-waiting-hoard-of-sick-people behind the counter.  She gave me attitude.  But she also gave me drugs.

Hooray!  Crisis averted!  And it only took me about four and a half hours to get it sorted!  I could have driven home and back in that time, and I would have had an extra half hour.  Additionally, I had to pay full price because the store didn't have my insurance information and I didn't have it on me.  AND thanks to the time-consuming nature of all the hassle, I had to take it like three hours later than I was supposed to.  I hear that taking it at inconsistent times increases your side effects.  So.  I'm looking forward to that.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

So I got a package from Kentucky Cousin a couple nights ago, and when I opened it there was just a pile of cat figurines.  I immediately started laughing and setting them up on display, and each one I set up only made me laugh harder.  Because cat figurines.  I didn't even need the attached note to explain what the gift meant, but I still wanted to frame it when I saw it because it just said "Merry Fucking Christmas! <3 Aunt Flo".  If you don't get it, read this and then realize how great this present is and then come back.

It's a great present, right!?

And I really needed this gift right now because sometimes I forget why I started this blog and what the title really means to me.  Infertility sucks.  It's the worst.  It's full of pain and heartache and disappointment and mood swings and well-meaning but incredibly insensitive questions and embarrassing symptoms and inopportune crying fits and invasive doctor visits and scheduled sexytimes and jealousy and insecurity and bitter aliens from the planet Clomid who take over your body and make you furious for no reason.

But it's also funny!  Or at least, it can be.  And I want this blog to be a place where I can look PCOS in its ugly face and tell it a knock-knock joke.

For example:

Knock knock.

Who's there?

A pregnant woman.

A pregnant woman who?

A pregnant woman who has five seconds to get off my lawn before I strap her down and blow up her Facebook feed with pictures of MY stomach all day for the next nine months.  Enjoy, fatty!  You'll never be this skinny again!

So anyway that's why I'm here.  Turning infertility into WINfertility since 2014.  And I hope I can make you smile in the process.

Here's a picture of the new display in my living room:

Is There An Escape Button?

Sometimes I really wish that I didn't have to deal with this.  With anything, actually.

Normally, I don't consider myself a quitter.  In fact, anyone who knows me will tell you that my stubbornness and my fight are two of my defining characteristics.  The first time I went rock climbing, the instructor pointed out three paths to the top, saying, "This one is nice and easy with a lot of foot holds.  This one will require some creativity, but it's not too difficult.  This one over here is basically impossible, even for experienced mountain climbers."  And I started on the last one.  Without hesitation.  I didn't make it to the top, of course.  I fell.  But I fell trying.  And as I screamed and plummeted through empty air before my rope went taut and I could feel the support of my harness, I had no regrets.  I was ready to try again.  Because that is just who I am.

But something about this is starting to kill that in me.  And since that's one of my defining characteristics, it feels like it's just killing me.

Lately, I've been fantasizing about dropping out of law school, quitting my job, throwing out the drugs and deciding that I'll figure out children later, and then moving to some small town where no one knows me and starting over.  Taking a month or so off before just getting some boring retail job that doesn't suck my soul out of my nose and dangle it mockingly in front of me.  Or, I don't know.  Just something random.  Be a lion tamer.  Or a robber barren.  Or maybe just like a really nosy neighbor.  Something, anything, completely different from my life now.

Because right now, I can't catch a break.

My boss is such a stickler for attendance that he actually got mad at my husband for missing a total of three days last year.  He missed them in order to attend two weddings and a funeral.  But apparently we should have chosen two of those three events and said "Sorry!  Can't come!" to the third.  So no break there.

Law school has "breaks", but the work is so brutal that both Thanksgiving and Spring Break are NECESSARILY spent studying, Winter Break is only a couple of weeks and full of holidays and other such non-break events, and you can forget about taking summer off because you're expected to work AT LEAST full time, and probably with a commute that's about an hour to avoid competing directly with everyone in your entire class.  So no breaks there either.

And obviously, taking a break from infertility isn't a real thing.  I wish it were.  I wish that I could just turn my feelings off, put the effort on hold, and happily carry on with my life for a while without thinking about how badly I want a child and how completely ineffective my efforts in that regard have been so far.  But I can't do that.  It's basically all I think about these days no matter how hard I try not to, and despite the fact that there is exactly NOTHING new to think about because this process is the same freaking thing month after month.  Waiting and then trying to control things and then waiting and then starting to hope and then waiting and then planning even though you tell yourself not to and then waiting and then total, utter despair.

And then waiting.

Two Days Early

Brother and CSIL visited this last weekend.  They only just left yesterday.  And... it was draining.  I was not at my best.  She's really starting to show now, and she's got a lot of rather noticeable symptoms.  So I feel like I can't hide from her pregnancy at all anymore.  Even if we're not talking about it (which is infrequent), it's just so visibly present that I can't think about anything else when she's nearby.

At one point on the trip, CSIL got so nauseated that we had to pull over so she could throw up in a parking lot.  And as I watched her dab at the mess with napkins as the rest of us scrambled to get ginger ale and saltines and hand sanitizer, I actually felt jealous of her.  Jealous.  I wished so fiercely that I were vomiting in a parking lot, too.  And that made me feel pathetic, you guys.  Just absolutely pathetic.

But it still wasn't as awful as the way I felt when I got my period today.  Two days early.  I didn't even get a chance to hope.

And it hurts, you know?  It just hurts.

Because I wasn't even looking for it yet.  AF never comes early.  Only recently has "on time" even been a thing.  It's like I was waiting for Christmas to open my presents and then someone opened them for me two days early and everyone in the world who got me a present decided that cat figurines was the way to go.  I don't like cat figurines.  What would I do with them?  What about me made people look at me and think, "That woman must love her some tiny statues of fluffy things"?  And not only do I not get to wait for Christmas anymore and not only do I get these terrible gifts instead of gifts I want and not only do I have to try and figure out why no one in my life understands me, but now, even though I never wanted them in the first place, I have a whole freaking collection of cat figurines that I have to display in my house.  So people are going to come over and see my collection and think, "Oh, she must like those."  And then they will buy me more.  Cat figurines will be my whole life.  I will be the crazy cat lady even though I am married and have, like, one cat.  Tops.  Meanwhile, I get to watch everyone else get the presents that I actually wanted and talk about how cool they are and how wonderful life is and how special this whole wonderful holiday season has been and I will have to be happy for them.  Or everyone will think I'm horrible.

Clomid v. Finals: the Clash of the Titans

Whose freaking idea was it for me to start Clomid the month of finals?  WHOSE?  I would like to have some words with that person.

Because finals are stressful.  And a law school final is a very special kind of stressful that requires full attention, full commitment, full dedication, and approximately half of your soul.  Per final.  If you have more than two finals (as most people do) then you are beyond soulless.  I am very sorry.

It's nice to not be a 1L anymore (meaning in my first year of law school), because 1L finals take like 150% of your soul and also all of your joy and your tears and your will to live.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that every single day I went to the law school last year during finals I walked in on someone crying.  In the bathroom.  In an empty classroom.  In the middle of the hallway.  Crying everywhere!  Dreams shattering!  Sanity crumbling to bits!

Due to support from Husband and family and my own willpower, I was not one of The Criers and I did pretty well through the process mentally, emotionally, and academically.  So I didn't really think much about taking Clomid right before finals, because if I can handle 1L year, I can basically handle anything.  It did not even occur to me that there would be an issue.

But even if I had thought about it, I might have taken it anyway because I was completely sure that I would fall in the weepy camp of Clomid takers, and then worst case scenario I could just pretend to be a 1L again and not a single person would question my tears.

But I do not fall into the weepy camp.  I am firmly in Camp Rage, and if I cry they are tears of fury mixed with blood and I drown you with them while I laugh.

So when you take finals, which are already very stressful and frustrating and soul-killing, and you add in my new habit of reacting to every little thing that annoys me with PURE AND UNADULTERATED FURY, what you get is me on a month-long wrathful rampage.

So yesterday, my boss said something very disrespectful to me, my clinic didn't come through for me on something my client NEEDED, and I didn't have time to address either of them because I had to start studying for Evidence which I am not at all prepared for and which I need to GET prepared for in, oh, two days (one of which has 7 hours of church commitments already carved out of it).  I can't even tell you how many times I punched my pillow or screamed or angry cried.  Husband literally backed away from me slowly at one point.

Basically, I am a fire-breathing Godzilla and I am barely leashed and at the slightest provocation I WILL BURN THIS ENTIRE CITY DOWN SO THAT NO ONE HAS TO TAKE FINALS.  NO ONE.  Heaven help me if I'm still this rage-y when my period comes.  Who knows what I'll do.

Guess what!?

So I've learned that I can't start conversations with the words, "Guess what?" anymore.

We had our last Appellate Advocacy class last night, and they revealed the final rankings for the competition.  I was surprised and really pleased to find out that I ranked ninth.  And it's a class of 77, which means that I did better in the four weeks of competition than 68 of my peers did, even dealing with everything else I'm dealing with.  It was very exciting!  They called my name, I walked down to the front, they gave me a certificate, the President of the Moot Court Board shook my hand (which was pretty funny because he's actually a friend of mine and I'm not used to being so formal with him), and then I went back to my seat all proud and pleased with myself.  In my excitement I fired off a Facebook chat "Guess what?" to friends and family members that I had talked about the competition with and who had indicated that they wanted to know the results when I found out.

Freaking all of them were like, "ARE YOU PREGNANT!?"

Ugh.  As if I would tell them via Facebook chat if I were.  I mean, really?  And who starts a life-changing conversation like that with "guess what"?  Also most of them know or should know that I only just had my period a couple weeks ago.  So.  Get it together, friends and family.

But it really brought me down.  I went from really happy to ready to cry in like two seconds, and this time it wasn't the Clomid's fault.  Because not only was it really crushing to be reminded of my infertility when I had managed to think about something else for a full two minutes, but also it was really awkward to then be like, "No... still pretty barren down there.  I actually just wanted to tell you that I did pretty well in this class I'm taking...  You know what?  Never mind.  Sorry for the false alarm.  My news sucks."

So... lesson learned.  I'm never going to ask anyone to guess anything about my life ever again.  Not ever.

On the plus side, if I ever do get pregnant, at least I now know that it will not be difficult to segue into the announcement at all.

Symptoms Part 2

So now my symptoms have just gotten weird.  Mood swings I was prepared for.  Even hot flashes.  But today I just got a bunch of random things.

Nausea/vomiting!

Cramps in my lady parts!

A really weird and intense pain on half of my face that extends from just below my jaw to my brain bits!

That last one doesn't even make sense, but I Googled it and a bunch of people have jawline pain on Clomid.  WHY!?  What reason could there possibly be?  Is jaw pain hormonal?  Does making me feel like my brains are going to burst out of my skull somehow prepare my uterus for fertility?

But whatever.  I'll take whatever I have to take, because the ol' ovulation kit says today is a flashing smiley face day, and that means that I ovulate soon.  So husband and I are having our scheduled sexytimes and hoping to make a baby in this weirdo, symptomatic, drugged-out body of mine.  Wish us luck.

'Cuz it's going to take some willpower to down these pills next month if they don't work now.