Got my calendar

CCRM calls your schedule of medicines and procedures your calendar.  Dr. Schoolie answered our request for this from his vacation and I got mine the other day.   The nurse took some time to explain to me various components.  I told her that in our last consult, the doctor had previously told us that I would be on the most aggressive protocol that they have.  She agreed and said he was "throwing the book at me".

Hearing this freaks me right the f**k out.  I don't think anyone ever wants to hear that they are on the most aggressive treatment.  That means there's nothing left.  It's another reminder that we're all-in.  I mean don't get me wrong, cognitively this is absolutely no surprise to us.   We've been to 4 RE's, and none of them have been very positive about our chances of bringing home a real live baby.  The only thing that has kept us in the game is has been my age.  I'm 33.   

I take the nurse's comments as a warning.  My body is going to be taxed more than it ever has been before in this IF journey.  I'm scared.  I've been abusing it without much regard for the past year and a half.

Under my bathroom sink I have six filled sharps containers to prove it. There is another super-sized model in the closest, that is also half full.   For whatever reason, I can't bring myself to throw them out.  It's like a little fertility grave yard under my sink.  Each needle represents some weird badge of pain from our IF war.

My naturopathic doctor told me that my kidneys were likely very stressed from all of the drugs I have been taking.  She said in Eastern medicine it is believed that when you are pregnant you give half of your energy to the baby.  She said that this was the case even for a miscarriage.  The fact that I had two in 2012 she said would have really depleted my energy levels.   That moment that she said that made my eyes water.  It was validating in a way that I never thought of before.   A reminder of the pain that I still carry from losing those three tiny babies.

I told her also about the heavy doses of antibiotics for infections for possible (and likely non-existent) infections, steroids supplements and injectable blood thinners.   My body has been kind to tolerate all of them with only mild discomfort.   I secretly just hope it's not storing up the toxins to feed some super disease for down the road. 

In some ways I feel like I know in a small way what it would be like to be addicted to drugs.   I am kind of am right now.  It's just that my substances of choice are Follistim,  Menopur, estrogen and progesterone.   I'm using a substance to attempt to solve and hide an emotional problem.  I wish I could think of it more as taking medicine to cure my disease, but I'm not there. 

Dr. Schoolie, my IF pimp said it was "reasonable" to give this one or two more tries if we had the financial and emotional strength to do one or two more cycles.   Now that things are getting started, I'm realizing that I might have exaggerated when I said we said we did.