A little more waiting

The MRI went well.  I spent a total of 35 minutes listening to a variety of loud techno-like or fire-alarm-like noises.  They put headphones on me so I could listen to elevator music, but I could only hear the music during the few seconds between scans.  I did keep my eyes closed the whole time, except for a brief moment when the tech asked me a question (What county is Omaha in?  No idea...).  It felt like a coffin that was lit up on the inside, but I suppose in a coffin you wouldn't be wearing a head brace to keep your head still.  The "ceiling" was a lot closer to my face than I expected.  I closed my eyes immediately.  :) 

The tech said the radiologist could take up to 48 hours to read it, so I might not get the results until Wednesday at the earliest.  Just a few more days to wait...

MRI scheduled

I'm having the MRI of my head tomorrow morning.   I've had an MRI of my pelvis before, so I know what to expect, but this time my head will be all the way inside the machine.  I'm not claustrophobic that I know of, but I might keep my eyes closed the whole time.  They will have to give me an IV for the contrast, so I'm not looking forward to that.  Since the day last week when I made the appointment, I have pretty much been able to not think about the MRI (and possible results) at all, which is a big blessing.  Thank you, God.  (Before I made the appointment while I was waiting for the insurance company to approve it was another story...tears, worries, etc.)   I appreciate all your prayers.  :)

I doubt I'll get the results any time soon.  I'm guessing after the radiologist reads it, I'll have to wait to hear the results from PPVI.

The plot thickens

Hopefully in the next few days I will be able to have an MRI of my head. They're looking for a brain tumor.

I'm not joking.

It's not as bad as it sounds though. If they find one, the brain tumor should be benign. But still, no one wants a brain tumor.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, Dr. K's nurse called me today. I thought it was strange to see the PPVI number appear on my phone because they rarely call for a cycle review; they prefer e-mail. For my P+7 blood draw, they were going to measure prolactin in addition to the usual progesterone and estradiol. The nurse asked me if I had been fasting for 12 hours prior to the blood draw, which was required for the prolactin. Yes, I was fasting. She asked if I had avoided the other things I was asked to avoid (sex, exercise, and nipple stimulation). Yes, I did avoid those things.

Then she took a deep breath and said my prolactin was elevated. I asked what the value was. She said it was 62. (whoa...my jaw was on the floor...that's not normal...normal range ends around 25) She added that when Dr. K saw that value, she did not believe it. So they double checked that it was my blood and then she had the lab run it again. The second time it was 59.2. That meant it truly was elevated.

The nurse said she'd have to relay my answers to Dr. K and find out what the plan was. She promised to call back tomorrow. I had an e-mail in my inbox within half an hour. I was expecting it to tell me that they had called in a prescription to my pharmacy for a medication to decrease prolactin. There was no new medication mentioned. Instead, there was an attached order to get an MRI of my head. I guess I knew it was a possibility (I didn't know how high the prolactin level had to be before a doctor orders an MRI), but I didn't expect it so soon. When prolactin is elevated, they do an MRI to check if there's a prolactinoma, a benign tumor that produces the extra prolactin.

I was wondering how much of an effect a prolactin level around 60 would have on fertility. Cue Dr. Google. One site I found said that levels in the range of 25-50 "may" decrease overall fertility, and levels in the range of 50-100 "significantly" decrease fertility and may cause irregular cycles. Significantly decreased fertility...wow. In reading that, I actually felt a little optimistic that if we could reduce my prolactin level with medication, we might have a chance at conceiving...if—and that's a big if—the antibiotic can do it's job for a while longer (which is questionable, at best) and if there aren't other things we have yet to discover that need fixing.  Since prolactin can inhibit ovulation, who knows if I have even been ovulating?  My ultrasound series that showed I ovulated was two years ago.  If I'm not ovulating, my body is sure doing a good job at pretending that I do—my mucus, cycle, and hormones are all normal looking.

After I read the e-mail with the MRI order and explained it to DH, this conversation happened:

Me: Whom did you marry?
DH: A walking disaster. But I still love you.

(you need a little humor in this kind of situation) :)

I'm trying not to be nervous, but I'm nervous.  I'll call in the morning to make the appointment for the MRI.

. . .

Friday update:  No MRI for at least a week.  The next openings in the schedule are next Friday.  Plus my insurance has to preauthorize it first.  Now I have to try to not think about it for a week...  :P

Patron saint of 2014

I've been using the saint generator here to choose a patron saint for the past few years.

Last year my patron saint was St. Jude, patron of desperate situations and impossible/lost causes.  I think fixing our IF is getting to be close to lost, so St. Jude seemed an appropriate choice.  I also asked him to pray that DH would find a job, which I knew would be a difficult process.  Neither prayer has been answered yet with a "yes."  I hope a year's worth of prayers from him have some kind of good effect.  I know they weren't in vain.  Maybe both requests are so close to impossible that we need more than a year's worth of prayers from the saint known to make the impossible happen (well, God makes it happen but St. Jude intercedes).

Even though DH has been out of work for more than a year, I am impressed with his attitude, which I think is a major fruit of those prayers.  He's been unemployed for a long stretch before, and he became very pessimistic and angry about the situation.  So far he's in good spirits and is optimistic, even though it's taking longer than he hoped.  The vast majority of the hiring in his field takes places once a year, so most of the time he is just waiting and looking if there are new jobs posted (all of which will be filled in the summer).  I'm still asking begging St. Jude for prayers that DH finds a job this year.

So who is my patron saint for 2014?

(source)

St. Isidore the Farmer

Feast Day:  May 15

Here's the list of things he is patron of:

• against the death of children
• farmers
• laborers
• ranchers
• rural communities
• livestock
• for rain

At first I was like, "Really?  Did this saint generator malfunction?"

I'm not a farmer.  I would need to have children before I could pray that they don't die.

So I looked him up.  His only son died at a young age.  He and his wife were convinced it was God's will that they not have any more children.  The article I found said they lived together "in chastity" the rest of their lives, but I think it meant "in continence" (no intercourse during marriage).  If they lived chastely, they weren't necessarily avoiding all intercourse but could have been using NFP to avoid pregnancy or whatever version of periodic abstinence was popular in the year 1100.  :)

Then it made more sense.  He and his wife were a childless couple for most of their marriage.  His wife is a canonized saint also--St. Mary de la Cabeza.  Yes, I can definitely use the prayers of someone who knows what it's like to live without children (even if they chose it and I didn't).  Hopefully he doesn't mind praying that we could have children, but if he wants to pray for us to find peace living without children, that would be welcome too.

St. Isidore the Farmer, pray for us!

"To ensure that the saints pray and intercede for us, we must invoke them and ask their help. The best way to celebrate their feasts is to realize the power they have with God for obtaining the graces of which we stand in need. Our Lord is so pleased when we profit from the intercession of the saints that, wishing to bestow on us some favor, He often inspires us to seek their mediation and invites us to ask them to pray for us. With full confidence we should seek their help and turn to them, especially on their feast days, without doubting for a moment that they will listen to us and will obtain for us what we are asking." ~St. Francis de Sales

Still here, still IF

That just about sums it up.  Read on if you want the slightly boring medical details.

1.  We're still fighting the TEBB.  I think we're losing.  After the three-week course of antibiotics took it away for one cycle, it came back the following cycle for five days.  Then we started taking the antibiotics every cycle from CD1-CD10.  The first cycle had two days of a tiny bit of TEBB.  The second cycle had three days (again a tiny bit).  The third cycle had one day of TEBB.  I wonder if maybe acupuncture helped?  The fourth cycle had two days.  This cycle (#5) had three days.  Dr. K told me to start turmeric to try to combat it.  I'm feeling maxed out in the pill department, so I was happy to find that liquid turmeric exists (and is possibly better absorbed than pill form according to Dr. Google).

2.  (this is just my personal theory) The TEBB isn't just a marker for the infection in my uterus.  The longer it stays around the more likely my endo will return.  My theory is that the infection played a large role in the regrowth of my endo after surgery #1 in 2011.  It's either that or I have some crazy genetics that make me super-predisposed to grow endo at a fast rate.  (Pain during my period returned less than 16 months after surgery #1...and surgery #2 last year showed endo in all new places--no recurrence from the first surgery.)  So I'm thinking that if we lose the battle with the TEBB, it's just a matter of time before the endo returns.

hanging out with a needle in my foot

3.  I was mistaken in thinking the acupuncturist was a physician; he is actually a chiropractor.  I've never been to a chiropractor before, and I didn't know they use the title "Dr."  I get the impression that he is good at what he does, but normally he relies on instant feedback from his patients because their pain goes away (so he knows he did something right).  The only symptom I walked in the door with was infertility, and there's no quick fix for that.  One day he complained to me that I don't praise him for what he does.  I told him he will get no praise from me unless I get pregnant.  I mean, what he does he expect me to say?  "Wow, the way you stuck that needle in my foot was great!"  Seriously.  (rolling my eyes here)  He did tell me on another occasion, "I WILL get you pregnant."  I don't know if he's confident or crazy or maybe a combination of the two.  Besides the acupuncture he ordered some blood tests (blood count, chem panel, etc.) to see if he could figure out anything else that's wrong.  A bunch of the labs were not in the normal range, but he really couldn't explain to me what they meant, other than I need to eat more protein and my vitamin D is still really low (39--at least it's better than it used to be...).  During each appointment he poked me with 2-3 needles and checked muscle strength in different places.  I ended up going every week or two for two months.  During my last appointment before Christmas, he had a neurologist with him for the day.  The neurologist found some (little?) things that were abnormal, like an intention tremor--my hand shakes a little when I reach for something far from me.  They shooed me out of the room so they could talk about me before I could ask what anything meant.  He promised to call me to tell me what the neurologist found, but he never did.  He closed the office for a couple weeks before Christmas and then I was out of town until after New Year's.  When I got home, I kept putting off making another appointment.  If there was another acupuncturist in town, I would switch in a heartbeat, but there's not.  He just rubs me the wrong way.  I'll probably go back to see if it improves my TEBB, but I don't think I'll last very long.

4.  Dr. K rechecked my thyroid labs.  My free T4 was low, so she increased my Synthroid dose.  I don't really have symptoms of low thyroid, so it's basically just treating my lab numbers.  When I started Synthroid, it was also just for my lab numbers.  Apparently it's common, according to the PPVI nurse I spoke to, that after a patient takes T3 for while, her T4 drops requiring the addition of Synthroid.  I had heard other patients on T3 say that this had happened to them as well.

5.  I learned that a certain well-known NFP-only physician of another method (not Creighton) treats any prolactin level that is above 10 in infertility patients.  My prolactin was 23 when it was last measured in 2010.  I asked Dr. K what she thinks about this and if a slightly elevated prolactin could affect fertility even if I have regular cycles (around 28 days).  Usually elevated prolactin would make cycles longer, but I don't have long cycles.  She's rechecking my prolactin this cycle, so we'll see in a week or so during my cycle review what she says about it.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

I decided to dip a toe back in the blogging waters on the feast day of my favorite saints.  Their story has inspired me since I first heard it back in college.

I took this picture at the Basilica of the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in
Washington DC.

St. Perpetua was a 22-year-old noble woman with an infant still breastfeeding.  St. Felicity was her slave and was eight months pregnant.  They lived in Carthage (northern Africa) during a time when it was illegal to be a Christian according to Roman law.  They were imprisoned with a few others and sentenced to death because the authorities found out that they were Christians.  Perpetua was able to still breastfeed her baby while in jail because the guards accepted bribes and allowed her baby to be brought to the prison periodically.  She prayed that the baby would wean before she died.  Felicity prayed that she would deliver her baby prematurely so she could die with her friends and not alone. (Rome thought the unborn were sacred, so they would not kill a pregnant woman.)  Both prayers were answered.  A couple days before the scheduled execution, Felicity went into labor and delivered a daughter who was adopted by a Christian woman.  Both died as martyrs in an amphitheater.  Perpetua's last words to her fellow Christians were: "Stand fast in the faith and love one another."

Even though they were both mothers, I think they are still great examples for (infertile) me.  They put their love of God and desire to live the truth of their faith above all else--above a comfortable life and above their children.  For me, it's a reminder to put God before my desire for children and let Him satisfy me, as difficult as that is sometimes when the sorrow over our infertility is great.

Stayed tuned for some more blog updates (hopefully) soon.  :)

Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, pray for us!

P.S.  I have been working on DH for years to convince him that Perpetua is an excellent choice for a girl's middle name.  No luck so far.  I guess I might have a lot of time yet to do so...if, God-willing, we ever have a daughter...  No progress in that area, though.  :(