This Blog Has No Direction

Agreed. This blog is terrible.  I think if I was not working full time and taking care of a large household that I would have more time to focus on the things I want to write about. I am always coming up with ideas for stories to blog about- like the time my dad cut his finger off, or my brother tried to cut the cleats off of his shoes, or the time my car caught on fire- or even my fantastic trips to renascence fairs.

These days I have been stuck in a terrible depression and I can't seem to shake it. I know a lot of it has to do with the fertility medications I am on. Normally I love to write when I am feeling down, but this down is different. It's malevolent and sinister; robbing me of all the things that used to make me feel happy.  My life depresses me, my infertility depresses me, my job depresses me, being a mother depresses me, being a friend depresses me. There's just too much sad.

I don't want to make anyone sad. I just want my sad to stop. I hate feeling helpless more than anything. I hate feeling like I am not being heard or taken seriously.  I need to get this sad under control and start living again. I just don't know where to start. I mean really, who wants to sit around all day wishing they just didn't exist anymore?

I think I am going to finally give this blog some direction. I have decided that I am going to blog about being totally and ridiculously honest about life.  If I do something stupid- I am going to blog about it and share my thought processes no matter how horrible, selfish, stupid or insecure I may seem. I will write like an adult trying to make sense out of things.

I am going to write about my childhood and all the funny, stupid, crazy things that happens when you live in a large, poor,  dysfunctional family, but through the eyes of a child.

Yes the blog will feel bipolar at times, switching from humorous stories to more real topics like how fucking hard it is to stay away form soy and carbs!

Stay with me folks. I'
m sure there will be a gem in here somewhere.

I'm not gay, but there are days I feel like a unicorn and there are days I feel like this unicorn.

Imaginary Children

When I first started this blog, I had intended to tell colorful stories of my childhood and maybe enlighten a few about dyscalculia. Over the course of a couple years it has evolved into something a little more. When I write about infertility, it's usually through my tears and as I sit here now- my eyes are thick with salt water.

I spend a lot of time imagining what our child would be like. I imagine a tall girl- with her fathers wavy blonde hair and my blue eyes. I imagine all the things I was going to teach her like pottery and archery, baking and makeup. She's had a hundred names in eight years. I imagine a son with a freckled nose and an oversized wristwatch riding a bike with his dad. I imagine teaching him to be a good man. A simple man.

Each year that passes by yeild not children, but another dozen failed pregnancy tests. I grow more distant from the things I once loved and feel myself surrendering to a deep and lingering sadness that I can not shake. I wear masks every day to work but I am afraid people are beginning to notice there's not much life happening behind these eyes.

I feel myself pushing my Viking away in anger and sadness. I am angry that he loves me. I am angry that he loves me AND I can't give him what he wants; what he deserves. I break my body, force chemicals into it, sleep upside down, eat strange herbs, suffer horrible pain and sickness. I must endure debilitating anxiety attacks brought on by the hormones. I am subjected to humiliation each time I see a new doctor. And I do all of this because I love this man so much and want to give him a child.

It does not matter to me if he tells me we don't need to have a child. I know in my heart he wants one and I will be the reason he doesn't have an heir to his throne.  I can not live with that.

I never have felt permanent in this relationship. It  has always felt as though this relationship was hinged on whether or not I produced a baby. After so many years of failure the guilt, anger and complete and utter sorrow has broken me inside. I feel like the shell of a person, just animated skin  and bones masquerading around as a happy person.

I am slipping.

This causes me to stay away from people. I don't go to see his family even though they are right next door. Why? Guilt. I am a fraud. I am holding their son back from having a child. I am robbing them of having a grandchild. I see it when they look at me.

I lash out at the Viking- wishing he'd just end us. I imagine him finding someone who can and will give him a child. I imagine being both happy for him and terribly terribly sad.

I imagine running away to another state, Vanishing. Never looking back so I don't have to hurt.

There is no winning here. I lose no matter what. It's a terrible place to be.

People in my life do not understand what I am going through and I can not explain in anyway that help anyone feel what I am feeling. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Infertility truly is a lonely place.

My Viking is away for ten whole days and we are finishing up our last round of fertility treatments. I'm out in the woods all alone and hoping the hormones don't attract Bigfoot. To see how I would fair I took this handy quiz.


http://theoatmeal.com/quiz/bigfoot_love

The Day My Dad Lost His Finger

As I have mentioned before, I am the oldest of seven, mostly feral children, all about a year and a half apart. I am 12 years older than my youngest sibling which pretty much made me the boss by default. With a family that big, there were bound to be injuries.We fought.... a lot. Everyday our yard looked like a scene from Brave Heart. I had practically become a combat medic by age 11.  Besides our constant battling, at least two of my siblings were terribly clumsy and one sibling in particular had the worst case of ADHD in medical history. Imagine a clumsy Flash Gordan, that would be my oldest sister.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles + Koolaid+ 2 boys= roundhouse kick to the nose^blood

Treefort + 5 roudy siblings and 2 neighbor boys + lack of parental supervision= broken arm.

 Fighting sisters= smashed fingers in the door.

7 kids+Koolaid and PB&J sandwhiches= mini armageddon at the Korvinos house.

 I now understand why my mother was such a Nazi about keeping stuff out of the house that had sugar in it. We were where the wild things were.
 

There was so much blood being spilled at my house, that I have become a blood spatter expert.
Blood smear on the wall- Oh that means Jaime and Jeremy were watching the Ninja Turtles again. (Thanks to my brothers, we couldn't watch "Karate Kid", or the Turtles because they suddenly became karate masters of the dojo)

When one of my siblings got injured, my Mom had one of two emotions and you never knew which one you were going to get. She'd laugh at you so you didn't cry, get up and walk it off OR she'd get angry-scared and fly into super- panic ER Doctor mode. When she was frenzied Dr. Mom, she would instantly appear with a first aid kit and you'd spend the next 45 minutes in a  cloud of  profanity, antiseptic and bandages. You may have only had an infected flea bite on your shoulder, but my Mom's fussing coupled with her epic bandages were so intense you couldn't move your toes when she was done with you. There were a lot of times when injuries were laughed at to toughen us up. Like the time I got a splinter in my butt from the sea saw at school and my Mom  tried to get it out in front of the Avon lady laughing the whole time.


"Pfft...you don't need to go to the doctor, it's only a flesh wound. Stop bleeding on my carpet"

I'm so tough now.

We didn't always like to call Mom for help. We only called Dr. Mom when  we couldn't stop the bleeding with copious amounts of toilet paper and electrical tape. Gnerally we knew what to do when there was blood. See above chart. But when our parents got hurt....that was just weird and terrifying. There was nothing we could do.

When I was growing up, my parents fought a lot.  They fought about money, inlaws, outlaws, kids, housing on a daily basis. They always managed to make up, at least until they didn't.

One day in particular my Mom and Dad got into a big fight and my Mom loaded us all up and we went to the mall. To this day, I do not know what their fight was about, or why we went to the mall when we had literally no money to spend and I do not think I want to know. When we came home my Dad was ghost white and had his hand wrapped in a t-shirt. It didn't take a psychic to figure out something bad had happened. My Mom flew out of the car- I don't even think it was in park yet, and ran over to him.

"What's wrong! What happened?" My Mom demanded.

"Nothing- just get me to the hospital." Said my Dad wrapping the shirt around his hand even tighter- as if he was trying to protect it from her prying fingers.

"What did you do?! What happened?" My Mom pleaded.

"Nothing, just get me to the hospital."  My Dad had gone from white to green and his eyes were sad when he looked down at his tightly wrapped hand.

Here's where frenzied ER Doctor Mom came out.

"Goddamn it! I want to know what happened and I want to know right the fuck now." She pried his hand away from his chest where he'd been clutching it.

I realized all of us kids were standing around him...watching silently; some of us crying. I was angry and scared and I didn't know why. The last time I saw my Dad act this way, his best friend had died in a terrible accident.

"You don't want to see Diana." He said softly, but my Mom wasn't having it.

"Jesus Christ!" My mother exclaimed when she finally got the shirt unraveled and saw the damage. Without missing a beat, she loaded my Dad and 5 of my sibling into the car, leaving my brother Jeremy and I alone to look for his finger.

It wasn't until my Mom said, "Find your Dad's finger," that I realized what had happened. I felt so horrible for him, imagining what I would feel like if I had cut off my finger.

It turned out that my Dad, having felt bad about their fight, decided to make my Mom some flower boxes. (Totally something my viking would do). He slipped somehow while using the table saw, cut the tip of his pinky finger off and sent it flying across the garage and now my brother and I were tasked with locating it.

I left my brother in the garage to follow the blood trail and I ran into the house and called the hospital like my Mom told me to do. I can only imagine what the hospital staff member who answered the phone was thinking.

"Hello, Korvinos Family Hospital. Which child is this?"

I had no sooner hung up the phone when my brother came in from the garage.

"I found the finger."

"Good, go get it." I said getting a glass full of ice.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to."

"Do it anyway. It's your Dad's finger!" He looked pale and scared. 

"Fine you big baby." I said and stomped out to the garage. It wasn't that he was a baby- he just had more empathy than I did at that age. I think it must have physically hurt him to look at his Dad's separated finger.

"It's there." said my brother Jeremy, pointing between two boxes on the floor of the garage.

 I picked up the finger and looked at it for a brief moment, even giving it a little squeeze to show my brother I wasn't scared at all. I tried to keep my composure, even pretending that holding the finger was somehow cool, but I was horrified inside. It looked just like my Dad's finger, only not attatched to his hand anymore.  The finger just ended ubruptly and when I looked at the part where the knuckle would be, I could only see the exposed red, spongy flesh; no bones or blood at all. It was suprisingly clean.

By my brothers reaction, I expected the finger to be mangled...maybe even inching across the garage floor in search of it's missing hand. I thought to myself, "This actually is kind of cool. This is my Dad's finger."

Then the mini combat medic in me came out. I rushed to the kitchen and I dropped my Dad's finger into that cup full of ice. All of the things I had ever read in books or seen in movies about what to do when someones cuts something off of their body began flooding my mind. I began to second guess myself. "Wait...wasn't that supposed to be ice water?" Consequently, I filled the cup with ice water and then my brother and I went running across the street to our old neighbors house with the finger floating in a cup.

Me to the neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, "Our Dad cut his finger off and we need a  ride to the hospital so they can sew it back on." I held the cup up high so old Mr. Johnson could see it. I don't think he heard me the first time because he said,  "By god, is that a finger in ice water?"

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson only had room for one kid, so I sent my brother with the finger to the hospital and I stayed home and cleaned, full of nervous energy. I waited for hours for my Dad to get home. I was so sure he'd be so proud of me for picking up his finger and being smart enough to put it in ice water, but when he came home, he was still a pinky finger short.

My Dad says that the bone was cut too jaggedly for them to sew it back on, but I heard that because the finger was stuck in ice water- that the tissue bloated and blood vessels shrank making it too hard to reattach it. I guess I'll never know the truth.

My Dad never acted like losing his finger was a big deal. He never blamed me for putting it in ice water either. In fact, he has always made a joke out of it whenever people asked about it. His favorite trick is to put the stub up to his nostril so it looks like his entire finger is up inside his nose.

Four things my Dad told people about his missing finger.

 Now that I am a Mom, I still use toilet paper and electrical tape for injuries. My childhood prepared me for life as the mother of vikings, though I won't let them anywhere near a table saw. As for my brother, he now works with blood for a living as a kick ass tattoo artist. See below :)

https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.elledge.7

Oh and in case your wondering- when a finger is severed off- you do not put it in ice. Instead you clean it, wrap it in gauz, place it in a plastic bag and THEN place it in ice water. See Below:

What to do if you cut something off!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow the Hobbits Look Funny

 Disappointment...

Like many fans of LOTR, I couldn't wait for the Hobbit to come out in theatres. I counted the days until it's release and marked the week it was released by reading the book and watching the old cartoon version. Then the day finally came! We arrived early out our favorite theatre and loaded up on an obscene amount of popcorn and a vat of soda, we scurried up the isle where we managed to get really good seats.

Right off, when they started singing (which is in the book), I noticed something about the film...it had a different feel to it than LOTR. I told myself this was because it was, after all, a different story. But it kept nagging me. Scenes seemed overly drug out and pointless. I felt distracted- like the magician Peter Jackson was diverting out attention lamely so we wouldn't notice the lack of content.

Half way through the movie the nagging movie snob in my brain had drug me down to her level and I began to pick apart every scene. Where did this white orc come from? Good god- the CGI....make it stop. The sets really started to look like...well...sets. the magic disappeared before my eyes and I could see the humbug behind the curtain. 

I drew this a couple years ago when  I first heard they were thinking of doing a new Oz movie. Oz Art by OzK.

The lighting was weird, especially towards the end when they were fighting the white orc and his band of baddies. The orange glow meant to be from the fires was all wrong, the plastic tree was all wrong...Thoren's nose was all wrong.  I told myself it was because it was meant to be watched in 3D but because I can't see movies in 3D we don't waste our money going to them.

So, we bought the movie. I just knew it would look better on our TV than it did in theatres, but I was wrong. The movie, while beautiful and bright in some areas, seemed cheep and Wal-Martish in others. Unfortunately, I had the same feeling about Disney's Oz movie. I had waited for that movie for more than half my life only to be horribly and utterly disappointed. I highly doubt that I will follow the franchise if one is drummed up. I will follow the Hobbit however, but I sincerely hope the next is done with a better eye.  

 I recently found out  that The Hobbit was shot with a different frame rate than other movies....fucking put it back. And how about some non fucking CGI special effects. Stop being lazy. Jim  Hensen created entire universes out of felt and wire that made you believe you could go there if you just knew the right words. It's time to bring back the magic and good story telling Hollywood.

Spinning Straw Into Gold

 ***This blog is not a guide to fertility nor is it meant to be uplifting. It is the ramblings of a half mad woman who has been fighting infertility for 10 years.***

So, as mentioned before in a few blogs, my Viking and I struggle with infertility. Actually, I struggle with infertility,  he endures. See, it is my problem.

I am 35 now. I was 25 when I learned there was an issue with my fertility. It seems I do not make enough progesterone, which besides annovulation  (That lack of ovulation) and lack of a menstrual cycle, progesterone deficiency causes a slew of other health problems.

We have used up all of our savings on procedures and treatments, spent all of our hope, depleted my self esteem, and barrowed much from my sanity seemingly without the ability to pay it back.

My Viking seems unfazed. I, on the other hand, feel like crap. I feel like it would be easier for him to ask me to draw water from an empty well, catch a rainbow or spin straw into gold. 

Recently we have tried another round of Clomid before going to see a fertility clinic in Portland. We started with 50mg of Clomid which must be taken at veryspecific times during your cycle.  This can be tough for someone who has PCOS and Estrogen Dominance  because your cycle is not regular at all and you can ovulate late. None the less, I read everything I could get my hands on about charting and timing sex and Basal Temperatures. I had charts and graphs everywhere. I looked like I was studying global warming. 

The first round really felt like it worked.  I felt the pinch of ovulation in my ovary, had sore boobs and my nipples felt like they were sunburned. The ovulation predictor even said that I had an LH surge which is the hormone that tells your ovaries to release an egg. 

For two weeks I was sick, nauseous, bloated and had a heavy feeling in my uterus. I was soooo sure we were pregnant, we started picking out names:

Malcolm if its a boy after Malcolm Reynolds, a character from the show FireFly.

Amber if it's a girl because everyone is naming their baby Sophia, which is what I always wanted to name my daughter. The Viking doesn't like the other names I picked out such as Aurora, Athena or Anastasia. I wanted her name to have a warm glow to it.

The body can be as cruel as the gods. I waited to test until two days past my expected menstrual cycle, but the test came back negative.  I tested again, straining my eyes for the faintest sign of a double line with no success. I bought a digital test and then debated the true meaning of the word "NOT."

The second month I didn't need progesterone. My period started on it's own after picking up Metformin again which is pretty normal.  I took another 50mg of Clomid on the 5th day of my cycle everyday for 5 days just like instructed. This time I felt nothing. No sore boobs, no sickness- I felt nothing but a deep lingering depression.  Depression is nothing new to me, especially when dealing with infertility, but ending my life? That's not me at all. I looooooove life. I am happy...what was happening to me? This depression made friends with anxiety which clung to me like sweat and was as suffocating as smoke.

Thoughts of ending my life would hit me unexpectedly and as I increased the Clomid dose from 50mg to 100mg the feelings became so intense I was afraid to be left alone. I would sometimes crawl into my Vikings lap shaking with fear. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it's not. I was afraid that I might be over taken by these feelings and really do harm to myself.

My Dr. ordered a HYSTEROSALPINGOGRAM  to make sure there was no blockage etc. which went well and I was told this could increase my chances of getting pregnant for three months just by having the procedure done. I was mid cycle when the procedure was actually done. Since the hospital demanded cash upfront- it took the last of the money I had saved.

After the report said that all systems were clear, My doctor then upped my dose of Clomid to 100mg. Things were really busy for me at work, but I managed to take a little time off on the days my epic charting said that I should. My boobs hurt, my back hurt, I was sick with vomiting and diarrhea  and then there was the pain. My right ovary, which had never hurt before, suddenly made itself known. I couldn't sit, squat, stoop, bend or lay on my right side at all. I knew this had to be a good sign as it was far too early for it to be an entopic pregnancy. I saw my doctor on day 21 so I could have the progesterone withdrawal test to see if I had ovulated and explained to her I was in a ton of pain. She of course had to poke my tender spots and decided I needed an ultrasound. The ultrasound confirmed that I was indeed telling the truth, that ovary was as big as an egg McMuffin and had 13 black holes where it looked like eggs may have ruptured from.

Could it be that I had 13 tiny Vikings making their way to the promised land?

No. None of them implanted and furthermore....the Progesterone test said I had not ovulated at all.

So the next step is 150mg of Clomid and I am scared. Everyday I ask myself when will it be ok to stop? When can I just be happy with the life I have without a baby? I mean I want this, but it is my Viking who wants an heir to his kingdom.  I have always felt like if I can't produce an heir I'll suffer the fate of Ann Boleyn. Not that my Viking is a wife killing tyrant or anything, but he could cast me away. It's a silly thought, but it's how I feel. Like I am just a temporary cast member unless the audience decides they like me and the writers re-write history, Ann has a son and gets to keep her head.  I bet she felt like she was trying to spin straw into gold as well. I bet she sometimes felt that the gods were cruel.

So today I start another 7 days of progesterone to jump start my cycle, which happens nearly right away upon stopping the progesterone, followed by 5 days of 150mg of Clomid. I am scared. Not just that it wont work, but what the next 30 days are going to be like on my psyche. It has taken a great amount of effort these past few months to appear calm and serene outside of the house, as though my waters were as smooth as glass, but only yesterday the glass cracked and a flood of emotion poured out while sitting at my desk. I nearly drowned in it.

I just want to be done with all of this. It's all so embarrassing. All things private are brought to light. Sex doesn't feel like sex anymore. It's lost the magic. Babies make me sad, it's too hard to pray, I am driving my loved ones crazy.

UPDATE*** Day 3 of progesterone and I suffered a blinding migraine for half of the day. I have also gained 11 pounds since last month. :( My cycle should start this Friday 5/3/13 which means that I'll start the 150mg of Clomid on the 8th.  If you're reading this, wish me luck. Send me some baby dust. If you're going through the same thing...hang in there.