Fertility Drugs and Family Dysfunction

 So I started Clomid a few days ago. It sucks that it has come to this. I have to take drugs in order to try to have a baby. I’m not a pill person and in the last few weeks I’ve taken more pills than I care to think about. Pills to stop my period, to start my period, to make me ovulate, to change hormone levels…the scary thing is is that all of this could potentially be for nothing. People fail fertility medications all the time – that’s why the adoption business is still booming. I’m also on Decade on why is supposed to suppress my androgen levels – apparently mine are too high. So the doctor prescribed me 50 mg but I’m actually taking 100 mg (he gave me a bunch of refills). I’m trying to move this process along a little bit. I know I’m under 35 years old which dream to be the scary number everyone is afraid of, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be slightly more aggressive. He tells me I have wndometriosis and an ovulatory dysfunction and my AMH level is low, but then starts off on the lowest dose possible. It’s like setting me up for failure. 

They’re doing a sonohystogram tomorrow to evaluate my uterus to see how it is healing. If I get the go-ahead from them they’ll do an IUI this month. I’m not optimistic – the success rates are low, and even lower for someone like me. I’m kind of frustrated as to why they’re even going to bother. If the sonogram shows any scar tissue or any problem they’re not going to do IUI and potentially do another surgery. To tell you the truth I won’t go back to this doctor for another surgery. He fucked up the first one and I’m not giving him another chance to fuck up the second. I actually have another appointment with another fertility clinic at the end of the month. I’m waiting to see how the sonohystogram goes. If it looks OK I will stay with this clinic for two IUIs then move on to another office. There’s another fertility clinic that is one of the top in NJ. Problem is is that it is huge and people often complain of disorganization and lack of personalized care. Their numbers are amazing though; 64.4% live pregnancy rate for women younger than 35. My current doctor told me his live birth rate for women younger than 35 is about 50%; however if you call his office the automated message boasts rates nearing 70%. So…which is it? Those are two really different numbers. My doctor is rated as a top doc online and has dozens of rave reviews (more than the clinic with the 64.4% live birth rate) but he perforated my uterus during surgery and the communication of his office isn’t fantastic. Maybe it is just me, maybe I’m one of the patients that just fell through the proverbial cracks, but I’m not entirely thrilled with me care thus far. I don’t care about personalized care, I just want to go to the clinic that will get me pregnant the fastest.

You’d think that with all the fighting with my family I wouldn’t want to have kids. I mean, after the amount of financial  and emotional stress of fertility treatments, can you imagine if I finally had a baby, and then the kid grows up and we don’t even get along? I don’t get along with most people in my family any more. It’s incredibly lonely and makes me want to have a baby even more. If it were Becca I can virtually guarantee that she would be asking to to donate eggs or be a surrogate. If it were Ivanna and John having fertility problems my parents would help them pay for fertility treatments. I know this because that’s how family has always been. When Becca moved out my father helped her pay her bills until the day she got married. When I moved out my mother charged 4k of debt in my name. My father paid it off, but still. Help with bills? Hah! They didn’t even tell me what bills I had. For awhile I was paying off four different school loans until Michael helped me consolidate everything. And as a for Becca…she’s a really good sister as long as you don’t need her for anything. When I was a PA student I had to travel from eastern Long Island to Brooklyn for one of my rotations (about a 2.5 hour commute each way). I had asked to stay at Becca’s house for the five weeks of my rotation to cut an hour off of the commute. That lasted about a week. Becca and her husband told me that they needed their privacy and would prefer I didn’t stay at the house. I understand that they had just gotten married, but its not like I was crashing in their bedroom; I left at 8am and didn’t get home til around 11pm. So for four weeks I drove a minimum of five hours a day five days a week. If Becca needs a prescription for herself or one of her kids? Yup, then she has no problem asking for a favor. I’m just kind of tired of the bunch of them. I feel like I’m used and just generally not treated very well. My Dad I think loves me, but he puts his head in the sand when it comes to family dysfunction. He either doesn’t see or doesn’t want to see that everyone isn’t getting along and I can’t pretend that everything is OK. Jake is the only sibling who calls me on a regular basis without asking me for a favor. 

I’m tired of this stress already. I just want a baby already. C’mon Clomid!