Post-Op Rundown

Well, let's start with the fact that Monkey is doing great. Everything on his end went perfectly. Our household ran like precision clockwork getting him prepped and deposited in the care of the pre-op team. We even managed to get them to let both Author and myself in the pre-op room. Monkey was dosed to high heaven on Versed (a sedative) to get him to relax a bit in prep. I've been on one dose before my polyp removal and I was quite relaxed. Monkey, who is much smaller than me, took three doses! He was rather tense. Then they wheeled him away to the OR and Author and I turned back to wait.

Not three steps past the waiting room door I burst into tears. I'm rather proud of myself for lasting that long. Author and I went to sit with family to wait the predicted two hours. And then it was two hours...no word. Two and a half hours...nothing. Three hours and Author and I are fidgeting and staring intently at the beeper the receptionist gave us. Him and I both are telling each other "it is just an estimated time" "he was a bit late getting out of pre-op anyway" and so on. We are watching minutes by now and at 3hrs and ten minutes our buzzer goes off and we dash to the desk. The receptionist tells us that they are closing Monkey up and ushers us into a "consult" room. 

If you've ever had bad news at a hospital you will know about the consult rooms. Bad news isn't the only reason for them. Patient privacy is the primary use for them but you can't help but panic a little when you don't expect to be sent to one. It is a closet-like room with a few chairs, a phone on an end-table and a door. Nothing else. Seriously, not even a coat hook. Author, sheet-white and stone-faced, and me, tears already streaming, shuffle into the tiny room clutching hands. Horrible complications are running through our heads but we don't talk about them. What a terrified pair we must have looked like. Dr. M pops in, takes one look at us while shutting the door, and quickly says "He is doing great." Turns out that Monkey also has some endometriosis messing about and Dr M decided to remove as much as he could find to prevent any future issues. That is what took a little longer. I thought Author was going to pass out from relief....or maybe that was me. That last hour of waiting and the 10 minutes waiting in the consult room was one of the worse experience in my life. I hope I won't be repeating it any time soon.

Wrapping up Monkey's surgery, there was one night spent at the hospital then the released him back home. It is now five days since the surgery and he is already decreasing pain medication and walking around often. Another couple days and he will be ready to go out for a cup of tea or something. The healing is going faster than any of us could have hoped for. 

I am so glad this is behind us!

Preparing for the waiting room.

Monkey is having surgery this Saturday.

I believe I've mentioned it before but I'll give a quick background just in case. Monkey has been dealing with some serious menstrual issues for over a year. A few months ago we found out it was all due to a rather large fibroid making his uterus go wonky. His Doc decided that getting a complete hysterectomy (that is just the uterus and cervix but not the ovaries) was the best option for him. Monkey was thrilled. He hated having a period and the fibroid was making it 10 times worse. I was happy for him. He had a solution to his problems and he wouldn't be bothered with monthly bleeding anymore.

Surgery day is fast approaching and, though I know this is a common operation, it is still major. I've been with Monkey for nearing 13 years and this is the first surgery we have experienced. Monkey is a surgery superstar. He had several surgeries as a kid and young adult. Some of them were pretty big deals. But they were all before I met him. I've never had to sit in a room holding his wedding ring waiting for some one to tell me he made it through fine. I am terrified. I know it is a very small chance that anything could go wrong. I know the statistics. The surgeon is actually the one who did my polyp removal so I know how kind and careful he is. Still, they will wheel away the love of my life, put him under, and cut things out of him. And I can't do anything but wait. I am scared to bits of losing him, no matter how astronomically rare the chance of that happening is.

My brain knows it will be okay. My brain is in control of being sure that I have what I need (Xanax, knitting, tissues), that Monkey has what he needs (distractions) and that everything goes smoothly. My brain knows that it will be a heart-thumping couple hours and a few weeks of careful recovery and then our world will go back to normal.

What is in a name?

Today Monkey changed his name. He changed his first name to what just about everyone calls him. He also changed his last name and, in doing that, changed my name as well.

First, a little back story. Monkey's paternal grandparents were immigrants with a very obviously Polish-Jewish name. His grandmother was having a seriously difficult time finding a job and suspected it was due to antisemitism. She chose to shift her married name, and her children's names, to something not so conspicuous. She found a job shortly after. Who knows it the name change actually worked but I know that this kind of thing was (and still is) very common among immigrants wanting to assimilate to the American culture. However, this assimilation and Americanization of Monkey's family name always bugged him, especially since the rest of the extended family stuck with the original name. When Monkey felt ready to do a legal gender change he decided to tack on changing to the original family name.

Several years ago, I changed my name. My mom had died and my dad had disowned me so I didn't feel very attached to my given name and only used it when I had to give the actual legal name. I chose a new first name and took Monkey's last name, the Americanized one. I knew it was possible that I would have to change my name again. That doesn't bother me. I can't say I won't get a giggle at the confused looks I might get when my extremely Irish looks are matched up with my new, extremely Jewish-Polish name. Funny thing, my given first name is a very Jewish name but my mom had no idea. I use it as my middle name now.

So soon there will be a flurry of activity changing the name everywhere. At least this time I don't need to go through the court order stuff. But that is another post...

Hoping for a bfn?

As the date of my expected period approached I had two wished. One, that it be late so I didn't need to deal with it while camping (it was) and two, that it would definitely arrive (it did). I actually was hoping to not get pregnant.

For the first time in six long years I've truly had enough. I still find myself sad when I hear that yet another one of my old group of friends has had a baby. I still mourn the loss of the experience of pregnancy and parenthood but even with all that I find myself more and more excited to start the life after infertility. A life where I can make plans without wondering if I'll have to cancel them because I'm pregnant or have an infant. A life where I can redirect all that energy back into my (ahem) adult interests. A life where I can put the sex and BDSM toys back on the freakin' walls! The different life that is waiting for me when we stop trying. I am 99.9% sure that I will never get pregnant and I'm finally okay with that. I'm ready to transfer all the energy it takes to ttc (tracking, sperm donor wrangling, inseming, testing) and move it on to other parts of my life.

So what now? Have I given up? Hell if I know. I only got back from my camping trip yesterday and CD 1 is today so I haven't really had time to talk with Monkey about my feelings. I suspect that, no, I am not giving up quite yet. Monkey isn't in the same place as me with this. I'm willing to keep going for awhile for him. At this point I'd be so shocked if we hit that 0.1% chance of pregnancy that it would likely take me a couple months to mourn the loss of the life I imagined without a kid! Ah, what a mind-fuck that would be!

MIA

So, yeah, I've been missing all summer. I've been feeling pretty ambivalent about this blog. There is so much about ttc here. Coming to this blog seems like I must post about trying to get pregnant or infertility and that feels so...burdening. I do post about other things here but, well, after 6 years of ttc dominating my life those other things are few and far between. Blogging is good for me and I want to continue doing it. I just haven't figured out if it is time to retire this blog and start a new one or continue this one with a commitment to write more about the rest of my life? This will take some thinking.

In the meantime, here are some bullet point updates.

• I'm still ttc with our latest known donor through the end of the year. We have put off our last two infertility intervention tries until at least January. I don't plan on continuing ttc after those tries. I often forget when my period is due now because I only pay attention around insem time. I've been emotionally distancing myself from the process with very little effort.
• Monkey is having a hysterectomy in November because of a hefty fibroid that has taken over his uterus. This doesn't really effect our ttc options as Monkey has never been a possibility for so very many other physical and mental health reasons. It does effect timing and this is why we are postponing the IF tries. I can't imagine trying to handle Clo.mid, IUIs and trigger shots while he is preparing, having, and recovering from surgery. Thankfully, the surgeon is confident that it will be laproscopic surgery so recovery time should be only a few weeks. 
• I've spent the summer really trying to accept and embrace a modified life due to my chronic pain conditions. It has changed the way I do things HUGELY. It is still a struggle not to just push through the pain and finish this or that task. I still hate having to pace myself so carefully. I have managed to accept that I must do this or I will end up even more physically disabled than I already am. 
• I've started baking bread weekly to supply the house rather than buying it. (We do have a back up loaf of store-bought bread this week because I've been sick.) I'm really hoping to get a winter veggie garden up and running as well. This is part of embracing homemaking as my career. I feel like there are so few role models for what I'm doing. I'm no June Cleaver and don't want to be. I'm learning to make my own ideal for being the homemaker for my household (with or without kids).

So, that is the highlights. I'll be posting here still until I decide if I need a clean slate blog or if I want to embrace my baby-crazy past and let the current blog evolve with me. 

I'm off to listen to horror fiction podcasts (or maybe some Nine Inch Nails instead) while I dye some sheets black, clean the bathroom and mop floors. (Yeah, definitely NOT June.) 

My hero

My primary partner, Monkey, works in community mental health. He does a very, very difficult job with, sometimes very, ill patients on a very tight budget. He hears horrible stories of abuse and neglect from the histories of many of his clients. Sometimes they take out their pain on him by yelling and threatening him. Sometimes, thankfully rare, he loses clients to suicide or overdose. He goes through this every day at the office. Every day he gets up and goes back again for more. He does it because he loves his job. He cares about these people who no one else are helping. He believes that each client has the ability, with some help, to be stable, happy, sober, whatever. When he worked exclusively in addictions he always believed that if some one blew out of treatment that they would come back and, next time, they would succeed at getting sober. Every. Single. Time. Monkey is one of my heroes. How he manages to have worked in community mental health for the past 12 years and not become jaded and bitter has always amazed me.

He posted on his own blog yesterday about his work. You can read it here. He is an amazing guy, my Monkey. I'm so proud of who he is and the work he does. :)

The real poly experience.

The other day, while driving my family to their respective work places, we experienced a communication cluster fuck. It happens in every relationship but in a poly household they can get even more tangled than in a two person relationship. Thankfully, it was a scheduling confusion rather than anything with much emotional investment but it was a perfect example of real poly household life, made a tad more complex by sharing one car for three adults. It was a very "who is on first" kind of moment. Some of it was from me forgetting to talk about car arrangements then more confusion as the "reply all" button was not hit on an email thread about Monkey's schedule.

Actually, now that I think about it, I was the weak link in this particular cluster fuck. Oops. To redeem myself I did completely change my plans to accommodate my screw up. In the end it worked out better for everyone! I love it when that happens. :)

After it was all worked out Author said, laughing, "This is what people should think about when they think of poly!" We all cracked up. As long time poly people, we had all dealt with the misconception that poly is all about sex, often, with everyone. This little tangled knot of car use, work schedules, grocery shopping and the "reply all" email function is the real daily poly life.

It isn't all about communication issues and scheduling though. It is also about having diverse ways to deal with each other. Like the fact that Author catches me when I slack off from my meditation practice, even when I'm rationalizing it like a pro. Also, he found the perfect motivation to get Monkey back into his workout routine. Monkey has a great eye for world-building inconsistencies and grammar and typos in Author's rough drafts where I am more in tuned with possible character issues. Monkey knows me well enough to step in when I need to readdress my mental health issues and he knows Author well enough to be just the right combo of sympathetic and encouraging when he is freaking out about is writing career. Author and I like to shop for household things and talk about organizational supplies. Monkey and Author like to go to arcades and deconstruct movies. Monkey and I will go to truly crappy movies together and laugh the entire time. We each are something more for each other than any combo of two could ever be. That is the real poly experience.

And the sex is fucking awesome. :)

My brother's latest tragedy.

My little brother, T, found out last week that his dad has stage 4 lung cancer. J, T's dad, had just enough time to get his final arrangements made. Now J is in his final days, under hospice care and doped to near unconsciousness on pain killer to make him more comfortable.

(Background note if you are confused: T and I have the same mom but, obviously, different dads. T is 7 years younger and will always be my "lil bro" but is a grown man nonetheless. My mom and J divorced shortly after T was born so I barely saw J after I was about 8 years old.)

I ache for my brother. This is so sudden and so horrible. It is small consolation that he had a chance to say his goodbyes. It makes me so sad that T will now have lost both his parents before he turns 30 this summer. So young to have only siblings left.

T had worked hard on keeping his relationship with his dad over the last several years. J is a macho man from a very macho culture and his son's homosexuality was not exactly a comfortable subject for him. Though he didn't understand it, J didn't disown my brother or say he was sick/pervert/damned. J loves his son and so related to him the only way he knew how, through a "manly" activity. T loves cars and used that mutual interest to nurture a decent relationship with his dad. J is a good man. I hope his passing is as painless and gentle as possible.

In the midst of this heart-wrenching experience my brother is discovering a deeper level in his relationship with his boyfriend. Despite his romantic nature, my brother guards his heart well and has had few serious relationships. I was happy when, last fall, he said he was falling in love. This relationship is less than a year old but they both have been falling in love fast despite living about 8 hour drive from each other. The news of T's father came just a few days before their first real vacation together. T had to cancel. The bf was supposed to visit family back East right now. Instead, he surprised by brother by flying to him to spend the next few days. This tells me more about bf's seriousness and love for T than anything I've heard so far. :) Bf is there for my brother in his tragic times. This means a lot to T. It means a lot to me as T's very protective sister as well.

I had hoped to go to J's funeral but, complexities of ex-step-family relationships (and a tight pocketbook,) have changed my mind. I plan on sending flowers and a donation to the American Cancer Society in memory of J.