A sunny day

Today was a little busy, a little too busy to really let the reality of where I am these nine months later sort itself out. But I did make it to the cemetery. This fall, when it hasn't been rainy, has been brilliant around here. You can still see a blindingly yellow tree here and there, or a fiery orange one.

The colors are much more sedate by the baby section, though. I don't know whether it is by design or accident, but most of the color you can see from there is the subtle mix of all those shades of brown and those very few shades of green and yellow that comprise the nondescript background of fall foliage, the stuff you normally don't photograph.

The section itself used to be surrounded by these bushes that looked spiky and naked, and prickly appropriate when we first saw them on a brilliant and windy day in early February, and then blosomed, not green but dark red, in the spring.

Some of these stoic guardians either dried or froze out, and so they have been removed, along with their close neighbors. In their place-- nothing so far, but the ground looks like it had been tended to. A's spot used to be right by where the bushes rounded a turn, so it looked very enclosed. And now you can see that the ground to the right slopes downwards. I am not used to it yet. I don't know whether I think it's airier or too exposed now. I wonder whether I will miss the enclosure when the grass reclaims the slope. How fucked up is it, by the way, that I noted as a plus of the new arrangement that now there seems to be room right next to A, should we ever need it?

Only about a third of the wall of bushes remains. The red bushes are my landmark-- they are how I know I found our section. I like this navigation technique much better than looking at the section names and numbers.

The bushes bear these funny red berries, but only in small clusters and only in a few select spots. Always on bare twigs. What do you think-- blood or tears?



As I was making my way out, I spotted this tree. I was going to say "spied" but really there was no missing it. It looked even brighter than the camera was able to capture, I think-- piercing brilliant wonder.

I don't know why I wanted to go by myself today when I knew that JD and I are going together tomorrow. I don't know why I wanted to bring the camera, or why I took all these pictures. They really are a very poor substitute for those first pictures of a baby playing in the autumn leaves, aren't they?

No pressure

Monkey has been really good. She has waited and waited. She has stopped herself from saying things, and she has renamed her drawings. But last week in the car, after telling me all about how babies like to shake their booties if you give them your fingers to hold on to, and how if we have another baby maybe we will let her give the baby her fingers for support so the baby can dance, she told me she can't wait any more. I know, baby, I know. And then,
"Mama, I think by the time we have a baby, I will be all grown up."
"Probably, since you are so very grown up already."

As Friday dragged on without a word from the clinic, as the weekend wound its brutally elastic way towards what I perceived as a certain phone call first thing Monday morning, and as Monday inched and inched all the way until mid afternoon when the phone call finally came, the debilitating cacophony in my head preventing me from accomplishing anything requiring any real effort kept building, high among the many melodies comprising it the one about how my daughter can't wait any more. She is clearly bored with this "only child" gig. She needs interaction and reflection, she longs for companionship, and soon she will be all grown up.

So you can imagine that when the nurse said that the doctor would like me to repeat the ultrasound in another six weeks, I was not amused. I very nearly lost it, actually. She started with the recommendation, and I had to ask for the result. Which is that Immanuel is still there. Pretty much the same size. Still complex. So nothing is changing, but they want to give the bastard another chance to make himself scarce. This is not what Dr.YoungGun said would happen when we saw him. He said then that appearance on the repeat ultrasound would earn that mofo a one way trip to the OR. Let's just say that I am not doing well with this prospective pushing off of our hypothetical first cycle way into the new year. Maybe even past our one year anniversary. Which I don't think I would handle too well.

The nurse was sympathetic, and seemed to be genuinely concerned. I told her that I am very unhappy about this miscommunication, and she asked whether I thought it would help to come in and talk to the doctor about it. I told her honestly that I didn't think it would help too much to have a fight with the doctor. She very gently suggested that she can put me in touch with their social worker who is very good. I said that I needed things to move and not to talk about how I feel about them not moving. The thing that annoys me the most is that both before, when I was trying to reschedule this ultrasound, and now, she said that I could try a regular GYN to see if they would be willing to do the surgery faster, to accommodate my new job. Well, first, I don't have a GYN, only an OB. Second, this smells suspiciously like encouraging doctor shopping, which I don't think is right. Either you think that I can have the surgery now, in which case you should do it yourself, or you think that I shouldn't have it now, and in that case you don't encourage me to find someone who would be willing to do it anyway. And then there is timing. I didn't bother trying to find anyone like that before now because I thought I would have a whole week to get the surgery in at this place, which seemed very doable. But now it would be a laughably impossible task of looking for someone who would get me in and do the surgery with only nine business days remaining until the start of my new job. Clearly, not happening.

I am much calmer now than I was when I was blindsided by this information earlier today. I think I came up with a compromise that should satisfy both the doctor and us-- I will ask to do the next ultrasound in four weeks rather than six, in time to have the results for our next appointment at the end of November. He'd better be amenable to this.

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Nine months ago, on another cold Monday night, my husband played his guitar and my children danced, separated by my skin. I thought that he must be a big baby-- his twists and turns were really starting to hurt. That was the last night of our before, the last time we were all together, the last time that big, important things seemed good. I can't even say that they were good. The pathologist thinks that A was so active that night because he was in pain, suffering the effects of bacterial infection which she later ruled to be a contributory cause of death. I miss him so very much today.

Unsatisfied

So I am of the opinion that if anyone is going to put anything up my pudengo (thank you, Whoopi), I should (a) enjoy it; (b) get something out of it (like, you know, a baby); or (c) at least get the damned picture. Who is with me?

Right. So the stupid radiology place has the stupid policy to not show the patients the stupid screen, not to tell the patients what is on the stupid screen, and, in fact, not to tell patients a thing until the stupid doctor sends the stupid report to the requesting doctor. And, predictably, as of the close of business today, no report.

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I am also vaguely unsettled tonight by a birth announcement. It came by email a couple of hours ago. It is the first one that is really hard. Maybe it's because this is the first baby I didn't know about prior to the birth, or maybe it's because if you do the math, it turns out this baby must've been conceived some time around the time of A's death. Next week is the ninth monthaversary, the first one to fall on the same days of the week and to have both the death and the birth dates. Halloween isn't really the best time for that to happen, but I guess it's just one more thing in which we don't get any choice.

How to make a grown man run for the hills...

...or at least threaten to. Well, in the case of my wonderful OB, Dr.B, all I had to do was tell him that I am getting a job at the Other Big Hospital. Which means that I will have access to full text of every medical journal on the planet, more or less. He said he was moving. Without a forwarding address. We had a good laugh.

He also assured me that while the risk would be significantly higher if despite everyone's best efforts I did end up pregnant with twins, it wasn't going to be a deal breaker. He said he would bump up the monitoring and maybe start himself on Prozac. Did I mention I love my OB?

We talked about other things, like my medications and Dr.YoungGun's qualifications. Overall it was just very nice to see Dr.B, to know that he is still thinking of us, to get this reminder that if and when I get knocked up again, we will be in very good hands indeed.

Afterwards, I went upstairs to try to schedule a few things. They were able to move my ultrasound to today, so I will be leaving for that in a few minutes. They also scheduled JD's second swimming test for a month from the first one, and our follow up with Dr.YoungGun for a week after that. So a productive day overall.

As I was picking up Monkey from school, I told her teacher that Berura now knows about A because Monkey told her. The teacher replied that Monkey has told a lot of kids, and that they are accepting of the story. One of them came to the teacher to ask whether she knew, and received the confirmation that she did indeed know and that it was very sad. I think we did good with this school.

Ok, I am off to see how Immanuel is doing. I hope he is a rude kind of a bloke and has made his exit without any of those social niceties that would compel another, more civilized cyst to stick around for formal good-byes. But I am not holding my breath.

Making plans

Two years ago we ran away for Thanksgiving. Just the two of us. Monkey went to visit my parents, and we hopped a plane to Aruba. There were many great things about that vacation, not the least of which was watching crazy Thanksgiving weekend traffic in the States on TV, while sipping blue cocktails or getting ready to go for the morning dive. The vacation was so great, in fact, that we bought another one (a resort preview) right in the airport before we flew out. We then talked my parents and my sister into coming with us on that one. And we took Monkey, too.

This past spring we took a cruise, our first ever, to the Caribbean. This picture is from a snorkeling excursion we took to Stingray City at Grand Cayman.

 

I took the picture with our water- and shock-resistant digital camera, bought specifically for this trip. Yes, put it right under water and took the picture. Freaky, I know.

I love that picture. I love just about everything about it. I love the grace and the fluidity of movement, I like that it suggests how close I had to be to the stingray to get that shot, I even like that the creature's body carries reminders of scuffles, the sign of authenticity. This here is no pet stingray. This stingray has seen the rough side of the ocean. And of course, I like the shadow on the sand, the subtle hint of how clear the water is.

But today that picture is making me anxious. Not the picture, of course, the memories. JD wants to go away for Thanksgiving, to warmer climes, but more importantly away. And I am suddenly filled with dread. I didn't want to go on that cruise. It was too soon, not even seven weeks, after A died. JD had a good argument-- let's make new memories he said, everything here is all the same, as if nothing happened, I need something new and different. I heard him, and I knew he needed it. I knew Monkey would love it, and the friends we would go with were real friends, although long-distance now. So I agreed to go. As the time for the trip approached, however, I grew ever more anxious. I didn't want to go. The chores of getting ready for a beach vacation-- waxing, shaving, pulling out summer clothing while it was still certifiably winter outside, things that I would normally enjoy, or that would at least amuse me, it all felt wrong, it all felt like too much.

The cruise itself was up and down, with some great highs and some spectacular lows. When I think of it now, I mostly think of the good memories. Unbelievable dives, gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, talking with friends, happy kid faces. But today I am transported right back to that time when I was getting ready to leave, that heavy, anxious place I hoped never to revisit. Experience tells me that if we go, the vacation will be good for me. The place JD found even has resort-wide free Wi-Fi. I could keep up with blogging from the beach, which is good, since I am not a big beach person otherwise. So why am I so mortified at the thought of going? Why do I feel right back there all these many months ago? Is it just that I was all set for a quiet long weekend at home? Is it the stress of the infertility stuff? The stress of the new unknown? I thought I was better now.

What's in a number?

I am not my body. My body is not exactly up to factory standards, but I can't return it or put in for replacement of defective parts, so I deal. I live for the numbers, though. In the ancient times when I could wrangle my body to my will, make the defective parts run to an ok approximation of the industry standard, the numbers were my weight, length of my cycles, my LH spike for ovulation purposes, mid-luteal progesterone as a benchmark for those early pregnancy readings, and hCG and its doubling, or not, for the pregnancies. There were also thyroid readings as necessary. Pregnancies brought their own numbers-- weeks, heart rates, crown-rump, nuchal fold, probabilities, glucose tests, blood pressure, protein in urine. This year brought measurements of heart rate and blood pressure sans pregnancy, too many stuck LH readings, and now the cyst size. Numbers, numbers everywhere. I am a geek.

But at no time did these numbers measure my worth. I am not my body.

Waiting for JD's numbers this weekend was somewhat different because I worried about how he would take it if the results were not good. Before we had Monkey, two different tests showed borderline low numbers. We talked about this when this test was first ordered. Whatever the test says it won't matter, I said. It means nothing. It's just to tell us what we need to do. This feeling did not change for me as the test, and then the results day approached. Good, I thought, at least I am not a hypocrite. He is not his body either.

To be completely, thoroughly honest, I was thinking that given the history, some of the numbers will be on the low side. I even thought that if they are, we might get the diagnosis of male factor added, and that it might actually help speed up our stupid insurance coverage.

There are other things, too. The cultural stereotype of manliness=virility is alive and well, and is reinforced in this case by two cultures. We also conceived A on the first try. Variance, she is a bitch, in poker and in life, and it can mess with your head but good in both settings. I had that going this summer, when I sooooo hoped to get pregnant that first month we were allowed to try. I think I got over it the day I realized PCOS was kicking my butt, and ovulation was no longer forthcoming. I couldn't really tell where JD was on these things.

Yesterday afternoon we got the results. They are worse than we thought. In fact, the one parameter I thought was least likely to be affected, based on the three previously recorded conceptions, was in fact affected. We have low motility. Very low. Very very low. The numbers are bad, and they don't matter. We have low motility. Yes, we. Because JD isn't his body either. It's just what we have to deal with.

What's your poison?

Because, after all, I have a reputation to uphold, because it's a Saturday night, and a good, no-- great-- game was on, and because I haven't done it in a while, I thought I'd tell you what's been helping me get through the night. Aside from the game, I mean.

Tonight it's Bellini Martini, the approximate recipe for which can be found here (promise me you will never believe the lying bastards who tell you this drink does not include champagne, k? k). The recipe is approximate in that the ingredients are right, but not necessarily the proportions. For the proper drink there is always that nice little place on the piaza level of The Ven1t1an resort in Las V@gas. Or my house. If you choose the latter please do give me at least a couple of hours of warning to make sure there is food to go with the drink.

So what are you drinking this fine time of day?