One at a time

Patience isn't one of my strong suits. I work hard to suppress this personality trait in my every day life: when talking to people and they have boring stories I'm not interested in hearing; when dealing with slow clients on the phone; when coworkers come for a chat I'm not in the mood for; when people have solvable problems they're whining about; the list goes on. There are times my impatience wins but for the most part I'm able to function in society like a regularly patient person.

It's been difficult to keep my frustration at bay with how long everything takes in fertility treatment. I was frustrated when we needed to see the urology specialist who scheduled us for May but ended up having a cancellation in March. I was further frustrated when we discovered we'd need to do surgery which would delay any IVFs for three months, and then even more frustrated when the first available opening was at the end of May even though we were seen in March. I almost lost my marbles when I found out we'd have to  wait to see the RPL specialist in October but then it worked out that we were able to go sooner and got an appointment in May. That was nearly a miracle. And now I'm realizing how stressful May ended up being.

It doesn't end there. The RPL specialist wants me to repeat the hysteroscopy because the images sent from old clinic didn't have what he's looking for. I'm not thrilled about another surgery. I'm really unhappy about it, actually. But beside the fact that it needs to get scheduled around a period, they also need to do some work to figure out what the stain test is because it's not standard protocol. So I was able to schedule it only based on next month's estimated period, not this month. This pushes back everything else.

In addition to all the waiting, the RPL specialist recommended repeated the ERA, this time unmedicated. I'm really not thrilled about another unpleasant biopsy, especially since I already did this twice at $800 a pop out of pocket. Unmedicated means no FET drugs or birth control. He wants us to go straight from that to a retrieval cycle. The reasoning behind that is to take advantage of the cycle of not suppressing the ovaries with bc pills and possibly needing less medication to stimulate. From there he wants to go straight into an unmedicated FET in the third month. All this needs to be timed so that the retrieval month falls out after the necessary recovery period of the varicocele repair.

Looking at it all at once is very overwhelming. I'm seeing a very frustrating summer ahead and I get annoyed and upset and frustrated at everything that needs to happen, at just the right time, for us to even start thinking about a possible retrieval or transfer. All things considered, we're know we're so lucky we were able to get in to see the RPL specialist sooner rather than later for obvious reasons. But this is rough. It's really rough to just wait. It's really tough to see my friends starting to think about bar and bat mitzvah celebrations for their preteens. We're not even any closer to having an infant.

In the grand scheme of things it's only a few weeks. I know that logically and most of the time I'm ok with it. I've been able to shove down most of my frustration and impatience under the guise of "doing something" with these appointments. But every so often something pops up and I get reminded of how frustrating it all is. I'm upset today because the hysteroscopy was scheduled for end of June instead of next week. But the reality is that a few weeks don't make that big of a difference. I'm thinking of it compounding and if everything takes "just a few weeks" then it builds up to months and months of waiting.

I know I can't think like that. I just won't survive. My blood would boil in anger at the injustice and then they'll delay things even more to treat my sky rocketing blood pressure caused by all the impatience and frustration.

My husband made me feel better by saying we should just take it one day at a time. I can't think of a better way to tackle this. We really have no other choice. Every other year the summer seems to fly by. So maybe if I focus on one day at a time it won't seem so long. While I can't help but be impatient, I can try to incorporate fun summer aspects sprinkled throughout to help it go by faster.

When thinking about the difficult aspects of infertility, there are a lot. The first ones that come to mind are the devastating negative betas, or the traumatizing miscarriages, or the emotional roller coasters during stim days and embryo development. I'd rank these waiting days among the top five as well. Waiting for each procedure, each test, each surgery, each appointment one at a time with weeks in between trying not to scream in frustration while attempting to go about your daily life as though this is normal is pretty mind boggling.

So I had a cry. I got some hugs from people I love. I got in a good laugh and made some food for Shabbat. And now we just wait #oneatatime.