Birthday Weekend

Friday I turned 27 years old. Sometimes I can't believe I'm at this point in my life. I've been married for almost 3 year, out of college for 5 years, have my Master's and have been working as an OT for almost 3 years and just over a year ago started the journey to make an infertile person a mom. I look at my life and can't help but wonder...when did I get here?? It still feels like last year Todd and I celebrated my 21st birthday and here we are at 27!

Here's my birthday weekend re-cap:

Like any good 40+ hour a week worker, I took my birthday off..and Monday, just for good measure :) I tried my hardest to sleep in but that lasted until about 7:30 so I got up, ate some breakfast and went for a run. For some reason a good birthday run always feels good. Like every year I have to prove that I'm still going to be a runner this year and can still go the distance. I think birthdays are more of a "New Years" for me. Todd was SUPPOSED to take Friday off and we were going to go to Denver but he waited a little too long and got scheduled to fly. He was supposed to be home around noon. About 11:00 I decide to get in the shower so that I'm all ready to go when Todd gets home...except we have NO HOT WATER!! I call Todd. No answer. I call my dad. He says it could be the heating element if the water heater isn't leaking water everywhere. No water. I call Todd. No answer. I call Todd again. FINALLY! He answers! I tell him the bad news he says he'll be home in 20min (about 1pm) The plan at that point was to drive up to Spearfish to stay the night and have dinner in Deadwood at 6:30. At 1pm the driveway still needs to be shoveled, we have no hot water and we're an hour away from our destination.  Todd's drives to the electric company to buy a new heating element for the water heater and I get stuck shoveling. Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE shoveling?? It truly is my least favorite chore with mowing in a close second. I think its because 1. I'm from Texas-we don't shovel snow and 2. 6 months of shoveling snow while Todd was deployed last year just made me bitter. Needless to say I was NOT happy about shoveling snow on my birthday. Around 4:00 the water heater is fixed but its going to be over an hour before we know if we have hot water so we drive to Spearfish with the plan to shower at the lodge we were staying at and then head to dinner, which we had to move the reservations back to 7:30 to accommodate our mishap. We stayed at Spearfish Canyon Lodge for the night...the same place we stayed for a weekend before Todd deployed when we went snowmobiling last year. Its a really cute place in the middle of Spearfish Canyon (our absolute favorite place in the Hills) complete with fireplaces in the room. Once we finally got cleaned up (6 hours after I wanted to shower) we made our way to historic Deadwood for dinner at Jake's at the Midnight Star-the casino/restaurant that Kevin Costner owns. It was DELICIOUS! I had a bacon wrapped shrimp, salad, fillet mingon with truffled mashed potatoes and creme brule for dessert! A-mazing! It was getting late by the time we finished dinner so we headed back to the lodge. I tried  my hardest once again to sleep in on Saturday but that lasted until about 8:00 so we got up and went into Spearfish for some breakfast at the Vanilla Bean Bakery-a cute bakery on main street that just so happens to make gluten free muffins, scones, granola and cake.  After a relaxing breakfast and loading the car with GF goodies to take home we headed to do our favorite winter activity-Cross country skiing!! It was absolutely perfect weather for XC skiing! We went for about 2 hours then headed home and ended the night at dinner with 17 of our closest friends.

Great birthday weekend. Here's to my 27th year!

Home Sweet Home!

I'm so very excited to be going home to Dallas this weekend!! If you happen to remember I was supposed to travel to Bismark back in November for a class and it ended up getting cancelled the week of.  My boss had told me to look for another location and fortunately there just happened to be a class in Dallas. With the 1 non-stop flight from Rapid to Dallas daily and the fact that they don't have to pay for a hotel the cost ended up being about the same so the hospital approved for me to go! I travel Thursday, the class is Friday and Saturday and I'll come back on Sunday. Basically, I'm getting PAID to go see my sister for 4 days!! Oh...and I have to sit in a class for 2 days but hey, its TEXAS!!!

In case you happen to be interested its a Fieldwork Educator Certification course.  Being a fieldwork educator is also known as being a Clinical Instructor (CI) or the therapist a student interns with for 3 months, 3 times before graduating from their OT program. You can be a CI without being certified, you just have to have a year of clinical experience but being certified makes you better equipped to be a CI, gives students more confidence in you as their CI and is highly favored by OT programs when choosing where to send students. I'm very excited about this because I LOVE teaching in the clinical setting. I get a student from The University of South Dakota at the end of May so I'll be looking forward to implementing new ideas with them.

So yay for short work week, learning, traveling and getting to do a little pre-birthday celebration with my sister!

Dr Smith

Today was my big appointment with Dr. Smith, my main office RE. She is the big decision maker and the one who does IVF. I was glad that I had the whole day off of work because I was pretty anxious all day waiting for this appointment. I got there early and fortunately they were running ahead of schedule so I was able to spend extra time with her (almost an hour and a half total time). I do love Dr. Smith. She has so much experience in her field, really cares for her patients and is very direct and to the point (which I appreciate).  I sat down in her office for the first half of the appointment and she reviewed my chart and everything we've been doing up to that point with Dr Diehl. Unfortunately, given my age, diagnosis and the amount of treatments we have done thus far she feels like we should have gotten pregnant months ago. Since we're not pregnant and everything is perfect on Todd's end she feels that I either have an egg quality issue or a fertilization issue and strongly recommends that we move onto  IVF after this cycle using the "Long Lupron" Protocol with ICSI (link is to another fertility clinic website, not mine) ICSI is usually used for sperm issues but if our case it would be to test fertilization issues.  If we decide to do IVF before Todd deploys we'll actually start the process pretty soon.

She doesn't think I need to do a lap surgery. She feels I have no real indication for one based on symptoms and other test results.

We are continuing with this IUI which will probably be on Tuesday based on today's ultrasound and how I've responded the last several months. Miracles do happen and we certainly still can get pregnant this month but statistically it's not very likely.

I feel like I have so much information to process. I never thought we'd be at this point.  I was able to talk to Todd right after the appointment but was pretty bummed he couldn't be there. Fortunately, he gets home on Friday.

Why can't failure NOT be an option?

The perfect cycle ended not so perfectly.

Exactly 14 days after our last IUI Aunt Flo decided to make her appearance. Didn't even need blood work to confirm the failure.  Naturally, I called Lyndee to let her know, left her a message and about 15 minutes later I was shocked when Dr. Diehl himself called me back! He sounded genuinely disappointed that I wasn't pregnant.  He wants to start the next cycle the same as the last and do another IUI. I have my appointment with Dr. Smith on Wednesday so she will actually do my ultrasound and adjust my meds this month how she sees fit. I'll also be talking to her about the possibility of doing a lap surgery and doing our IVF consult. It just seems surreal. I never thought we'd be at this point.

Todd is still in Vegas. He was so hopeful for this cycle (as was everyone). Its definitely harder dealing with ANOTHER failed cycle with him so far away. Fortunately for me, work is super busy so I don't have to think about it during the day much.

So what will I do this weekend NOT being pregnant? Drink a lot of coffee. Go for a long run. Deep clean the house. Drink wine.

Pink Glove Dance at Mt. Rushmore by Regional Health

Our hospital system did this "Pink Glove Dance" to raise awareness and money for Breast Cancer Research here in Western South Dakota. It was a lot of fun. The Rehab department is about 2min in, unfortunately you can't tell which one is me...but I'm there :)

Bittersweet Goodbye

Today we said goodbye to our sister squadron, the 37th Bomb Squadron as they leave for their rotation in deployment. While my heart goes out to the wives left behind as I have been in their shoes I can't help but also be sad because it means our countdown to Todd's next deployment also started today. The 34th BS will replace the 37th BS in July.

Yea..it's kind of like what they do to cows

Today was IUI#4. First of all, I have to say that I absolutely *love* Dr. Diehl. He's such an eternal optimist. (so is his nurse) You can tell he is one of those doctors that went into OB/GYN because he truly loves delivering babies and then went into infertility because he truly loves helping people get to that point. I feel very blessed that he is both my Reproductive Endocrinologist (in conjunction with "head honcho" RE, Dr Smith in Denver) and my OB/GYN. I feel like I get the best of both worlds.  Anyway, for my IF savy friends it was your pretty typical IUI. Todd did his thing around 3pm and I went in at 4pm then Dr. Diehl, MD student Dave and nurse Lyndee did the IUI. Dr. Diehl is so hopeful for this cycle. So much so that I will be extremely crushed if it doesn't work.  He said everything looked perfect, yes, perfect. I responded great to the new meds. My lining looked good. My follicles looked good. All my hormone levels have looked good.The ovulation trigger was perfectly timed and he referred to Todd's "awesome sample" as having "hearty sperm" HA! So now we wait.... Todd leaves for Vegas next Friday for 2 weeks so it will mostly be me waiting by myself.

But what is an IUI you ask?? Well, I'll tell you. Also known as an intrauterine insemination it is actually the very simple process of taking a sample of sperm and washing it which is pretty much glorified Darwinism as only the strongest, fastest, most motile sperm survive and injecting it via catheter inserted into the uterus.  Its like a combination of a HSG (see prior post) and a pap smear. It's over relatively quick, is more uncomfortable than painful and causes some mild cramping afterwards. Why do you do IUIs? When you're taking all these fertility meds you want to do everything you can to increase your chances of success. Bottom line.  It continues to amaze me that some people go through all of this and don't get pregnant and amazes me more that people don't go through all of this and get pregnant.