make glemonade

I need to start by saying we got pregnant! I was going to wait until the end of the post for dramatic effect (even though most of you know this to be true already), but it's easier to explain all my thoughts as I go rather than dancing around the fact that it worked as I tell you about round 4. So just soak that in for a minute! --- After we didn't get pregnant in May/June of last year, we had to quickly decide if we wanted to take our frozen embryos and try again the next month (there were 2 left). We decided to wait so we could enjoy our summer. We knew if we tried again right away and it didn't work, we would feel like the summer just slipped through our fingertips in sadness. So we planned on August, September, then October, it kept pushing back because every time the time came for me to pick up my first prescription, I wouldn't go. And the time passes, it's a cycle thing so you can't really just start whenever. Finally in November I bit the bullet a...

p.s. sorry about the small text, blogger will not let me change it! Zoom in, old friends! We did in vitro for the third time this last summer.  We started the process back at the beginning of the year, we had to find a new doctor because ours picked up and left the state (with our sperm!) and went back to California to stay. We got a letter in the mail saying they were gone and that was that.  We were incensed at the time, first because that is some pretty valuable sperm to us, and knowing that it was no longer near us we went from 0 to 100 real quick; and two, we had just done a consult with him a few weeks before and paid for it, only to get a letter saying he was peacing out.  As with everything, there was a back story and it wasn't as personal as it seemed at first. The two doctors we had severed their relationship, and frankly, the doctor in CA is the one that I do trust and am glad that he took our future with him.  We made arrange...

The first time we did in vitro, we got 6 good embryos. We used 2, with my age and reproductive health they didn't even want us to do 2, saying it was fairly risky that we would get multiples. We, of course, as you know, didn't get pregnant. This was back in June/July 2012. I got really depressed (I think I wrote all this before but I'm summing up just in case you are behind). I couldn't even think about trying again for a really long time, but we did have 4 embryos frozen with our doctors, waiting for us. We decided when we did it for the second time we would just keep it to ourselves. We didn't tell anyone, and it was liberating in a lot of ways. It had been so devastating before, I just couldn't bear to talk with anyone about it again. It was important for us, Eric and I, this time, to just keep it between us. I think that was something we could control in the whole thing, and it suited us this time. So we started in November of 2013, about a year and a ha...

I've just been thinking and what am I if I'm not honest with you? I guess I'm just not really living unless I'm being 100% honest... and... my real name is Fat Patricia. This is what is really hard about our infertility: We are really happy. We are living a great life, with good jobs, wedded bliss, good friends, family, food, vacations, concerts. Pretty much whatever we want, we do. We are young by most people's standard.  The problem is if it isn't broke, why fix it?  Why would we go and try to do this expensive, draining thing again, with either result? "Oh my gosh," I know half of you are thinking, "Don't you want to have kids? Isn't that the happiness you are looking for?" Yes. It is. And the other half of you are thinking, "Get it, girl! YOLO and you have plenty of time. Your time will come. Just enjoy this while it lasts!" And yes, I know that is true as well.  So here is my beef: with IVF I have to...

As weeks go, the 52nd week of the year is one of my favorites: between Christmas and New Years. You get the opportunity to reflect on the year you are finishing while anticipating the fresh start and the things to come. I was expecting something very different out of 2012. When we started the year, we had recently discovered are inability to produce spawn. It was a freshly opened wound, but it stayed for awhile. I tried not to take a lot of time to think about it. But I thought about it all the time. It's so draining to constantly think about something that you can't fix and can't control. I specifically remember a conversation Eric and I had with one of his sisters. She and her husband have a really hard time getting pregnant, and she just asked us what we were waiting for? If we knew we had only one option for biological children, why wait? And I knew we just had to go for it. Why waste time thinking about it when we knew other things wouldn't work? So around Ma...

With the blog challenge and a few other things, I realized that I haven't actually posted about our happenings since March. And even then it was solely an update on Eric's scan. If Peggy (my late mother-in-law) were around she would say, "Tell me about Holly". She always asked the questions that I didn't want to answer. Things are hard right now. I know I haven't written anything about our  struggle with infertility since... December?  On the one hand, I can't believe it has been that long since we started trying to figure out this baby thing. On the other hand, this summer felt like it was twelve months long. The pain that has accompanied this process  trial is far more than I ever could have anticipated. Mostly emotional, some physical. It is damaging. It has been damaging from the get-go. And my only hope is that it won't always be damaging. I do see in my mind a picture of me, with 2 or 3 kids someday (thoughts of a big family have been dashe...

So, when your husband gets sick, all you think about is him getting better. There are no other thoughts, so we quickly became grateful for doctors that simply told us what to do. We did it all. We bought flannel sheets so it would not hurt his head. They told us the best route for financial assistance, so we filled out piles of paperwork. They told Eric not to eat for 24 hours before [fill in the blank] test, so he didn't. They told us to freeze some sperm, just in case, before he started chemo therapy, so we did. It was a really awkward and amusing experience, really. One we are happy to tell you in person. I remember talking to the chemo nurses, particularly one, I don't remember her name but she loved 80s music, skiing, and Eric. She said people have kids all the time after they go through chemo. I don't even remember why we were talking about it. It was something at the very beginning that scared me, the thought of it causing infertility was one of my biggest fears abou...

You guys. How do I explain? I can't. We are doing pretty good. We got a goat. It's not a kid, I think she is full grown. She may or may not be pregnant. She stays at Jeff's. We haven't named her yet. Feel free to make suggestions. I just want to find the right one. I have worked so much this fall that I feel like everything else has taken the back seat. I can't speak for Eric, but I watch him put everything in to everything he does with little reward. We are weary. Isaiah 40:28–31 Yes, I know.

Eric, Gav, John, and Pace Well the good news is we have a lot of news; the bad news is it is Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. It is narrowed down to one of two of the T Cell lymphomas: Anaplastic Large Cell (ALCL), or Peripheral T Cell Lymphoma (PTCL). Both are very rare. The chemo for each of these is the same treatment, called CHOP (the abbreviation for the four medications given). The doctor called this morning with all of this information and asked us to come up today for the first chemo session. We went and dropped off an assignment for school for me, then headed up to SLC. First stop: Fertility Clinic. Yes, the chemo makes Eric infertile at least for the duration of the treatment. It may come back after the therapy is over, we really really are praying that it will come back, but it sounds like the chances are good that he will be fertile again. And if he isn't, we now have an account at that bank. We then went to Huntsman to Infusion (which apparently is another word for chemotherapy)....