love, love, love

A lovely blogger, whose blog name I love, Wait, What? nominated me for an award! My very first, thank you so much! aww, isn't she sweet?! I love that you add humor to the biatch that is IF and I love reading your blog, it makes me smile and I can't wait to celebrate your pregnancy. Go check out her blog and wish her lots of luck with her upcoming beta.



The rules for this award are simple. I LOVE YOU equals 8 letters which gives you 8 rules:

1-Thank the person who nominated you for this award and write a little bit about why you love them.
2-Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3-Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4-Nominate no more than 17 people (why 17?) who you love or you think could use some love.
5-Write one word (you can only use a word once) about what you love about their blog.
6-You cannot nominate someone who has already been nominated-the love has to spread to all.
7-Post links to the 17 blogs you nominate.
8-Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they’ve been nominated.

I pass the love on to the following :

No, I'm Not Pregnant, Just Fat Understanding

Conception Deception Supportive

Gum,2,3,4 Determination

My IVF Journey Strength

My Ramblings Honesty

In the Name of the Father Hilarious

Check out their blogs and see what I mean, pass on the love!

Cutie Cute Dogs

We have 2 very spoiled furbabies- Lucky and Lila. They are both chihuahua/weenie dog mixes aka chiweenies! Lucky was rescued November 2006 and Lila was adopted February 2007. They have been completely spoiled by us ever since, even my parents spoil them! I can't believe I haven't "introduced" them yet! So, here are my babies:

Lucky


He was about to be abandoned after his mom's owners couldn't get "rid" of him so we grabbed him up! We hadn't been married long and lived in a tiny apartment but we couldn't let him be tossed aside like that. He loves Cheetos and fries and is constantly at C's side, they are BFFs. Lucky has an attitude but we let it slide b/c he's so darn cute! He thinks he's a huge pit bull and has yet to meet a dog he's afraid of, much to the annoyance of our neighbors! Loves to howl at the train and chase bubbles. He loves to sit on our windowsills, keeping an eye on the neighborhood. Total Daddy's boy and is very protective of us.

Lila


We adopted her after I realized Lucky needed a sibling and I wanted a girl dog. She's a submissive urinator and pees if we yell at her, scare her, pick her up a certain way, drop something, hit something....basically she pees a lot but she can't help it and we love her anyway. Lila think she's a princess and regularly demands belly rubs by walking up to us and plopping down on her back in front of us. Anyone that comes over is expected to rub her belly as well. She's our delicate sweetie, scared of fireworks and loud noises. She's totally a mommy's girl and loves to cuddle!

I'm not sure what I would do without our 2 dogs, they even go with me on my regular trips to Houston to visit family! Their stockings are hung by ours over the fireplace every Christmas and I can't go to a pet store without buying them a new toy, Carlos teases me but he spoils them just as much.


I leave you with Lucky and Lila decked out in their Halloween finery. I hope you had a great Wednesday and have an even better Thursday!

Confusion

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy and sometimes Google is evil. I decided to search for sperm banks, you know to gather information, find some articles and all that jazz. That tied my stomach into knots and made me feel a little sad. It was such a mind trip to be looking for a man to impregnate me, I thought I had made that decision when I married Carlos. I'm not sure why but something caught my eye and made me pull out C's biopsy results for a closer look. They read: complete maturation arrest. I had forgotten about that, I had searched what it meant and asked Dr. Nuts about it. The information I found seemed to hint that complete maturation arrest could be treated, or at least we could attempt to treat it, with Clomid, steroids and such. Dr. Nuts told us, no, there is nothing further to be done. But Dr. Nuts is a small town urologist who performs maybe 2 testicular biopsies a year, by his own admission. He primarily deals with prostate cancer. Now I'm starting to think and google some more.

Now I'm wondering if there is something we can do. Maybe it's not the end of the road for us and maybe Dr. L is going to be able to help us. Hope returned in full force and then I stumbled across an email from a nestie that I had forgotten about. She said that she had found out that testicular biopsies aren't really the best way to determine presence of sperm and that they could actually do more harm than good, in the long run. Doing a search about that was confusing, some stuff I found seemed to support that but most stuff didn't mention it. I'm more confused then before and have a ton of questions for Dr. L now.

I don't want to think about it too much but something inside of me is whispering that there is much more to the story. Maybe I shouldn't be giving up on C being able to have bio children. I know one thing for sure, I can't wait for our appointment. I hope the next 11 days just fly by.

Reflection

I'm taking a moment to reflect on how much my life has changed in the last year because tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my Dad's strokes. It was the start of the worst four weeks of my life. It takes 8 hours to get to my hometown and even though Carlos drove like a maniac, it felt like 20 hours. I was borderline hysterical for the entire drive, all I could think was that I would get there too late and how I couldn't remember anything about my Dad. It was like all my memories had vanished and of course the more I tried to remember anything, the worse it got. It was horrible.

I remember bursting into the ER waiting room and seeing my siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins, I can still see them so vividly. I threw my purse at them and forced my way back to my Dad's room and what I saw haunts me to this day. My Dad laying on a bed, eyes closed, writhing around, moving so much that they had restrained him. My Mom was in tears, trying to soothe him and get him to open his eyes. I launched into bitch mode; ordering around nurses, demanding doctors and yelling at various family members. It took 30 hours for that stupid hospital to diagnosis two massive strokes, my Dad lay in the ER without oxygen getting to parts of his brain, for 30 hours. We had been telling them over and over again that we suspected a stroke and nobody listened, once they realized we were right, he was rushed into the ICU where he was in a coma for three weeks. Hooked up to so many machines, operated on and diagnosed with stage three colon cancer . A grapefruit sized tumor was removed and we were told that the cancer had spread to his brain, causing the strokes.

After many agonizing days, talks and arguments, we- my Mom, 2 brothers, SIL, sister, myself and Carlos - made the decision to remove him from life support. Once they removed his breathing tube, my Dad opened his eyes and spit at his doctor. He then turned to my Mom, told her he loved her and gave her a kiss. He was home 2 weeks later, walking, talking and very slowly regaining his health. He is our miracle, our living proof that God listens and prayer works. The tumors in his brain? Gone, not showing up on MRIs, the colon cancer? completely gone too. The man they said was a vegetable, is at home right now, bugging my Mom and playing with this grandchildren. Yes, he is brain damaged and walks a little slower these days, but he is ALIVE. He's defined all the odds and has come so far. He truly is my hero, the greatest Dad that has ever survived the brink of death and fought his way back to us.

I've been through hell this past year, I've struggled with my faith and fought a depression so deep I thought I'd never laugh again. But, I've never given up and I never will. You see, being stubborn is a family tradition.

(IF returns as my focus tomorrow, I just had to get this out about my Dad!)

What lies ahead

Once we knew that the biopsy was bad, I almost immediately began to think about the future. I began to think about donor sperm and adoption, I started making a mental list of pros and cons for both. At first, both were hard to accept as our reality but as the days went by, I started to accept it and threw myself into googling, reading and talking about both options to C. I felt led in one direction but decided, ultimately, I would leave the final decision to C. I wanted him to be the one who made the call, he had to be comfortable with it the most. We talked about both options but I never said which one I felt would be best, I was waiting on him. Finally, the other night, we talked about what I felt was right, where I felt God was leading me. Last night, C told me that he agreed. It was a very happy moment for us.

I am 100% excited and 100% scared/nervous/anxious to start down this path but I know in my heart that it is 100% the right choice for us. We are going to use donor sperm to build our family and we both look forward to this new adventure. We are still going to see Dr. L but we are being realistic at the same time. We have a lot to do before we can openly pursue this so we're aiming for donor-IUI in the Fall of 2010. I can't wait!

It's a part of life that some circumstances force you outside of your comfort zone and obviously, IF has definitely done just that for us. I was so against us going the donor route and even blogged about how I felt it wasn't for us, famous last words of a fool, huh? I had to get past the initial shock of C's azoospermia diagnosis before I could even think straight. But once the smoke cleared, and I took my head out of my ass, I was able to see that while biology is important to a degree, what mattered even more was that we had love to give. I'd give anything for there to be sperm, so would C, but I'd also give anything to be a parent, so would C. What it boiled down to was that how we built our family didn't matter, what mattered more was that we did and we will. We are going to be parents, great ones at that! We'll always grieve for what we lost and for what might have been but we are not going to let it define us anymore, or stop us. For the first time in a long time, we can see the light at the end of this tunnel and it feels so freeing. At last, we have hope again.

A very long time ago...

On October 22, 1999 a very cute sixteen year old boy asked me to be his girlfriend and we've been together ever since. 10 years really just flew by!

::sigh:: He's still so cute.


We're off to dinner and to see "Paranormal Activity", I hope it's as scary as everyone is claiming!

Hey ICLW!

This is my first time joining in on ICLW and I'm excited to participate! I'm Amanda, married to C for 3 years. We've been together since 1999 aka forever and have been TTC for 18 months. I have PCOS and C has azoospermia. We've known about the PCOS for 18 months but just recently found out about the azoospermia this past July. It was devastating to say the least and we're still struggling with the diagnosis, some days are good and some are bad. I'm just trying to not lose my mind and the blogging world has been a major part of that. We live in a rural area and feel like our small town doctor has taken us as far as he can. So, we're moving on to a big city doctor in Houston to get another opinion and to exhaust all our options. Headin' to the big city in the beginning of November, can't wait!

If the MFI guru can't help us, well, we're cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, we're holding on to hope and trying not to cry too much about C being spermless. Easier said then done, but isn't everything that sucks that way?

then comes the anger

I had been successful in ignoring it all, I was amazed at how well I seemed to be taking it. Granted, I had morphed into a super cleaning, super busy robot but I didn't think it was b/c of our results. I thought I was ok. HA! I've been just miserable the past few days as I struggle to finally face it. There really is no sperm and nothing I do, say, wish or pray for is going to change that fact. My wonderful husband will never father a child that has his really cute face. That is the hardest part for me, accepting that this has been handed to him. C wouldn't hurt a fly, he's genuinely a good guy- stops on the side of the road to help people broken down, gets up at 3 am to go drive a drunk friend home, gives his last dollar to a homeless guy and oh man, how he adores children. He is great with them, our 9 nephews and nieces think he's the coolest guy ever. And he is, C is one of a kind. (not that I'm biased or anything!)

I am angry at God because this is happening to C. There, I said it, I'm angry at God. I'm pissed off that he has azoospermia, pissed off that it can't be fixed, pissed off that there are idiots out there fathering children they abuse, neglect and don't want when my husband can't father a single one! It's not fair, it doesn't make any sense and I wish it wasn't true. I'm having a hard time reconciling God's love for us with what we are going through. I prayed so hard for sperm, my family prayed, my friends prayed, my fellow IF friends online prayed and still nothing! I'm a faithful person, I've witnessed God's love and I believe in the power of prayer but it didn't work for us. I feel like God failed us. I feel like God turned His back on us when we needed Him the most.

So, I tried to turn my back on Him too. I refused to pray and stopped praising Him. Funny thing about turning your back on God, you start to notice Him in places you didn't before. When I confessed all this to C, he looked me in my eyes and told me that he couldn't believe I felt this way because he didn't and that I shouldn't feel like this either. Wow, talk about a humbling moment. So, I'm trying to not be so angry anymore and I'm starting to deal with this mess. It's a slow process though, dealing with it, and I don't expect it to be easy. But, I have hope that it can be done, especially when I read blogs of other couples dealing with azoospermia. I wish we didn't have to accept this reality but then, there are so many things I wish for these days.

No change

I feel like I have gotten a lot accomplished lately. I "outted" myself on FB about our IF, we had our follow-up with Dr. Nuts and I scheduled our second opinion. Ok, maybe that isn't much but it sure felt like it!

Coming "out" on FB was amazing. I was super nervous to do so but once I did, this huge weight lifted off my shoulders and it felt so good. Not many people commented on the post but the ones that did, were supportive. I also received messages and emails from people with more supportive words. Most mentioned God to me and how this is His plan and how we should just adopt, I ignored them. I figure everyone deserves a free pass on stupidity and now that they have used theirs up, any future idiotic remarks will be met with my snark. It's been fun to update my status talking smack about IF and our doctors. It's liberating.

Our follow-up with Dr. Nuts was an epic disaster. That man actually made Dr. Insensitive seem tender. He announced to us that the results were, "terrible, just horrible and you should just adopt" and when we mentioned donor sperm he said, "Well, Mrs. Mqn, don't you have issues as well?" He told us that he understood we were frustrated, to which I replied that frustration isn't even reaching the tip of the iceberg of our feelings and that we were devastated. He laughed and told us that this isn't the worst thing that could happen. To this, I gave him the dirtiest look I could through the tears and told him a few choice words. I literally hate this man and wish heaps of badness on him.

We told him about our second opinion appointment and when we told him it was with Dr. L in Houston, he told us we picked the "male infertility guru". I was very happy about that but then Dr. Nuts gave us a laugh and said, "If he fixes you, let me know b/c I would be really interested in that." I walked out of the room and left the building. I was furious. Thankfully, we will never again have to see Dr. Nuts, unless I run into him at the store and I'm sure I'll be arrested if that happens. So, on we move to Dr. L and the stack of papers we have to now fill out before we see him. I'm not expecting a miracle, this appointment is for our peace of mind before we start gathering information about our other options. We have to cover all our bases and say that we did all we could. Although, a miracle would be awesome.

Still cry a lot, still feel like running away with C and still angry at the big guy upstairs. I'm just trying to not be so gloomy so that I can enjoy what is left of my favorite month. Oh man, so not looking forward to the holidays with this heaviness in my heart. IF, you are one big, stupid biatch.

P.S. we received the biopsy results on our 18 month TTC anniversary, how is that for irony?

Grief

There are brief moments where I forget, blissful moments of oblivion where I'm not a mess of emotions. But, of course, it never fails that the moment ends and the truth comes crashing down around me and I remember and it hurts. It just seems mind-boggling that someone as wonderful as him isn't producing sperm. I look at C and literally can't accept that he will never biologically father a child. He is the goofiest, funniest, most loving guy I know. He adores kids and they adore him. Babies stare at him, toddlers walk up to him wanting to play and parents are constantly apologizing as they fetch their child away from our booth, seats or carts at the store. We think it's cute and C always plays with them, talks to them, makes them laugh. I've known since I was a teenager that he would be the most amazing dad. I have always told people how much I wanted a little C. How can it be that I can't give my husband his child?

Everyone tells me that this is God's plan, that God doesn't give us more then we can handle and we should just trust God. I feel like screaming at these people, Really? God did this is us? God is causing us unspeakable pain? God's plan is for us to endure countless procedures, surgeries and piles of medical bills? God doesn't want C to father a child? This is God's doing? But, when I do voice this, people are quick to tell me to stop blaming God. I don't think I'm blaming God, I'm not blaming anyone, nobody "did" this to us, it just happened. I just don't think that this is God's doing and I don't think it's wrong of me to be mad at God right now. Maybe this makes no sense but it does to me and I don't feel bad for feeling this way either. We've been dealt a shitty hand and we're allowed to grieve.

That is what surprised me the most about IF, the grief. The grief, not the pain, that sticks with you. You grieve your fertility, your spouse’s fertility, your chance at starting a family the way most people do. There are times when the grief leaves you breathless. You wonder if you will ever be normal again, see pregnancy and babies in the way you did before IF. The grief is a constant, it’s always there, it’s just not always fresh. Not always the ruling emotion in your life. It makes me feel so tired knowing that this grief will be with me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to carry this burden forever but I know I will. IF leaves battle scars, you just can't see them.

overflowing

October 7 started out so good. C was working from home, the weather was crisp and Fall-like, we were goofing off around the house and being so silly. Then his phone rang and our world came apart. No sperm. The last piece of my heart shattered and I sobbed. C didn't cry, he just held me and wiped away my tears. I became angry, so angry at the hand that has been dealt. But, mainly, I just felt numb, so empty. I just can't believe it, no sperm? How the hell is that possible? Who can I punch so that they feel as bad as I do?

All this time I had been saying that if the results were bad, we would take the rest of the year to process it and then decide our next step. Yeah, that flew out the window and I immediately began to think, talk and research our options. First up, a second opinion with a reproductive urologist in Houston. I am going to find the best one and make an appointment before the month is over. I have to exhaust our options and have all the answers. C agrees 1000% with me.

Once we have done that, then we are going to take time to build our savings account up again. It is seriously weak right now as a result of all the testing and doctors this year. Our insurance sucks and IUI/IVF will be completely OOP (out of pocket) for us. I imagine that will take up a great chunk of 2010 so we're also going to be using that time to grieve, if need be, and seek IF counseling. I imagine we will also be researching the hell out of our other options. Which are donor sperm and adoption, both lovely ways to build our family. I imagine we will attempt both, donor sperm first and in a few years, adoption. Even if we are able to find and fix C's azoo, adoption is still in our future.

So, there it is, our plan of attack. Not that it makes much of a difference to how I am feeling. The depression has set in, I was wondering when it would. I am so sad, I have so many questions and honestly, I am angry. Angry that this is happening to C, angry that this is our reality, angry that we live 8 hours from great medical care and really, just angry at the world. I want to get in my car and just drive. Drive away from the crushing pain and not think about this constantly. I wish I could grab C and run away. Go hide from the world and pretend that we aren't miserable.

I just feel so empty.

and then there were none

Not a damn thing was found.

No sperm.

Still no news

Me having patience=FAIL

So much for getting the results on Monday. I've called about a dozen times, played phone tag with the nurse and bitched out the receptionist, twice. All to be told that the results are still pending. I am losing my mind. I've been trying to keep my hyperactive, very impatient self busy and as a result, my house is sparkling, I've been spending 2 hours at the gym every morning and I'm sick of FB and Twitter. My DVR is empty and there is not a single piece of laundry left to do. If it wasn't raining, I'd be walking the dogs around the neighborhood.

I am hoping that pending means good news b/c they're analyzing something they actually found but in the back of my mind, I know that the lab is just probably backed up. Here's to another day of waiting tomorrow. ::sigh::

and now we wait

The biopsy was finally done yesterday. C was a champ and cracked jokes the whole time, I was nervous and very anxious. Thankfully, it went well and now he's hobbling around the house with a large ice pack. He has only taken two pain meds and is planning on going to work tomorrow. I'm not happy about that but he insists that he'll be fine, we shall see. I'm just glad it's over.

Dr. Nuts said there was no blockage, which leaves me filled with doubt that the biopsy will show presence of sperm. We should get the results on Monday. Odd feeling knowing that our future will be determined Monday, makes me all crazy and feeling like I'm going to throw up. I'm trying to prepare myself for the worst but I have this little splash of hope inside that is refusing to stay quiet. Hope, a four letter word that keeps me going but that also causes so much pain when it doesn't work out.

Now we wait, we sit around and wait to find out what our next step is. Regardless, I'm sure the results will bring tears, I'm just hoping that they are tears of happiness rather then of sadness. I just don't think I'm strong enough to survive the grief otherwise.