I haven’t been so good with the blogging lately, have I? It’s not that I haven’t had things to write about. Maybe I have too many things to write about and not enough time or mental energy… I’ve been thinking about posting with medical updates (boring?) or updates on my crazy food intolerances (too overwhelming to think about), or how I’m excited we planned a spontaneous awesome trip last minute, and we’re leaving Saturday for Europe despite me not being all better and not being able to eat most things (there, I just blogged it, done. jk). I’ve wanted to blog about how infertility and endometriosis gave me medical PTSD and have made me feel like I’m inherently broken. And I’ve been wanting to blog about how adoption is not (or is, but mostly is not) the same as having biological children, but why I’m thinking about it anyway. Agh, where to start? (feel free to vote for future posts, if that suits you!)
Ok, happy stuff first. We had a dream vacation idea for our 10th wedding anniversary this summer: hike the 100 mile tour du Mont Blanc trail in Switzerland, France, and Italy (over 10-11 days, staying in B&Bs and pensions). If you don’t know what this is, type in ‘tour du Mont Blanc’ into google and click over to the images to cry at how beautiful it is (you can do this even if you do know what it is). We started training for it in January (we’ve never done anything this intense before), and then our plan was totally derailed by me getting sick and staying sick starting in March. We wanted to do in early July so we could see my family afterwards who were getting together for a little reunion nearby in July. But I was sick so we didn’t book the trip, and we postponed it thinking maybe we could still do it in August if I started feeling better. This back-up plan was starting to look suspect too (since I am still nowhere near well enough to do something like that, and maybe I never will be), and I was feeling pretty depressed about health issues and medical crap taking over my life, and daydreaming of booking a last-minute flight to see my family in Europe despite being sick. And then … a bunch of things came together making the trip actually logistically possible, and I decided I wasn’t going to let all the medical crap take over my life and make me miss out on seeing my family all together, which was really important to me. And, not only are we going to see my family, but we are going to spend 3 days in the Mont Blanc region basking in the beauty and/or doing day hikes (depending on what I am able to do), and we are taking a 2 day road trip sightseeing the Black Forest region of Germany. Europe, here we come!
Hmm, maybe I should have saved that for last because everything else will be such a downer after that. I suppose I should just summarize the medical situation. I still have the positional vertigo, but it’s getting better. It’s no longer like being on a boat constantly, only occasionally, and the blurry vision is improving. I now have a referral to see a vestibular rehabilitation physical therapist which is supposed to help. The kidneys seem to be ok, and no more side/back pain. The sciatica seems to be slowly improving: I’ve had a couple of days without shooting pains in my foot, but my hip is still sore a lot of the time and I feel like I have a subtle limp that is driving me crazy, I don’t know how to stop it, and I’m worried it means I will soon injure it again soon as soon as I do anything strenuous. I have a referral to see an allergist (who is not going to help me – yes, I am that optimistic. But, I have good reason since I already went to an allergist two years ago for related food problems and he told me he can’t help me – thanks a lot. I won’t give up so easy this time, but I’m not expecting much, and my primary physician wants me to see them, so I will. But then I will just come back and tell him what I already told him, that they won’t help me, and send me to someone else already) to discuss the possibility of histamine intolerance, which I waited six weeks for, and then they canceled it on me today and rescheduled for fucking August 18th.
They are so unbelievable, I don’t even want to think about this anymore. Except that I have to think about it ALL THE TIME, because I am so screwed up that I have to deal with tons of appointments, and referrals, and specialists, and lab tests, and cancelations, and it actually is taking over my life even though the doctors are not doing anything to help me! I don’t know how people who are really sick deal with all this crap – I can easily see this becoming a full time job, and I’m not even that sick, really. In addition to three scheduled appointments this week (one of which was canceled, but that certainly doesn’t take away time I’ve spent dealing with it), to which I have to travel 3 hours each way since I’m living with M this year , I had a surprise visit to urgent care over the weekend because I had one of my lovely endometriosis periods, which had me moaning in pain, sweating and vomiting. Several hours and a painful intramuscular pain injection (a new one for me!) later, I was ok, asleep in fact. Anyway, if my writing about this seems somewhat less coherent than usual it’s because my experience of it is a totally incoherent, panicked, and overwhelmed blur. I have no clarity about this, just lots of very negative feelings. Since the doctors don’t actually do anything that helps me, I’ve been very tempted to just try to forget about them and try to live my life and take care of myself on my own. But, I still hold out hope that they will finally discover what’s really wrong with me and help me, and they certainly can’t do that if I never see them. The other reason I am putting myself through all this is because I am applying for an extension on my tenure clock for all this medical crap, and I have to see the doctors to get letters from them and to create a record of everything in order to have documentation for my application. This means I’m also actively working on coordinating with my university about obtaining all this documentation for their records. Fun times, I tell you, fun times. Let’s just say that the vacation is more than a vacation, it’s an escape from the medical monster that has been wreaking major havoc on my mental health for the last few months. I will have 10 days where I get to pretend that this is not my reality. Can’t wait.
In Fertility Limbo 