A ridiculously long update

I forgot what a pain in the bootie it is to get a blog looking good! My background looks all funny, like there is a piece of plastic covering it up making it look faded. I'll have to work on that! As well as a lot of other things.

But first I wanted to write! It's been so long!

So here goes....an update on me! And all that is going on...the good, the not so good, and the kind of funny.

The zoo is still good. All SIX of them...SIGH....yes, there are six now. Although our portion of the pet family hasn't grown. My cousin's portion has. A few weeks ago a kitten was found in the girls' bathroom at school and me being the sucker that I am took the little guy home. Luckily my cousin wants to keep him so once she moves out he will go too. As well as her pain in the butt German Shepherd mix. Then we'll be back to our four, which is plenty...especially since our two cats only come in to eat or during bad weather.

Speaking of my cousin. She had her brain surgery two weeks go. For those who don't know. About a month ago she suddenly lost vision in the left half of her left eye. As in one minute she was looking at the TV and the next she realized something was wrong. She covered one eye at a time and realized that literally split down the middle of her left eye she was completely blind! Thirty minutes before she was seeing just fine. She's 29. This wasn't normal.  I knew the minute she said she lost her vision that it was a brain tumor. I of course kept that tid bit to myself. About two years ago she saw a fertility doctor because she hadn't had a period in 10 years and even then they only came once a year or so every since she was 13 or so. This doctor was a joke and told her she had PCOS despite not having any cysts on her ovaries or any other sign of it. He did some blood work to see if she might have a pituitary tumor because that would explain everything. But he never did an MRI.

Wouldn't it make sense to do a flippin' MRI on a patient who you suspect might have a brain tumor?!

Anyway, she made an eye appointment and the eye doctor immediately referred her to a neuro-opthamologist. I went with her and since she's a bit shy with medical stuff I spoke up for her and mentioned that she hadn't had a period in years and that I thought it was a tumor. The doctor agreed and ordered an MRI.

We got the results a few days later. And wouldn't you know it was a giant ass tumor! A little bigger than a golf ball, located near her pituitary but not a pituitary tumor, rather something called a craniopharyngioma. It had gotten so large that it was squishing her pituitary thus causing her fertility issues and was also pressing on her optic nerve and screwing up her vision.

So on September 27th they took her in for surgery and removed it. She is doing fabulous! She's been home for a week now. You'd barely know she had anything done to her! She's having issues with her kidneys, her thyroid, and a few other things...but all are fairly common issues as her body gets used to all its been through and as her pituitary kind of relearns how to take care of things since it hasn't functioned properly in 10+ years. She had  a recheck with the neuro eye doctor a few days ago and her vision is almost back to normal...just a small portion of her eyesight is still gone but there is a good chance even it will return. As for hormones and ovulation we'll know within a year if that returns to normal. The good news is that it all should!

And now we pray that the tumor never comes back. While it is not cancer it does still have a high recurrence rate. She can pretty much expect for it to return at some point in time. But hopefully it will remain as slow growing as it was the first time around so she won't have to deal with it for another 20 years or more!

Let's see. What else? Oh yes, how could I forget.

Two weeks ago yesterday, Brian and I bought a beautiful dark blue Ford F-150. 4-door, leather, wood grain...you name it this truck has it! But then wouldn't you know...

Three days later the company Brian works for let everyone go. We laugh about it mostly. I mean its not like there is anything we can do and there certainly isn't any point to freaking out. We still have my job which is enough to cover MOST of our expenses (lol, but certainly not his new truck). We have about 3 months worth of savings as well. So we're just trying to live like we're broke. And pray that something good comes along. Luckily, he's been doing some side work over the last couple weeks and really hasn't had a day of lost pay yet. But side work isn't a steady source of income and there is no guarantee from one week to the next that something will come up. He does have one job offer on the table but it would require him to be out of town 4 days a week and that just isn't option. I'd rather be broke.

I'm still oddly really calm about the finances and job status right now. I do have a tad bit of anxiety over it especially after the news we got at my last RE's visit. But for some reason I'm mostly just calm and figure its got to all work out eventually.

The last 3 months I've been dealing with a new problem...the low progesterone. The first month the nurse assured me that it could very well be a fluke and not to get upset over it. The second month they still weren't overly concerned but the third month that it was low I asked for an appointment to discuss options and was worked in this past week.

I honestly thought Dr. Ego was going to tell me that it wasn't a big deal. That none of it was a big deal, the low progesterone, the lack of pregnancy after 6 months of TTC. But instead he seemed concerned. He said it isn't unusual for women who have recurrent losses to also deal with infertility shortly thereafter. I think he called it "decreased fertility" maybe. I can't remember and for once didn't bring a pen with me! He just said it all goes hand in hand. Obviously having losses isn't a guarantee of infertility later on any more than infertility is a guarantee of losses but the chances are just increased. Oh lucky, lucky me!

I thought he would just recommend some Clomid. Actually I really thought he was just going to send me on my way and tell me I was overreacting but I thought I could convince him to just give me Clomid for a few cycles.

Instead, he wants to do IUI. Yep, IUI. ME. IUI.

Me, the girl who got knocked up really fast the first two times.

IUI.

It's almost funny to me. Because IUI was not something I would ever have to do. The one thing I thought I had going for me was that I was able to get pregnant fast. Yeah not so much. It's funny that one of the biggest fears I had about waiting the six months to TTC again after our last loss was the fear that something would go wrong, that we'd waste too much time and in that time frame a new problem would arise and I'd not be able to get pregnant at all, that I'd lose my only chance. Funny  how that works out, huh?

But despite my complete shock to be here, I'm not upset at all about having to do it. I'm nothing but excited for it. I have REALLY good feelings about it. I just know it is going to work. Ever since we started TTC back in February I just knew that it wasn't going to work. I had no positive vibes about it. I mean I had hope but there was something that told me that it just wasn't going to happen. Now I've got a good vibe back. Something stronger than just a bit of hope.

That being said I fully expect to freak out and have some serious doubts while in the middle of it all next month.

And I'm fearful about how many times we'll have to do it before it works. At $1000 each cycle and Brian having no steady job....uhhh....it's a little scary!

We're giving this month one last try au naturel. I expect to ovulate tomorrow or maybe the next day. So we'll see. It would be grand to not have to even worry about IUI at all.

So that is my update! It's good to be back to blogging!

Now if I can just get my lovely followers to follow me!