Break

After getting the news from the fertility clinic yesterday that I did not ovulate on the Letrozole, I was feeling pretty downtrodden. After the side-effects I’d had (abdominal pain severe enough that I went to the emergency room, mostly) I had wrongly assumed the medication was doing something in there.

I was a bit annoyed with the clinic as they tried to reach us on Friday and V missed the call on his cell so they just left a message. We were out of town for a much needed birthday weekend getaway, and of course they didn’t return my call all weekend so I worried about it when I would’ve rather forgotten about it. It was enough that I had to do bloodwork right before we went out of town resulting in a spectacular bruise on my arm. I didn’t want to think about any of this while we were gone.

So the nurse who finally returns my call on Tuesday just starts in, “So as the other nurse told you, since you didn’t ovulate on the Letrozole at that dosage…” Excuse me, wait, what? No, the other nurse didn’t tell me, this is the first I am hearing of it. She blithely goes on to tell me how my RE wants me to take 10 mg instead of 7.5 mg at the next dose. That’s the maximum dosage, and where can she send my prescription please.

I basically told her that since we’d bought three rounds (45 pills) I’d have enough to do another cycle at a higher dosage (20 pills). The nurse failed at math, which wasn’t reassuring. I mean, I’M not super at math but… Anyway, we hung up and I didn’t talk to anyone for awhile, just sorting through it all in my head. We’ve talked about going to this holistic fertility centre here in town for awhile – just hadn’t really followed through on it.

Honestly, to be truthful, I’m skeptical about some of the stuff they do there. More in the chiropractor/reiki/craniosacral range. Also, they have “nutritionists,” which is not the same thing as a “dietician” and I’m not sure about those either. I guess I am skeptical about many things. But they also have mostly traditional Chinese medicine, which I don’t have experience with and could be fantastic for all I know, as well as fertility yoga, acupuncture and fertility massage. I have read studies suggesting that acupuncture was helpful for fertility as well as a complementary therapy for people doing IUI and IVF and that many of these things could help alleviate side-effects from fertility medications.

At this point, I feel a bit like – what do I have to lose? Even if we do three months of this other stuff and it does NOTHING AT ALL, nothing at all is still better than actively hurting me like the other stuff is doing. I’m not abandoning the western medicine/fertility clinic approach either. But what I am going to do is spend the next three months just completely focused on me. We booked the initial consultation AND an acupuncture session the same night because acupuncture freaks me out a bit and I figure if I get it done I will see that it’s not so scary and then after that it’s all gravy. So we’re doing that on the 21st, just a little over a week away.

At the same time, I am going to get active again (that has definitely dropped off) and stop making excuses for eating like crap. I know I have been doing this – side effects from the meds and probably depression from dealing with all of this means that many nights it’s just easier to order take-out. Many nights became “almost every night,” which is not only expensive, it’s bad for us.

I’ve gained probably 15 lbs since we started all this and I started at overweight to begin with. I can no longer ignore how all of these medications and this entire process have affected my life (spoilers: 100% in a negative way, not a single aspect of this has been positive or enjoyable or made me happier.) So I think that taking three months (then we have our vacation scheduled in June) can only be a good idea. Yes, I was feeling melancholy because I just turned 31, but it’s not 3-4 months that will make or break our efforts to do this and if I can possibly ovulate on my own by losing weight and getting healthier and acupuncture/yoga etc then maybe that is what I should be doing.

Apparently other people agree with me because my Mom kept saying, “I’m so glad to hear you’re doing this, I think you’re being so smart about this and this is a great idea,” etc. etc. as well as “We’ve all been really worried about you. You don’t look healthy.” I guess, really at the end of the day, what is more important to me: having a child or ME? I mean if I had to choose. It’s a pretty obvious choice to me. If having a child leaves me absolutely wrecked and even takes years off my life to do, is it actually worth going through all of that for? Not saying we’re stopping. But we are going to pause and take stock. I might also contact and make an appointment with a dietician. There is a single dietician here in town who mentions PCOS in her description, but her website seems to be more focused on pregnant or just-gave-birth or with-young-kids people. So I will have to e-mail her first to know more. And yeah – I would opt to go to the dietician over the nutritionist at the fertility place.

So that’s where we are at right now. I’m also going to keep my workload pretty light to give me lots of time to exercise and cook healthy. I know I’m fortunate that I can afford to do that, and also afford things like a psychologist and these other therapies. I hope they pay off, and when I say that I don’t mean “put yoga in, get baby out,” I mean more that if they help me to feel healthier in even a small, tangible way, then they will be worth it as far as I’m concerned.