i've moved ;)

i have moved my blog to, yes you guessed it, wordpress :)

dakota mentioned that wordpress seemed to offer more options and she kind of wanted us to move over there... and she is a maniac with the metrics, LOVES to pour over them and contemplate our viewers from wide and far - if you are a viewer from wide and far and have not introduced yourself, go on... say hello!

aaaaanyway, i of course went right out and signed up the name of each of our blogs and just this weekend had the inclination to bring mine over. i think she will bring hers over soon. i am a geek this way, all she has to say is - hey, do you think we could make it do (blank) and i am off and running trying to find a way...

soooo, from here on out you can find me at http://wildride42gals.wordpress.com/

update your google reader and come up and see me sometime ;) i will be posting a new post there later tonight... i know, like you don't all have enough to do than to follow me all around blogland.

happenings around here...

1) they said YES to dakota's IVF!! woo hoo! we are gearing up...
ok, it won't look the way it was *supposed* to, dakota's eggs will be fertilized and then frozen instead of snuggled in me right away :(

*because they will not approve ivf for me at this juncture, we can not afford do the transfers to me right now


2) we are taking advantage of my being benched from ivf to medicate me for my infertility (wonky, headstrong, non-schedule following ovulation) and do an IUI this cycle... and i guess we will keep doing IUIs till i hit the 6 *failed* IUI mark [really hoping we don't hit that mark - if we do it will be 11 tries with no babies between us] and then once i am there, they should allow me IVF...

of course we hope to get a BFP doing one of these IUIs and then we hold dakota's embryos for baby #2. if we do NOT get a BFP, we pull embryos out of me to freeze and switch over to dakota's embryos [cause we can, and if we have not had a kid yet, we might as well go back to our original and preferred plan of her bio baby being first.]


3) so, it seems that i am hyper sensitive to every drug (and most plants, and dust, and perfume - well you get the picture) EXCEPT clo*mid. who knew?

NOTHIN' it did not raise my estrodil one drop, it did not make big honkin' follicles and most importantly it did not speed things along, putting me on a predictable ovulation launch pad... as a matter of fact, my follicles look as they always do (which luckily is not so bad i have one that is 11mm and some others on the other side that are smaller and i have a week, maybe more to go before i am close to ovulating. my body completely ignored the clo*mid. i had NO side effects from the clom*id - which again, shocked me immensely being a canary and all, so i am not surprised it didn't work.

i have to go back in to check the follicles on friday (they will NOT be ready, i know my body better than the docs) and then again on monday and possibly there will be an IUI on tues or wednesday (i suspect it will be later). i guess the IUI will look just like if i had done no drugs - fine with me, but a bit of a disappointment for our doc... she really wanted to see my ovaries doing the clo*mid dance. she is a sick woman ;) no, i do realize that one unmedicated average size juicy follicle is not as *good a bet* as several super juicy follicles hopped up on clom*id... this is where the vestiges of my being proud that my body marches to the beat of its own drum start to show... i know that is crazy given that i am paying our RE to make my body do something different namely to make me conceive against the ridiculous odds, and sooner rather than later given my age.

i ask you, do we have to choose between being proud of our bodies and the wonder that they are capable of and believing that our bodies are less than? not able to leap tall buildings, broken, failed, sick? and are waiting for a RE in shining armor to get our kitty out of the damn tree?


4) vacation... we are on vacation and it is the best thing ever!

we have work schedules that would be great for two people who DON'T like each other - think *co-existing* as opposed to *mad about you baby*! soooo, we are in paradise with a whole 8 days of each other's company right here in brooklyn... dakota rocks my world, did i mention that? we have had a couples massage, eaten out many times at great local places, slept in, gotten up early for no reason, had pedicures, discussed baby names, went to doctor's office and DIDN'T worry about how damn long it was taking, had several delicious sexy moments (so far) in bed and out ;) had a day where we went nowhere and did nothing, have had *mad at you* moments and the time to explore and resolve them all without three days of at-odds timing between things, meet the babypants gals - totally delightful in person as well as in blogland... and we have 3 days left, oh vacation!


5) our kitties, yes we still have them ;) are going in next wednesday to get spay/neutered (my dad says you shouldn't call it fixed - the cat is not broken and maybe he wanted to keep his balls ya know. it was hard on my dad in a house full of girls - me, my sister and my mom - when the only other male, the cat, got his balls *removed* poor dad!) that in and of itself would not be all that news worthy except that wednesday may well be the SAME day that i am having my IUI and the weird fertility karma of that is not lost on me ;)


6) maybe it is not asthma? the meds do not work for me - i have tried them all, in various configurations... what DID work was the massage... the woman who did it is very skilled and i talked with her a lot about the breathing problems i have been having and she did some REALLY painful work on my back, in the connective tissue between my ribs and various other places that have multiple muscles connecting and are places where adhesions were clearly formed and on that table, i could breathe fully for the first time in months! it was shocking! it lasted a couple days and is tightened back up at this point. i talked with my doc and we are going to explore the muscular/skeletal possibilities for a bit before we go deeper down the pulmonary diagnostic route... he says that there may be something to this given that the respiratory meds have been so unhelpful. strange! i will keep exploring it all... maybe it is a combination of things, who knows... i do know it is very uncomfortable and sometimes quite painful. i have another session with the massage gal on saturday. thanks to all of you who have given me support on the asthma front. it has helped me not to panic about what is going on and the keep trying to figure it out.

another plan bites the dust... but, wait there is a new one up our sleeves

hi all, it has been a long couple weeks. as dakota said in her last post we have been contemplating our next moves. i saw our RE on wednesday (wow, that was yesterday!) dakota and i talked all night last night about which way to go now.

i went in wednesday because i thought i would do my regular day2 bloods etc cause even though we had no fricken clue what to do next, but hell, doesn't EVERY protocol start with blood and u/s? ...while i was sitting waiting for the blood gal to take my blood i had such a sad gonna cry face on that she said, why don't we have you talk with dr X in case you don't need to be doing bloods (he is the one doc in our practice i don't know and that dakota hates) i said, more pathetically than intended, but i don't even KNOW him! she took another look at me and then asked me which one was my doc and hunted her down (even though she was not supposed to be on bloods and u/s that day) and got me in to see her. i love this blood lady!

my RE and i then got a chance to talk about my denied case and the fact that dakota's case has been in front of the insurance company now for a week+ and they have not said anything yet. the insurance company is waiting for her FSH for this month (even though they have a pile of her #s already). it is possible they will deny her case as well... our RE said she would not be surprised. aaarrrrgh! we have plans to fight that one tooth and nail.

when looking at my case, our RE was so pissed that they said i have *no documentation* of infertility since that was *her diagnosis* in november of 07, that and anovulation and that given my age, they should not be telling me i need to try and fail more times before they allow ivf, that said - they CAN say anything they want and every day the cases are harder and harder to win with the insurance. I enjoyed her rage on our behalf, and always appreciate her grasp of the realities. SO, she hunted down the insurance lady, chatted her up and then called me in to her office again and we looked at alternatives...

we decided that we will *treat* my ovulation problem - i started cl*omid on wednesday (i occasionally have cycles where i miss, and when i do ovulate, it is on no predictable schedule, which being a stubborn ornery gal i kind of took a crazy pride in and insisted on going au natural in my first IUI attempt). our RE thought that this plan would both help my future case (we are treating for infertility/anovulation) and if we shoot for doing an IUI this cycle while we are waiting for dakota's case decision, we might get lucky and get pregnant (which would be great to say the least), and at the very least we are getting me closer to meeting the ivf pre-requirements.

if we get pregnant, we would harvest and freeze dakota's embryos for baby #2 and if we don't get pregnant doing this cycle's IUI, we can re-asses and either do a frozen transfer of dakota's embryo (if she gets approved) or keep doing IUIs till we get me to an approved place.

this might seem like a no-brainer to some of you, but the order of our children (biologically) is something we have considered heavily. there are many reasons that we want dakota's bio-baby to come first *especially* if i am carrying it (largely related to marking our family as coming from both of us) and this shakes that all up. having our family is the most important thing, but it was important for us to talk through and take some time to have our responses to the change. there is so much to say on this i feel like it could be many posts in and of itself.

i worry still that there would be immense disappointment for dakota (i can't even imagine her having resentment), particularly since she started years before me and feels she has *not completed* her duty? task? quest? to produce a child. it pains me so... her pain i find so hard to bear. unlike mine, i can not refuse to feel it.

i mostly know that a new plan is good, it is forward movement...

more as it unfolds,

mulberry

ps - i am so sad in knowing that pufferfish is suffering with a likely ectopic pregnancy.

pufferfish is gonna be puffin' up

yes, pufferfish is pregnant, and now a *married lady*!

i just had to shout it from the hills because i am SO SO SO happy for them both and it gives me hope to keep keeping on...

we are still in the depths of insurance denial hell, full of how will we manage to *pay* for the transfers to me (i was informed yesterday that even the *less expensive* part of the whole shebang costs more than i had imagined) since they won't cover *anything* ivf related for ME. (all of this is, of course, assuming that we can get the evil insurance people to pay for the retrievals from dakota) is there any way to do this and not go into more debt than we already have accumulated in our lives. it almost manages to momentarily push aside the ever loooming, can we can get pregnant at all in the first damn place??

we took a walk to the park last night and sat and talked and cried and loved through our painful moments. the this morning we did it all again, wrapped in our delicious covers... i little less crying and more of the good loving parts ;) i love my sweet sweet dakota.

all this to say that one of our tribe has come out of the dark cave pregnant! yay pufferfish and we, well, we will follow you into the light.

denied... denied... denied... DENIED!!!

i don't know what else to say!

got a call from insurance company today in which they told me that my request for ivf is being denied. i asked *why* and they said that there was no documented case of infertility and there was no documented history of 6 (count them) 6 failed inseminations. mind you, we did not know we needed those things to be the case to get approved.

they said, talk to your doctor to determine plan of action. once we stop crying and fuming, we will do that.

this directly effects the harvesting of my eggs for freezing to use in the future. so at this point we don't know now if this will prove possible.

we are hoping that we will be able to build the kind of case that the insurance company wants when it comes to dakota. unfortunately, she has been through the ringer over the last several years and better meets their desired model of infertility - it breaks our hearts daily.

denied :(

gasping, waiting, oooh-ing

* thanks for the asthma advice and assurance that it will all be ok ;) i am still trying drugs and have not quite found the right combo... am still struggling... i feel a bit better when i lay very low - like i did over the weekend, doesn't work so much in real life. when i do any amount of walking, which i love to do, i get all aggravated again. by the time i got home last night, after a great visit in the park with pufferfish and then a good deal of walking around town, i was exhausted and not feeling quite right. i went to sleep very early and had bad dreams of not being able to breathe all night (i guess cause i was actually having a hard time breathing) they were weird dreams of of thick molasses-like goo-air filling up tubes and wondering if that is the way breathing was supposed to work... scary - i have called my doc this am and am waiting on call back about the next thing to try.


* [warning insurance complaint from person lucky enough to have ivf coverage through a secondary insurance - i feel almost guilty complaining!] we are halfway through the insurance approval/disapproval process... i have been ready to start my ivf cycle for 12 days (have taken 12 birth control pills to keep me in the limbo place before we can really get started). doctor's office has sent the pre-authorization in to my primary insurance and it took them 5 seconds to reject it - we knew they would, but it took several days for them to do it in writing and we had to wait for that to be able to send the request off to my secondary insurance... we finally sent that off on friday. i now wait with baited breath to see if they will approve as they are supposed to or if they find a way to reject it. gives a new meaning to the 2ww.


* dakota's cousin just returned from africa where she adopted (after a very long 2 year process) a beautiful little girl (who looks *amazingly* just like the cousin when she was her age - 18 months) it is soooo exciting and dakota is off work today and on her way over to meet the little one. i am so jealous. there was much oooh-ing and ah-ing over the photos and i want to go meet the little one in person too!

three things that are sucking right now...

1) seems i have asthma... about a month ago i started having this feeling in my chest that i had a lot when i was little... i called it being waterlogged back then. i used to have the feeling mostly when i swam too long in my grandmother's pool or in the ocean. i would also have it on smog alert days (we had a lot of those in the 70s and 80s in SoCal) and sometimes at other times i assumed must be bad smog days. it hurts :(

never thought of it as asthma... even with the cold burning feeling in my throat and chest when i would run as a kid... did i mention that i just decided NOT to run? really, i never run.

ANYWAY, the feeling came crushing in on me about a month ago and when i went to the doc about it, ASTHMA! bet you didn't know that you can have wheeze-free asthma. we are trying to find meds to get it under control, so far a week and a half of stuff that sucks. got some new stuff today to try. working to find solutions that will get me through the crisis and ready to get pregnant, and that will not negatively effect said pregnancy.

2) i am on birth control (to keep me in limbo) until my primary insurance officially rejects my ivf request in writing so that we can pass the request to our secondary insurance that should cover the costs... fingers crossed and crossed again. please please please don't screw us o insurance company! and don't delay tooooo long that we end up in a bad way for this cycle.

3) more about the birth control, the thing is that i am nauseous 24/7 from the pills and have had a migraine 3 or the last 4 days i have been on the pills. i woke with one the other day for the first time ever. i have them with my periods often, but never as bad as the one i had taking these damn pills. did i mention that i am a total canary in a coal mine? if the little pills are screwing with me this much, the shots are gonna kick my ass big time.

these things are sucking, and frightening me a bit too :( tell me i'm gonna be able to pull this getting pregnant thing off, will ya??