Today I am feel­ing … sad.

I shouldn’t be. It’s my day off from work and I’ve only got two more days until another week­end. It’s my Mom’s birth­day, and although she & Dad are in Aruba for a week of fun, I’m wish­ing that she’s hav­ing a won­der­ful sand n’ sun kinda day. And it’s bright as bright can be here in Sub­ur­ban Detroit.

But it’s cold … really cold right now. And maybe that’s what I’m miss­ing today. Is warmth. I want to be back in bed in my cozy paja­mas snug­gling with both my cats on either side of me. I want a steam­ing hot cup of cocoa with marsh­mal­lows to sip on. I want to flip ran­domly through the tele­vi­sion and finally set­tle on turn­ing it off and read­ing a good happy book.

Instead I’m sit­ting here at a local café, which nor­mally I like to do, and freez­ing my tush off. And con­tem­plat­ing my life.

I just got back from my OB/​Gyn office and I guess I’m feel­ing a lit­tle over­sen­si­tive. The rea­son I went today was to have an ultra­sound. I had made an appoint­ment to see my doc last week, in the midst of yet another painful period, which have been increas­ing in inten­sity over the past year. The ultra­sound sched­uled today was to see whether or not my endometrio­sis was back. And truth­fully, even with­out hav­ing my doc review the images, I pretty much know that it is.

I know I haven’t gone into detail about my infer­til­ity past. I do that pur­pose­fully, because quite frankly I hate reliv­ing that point of my life. But the basic jist is that I’ve had mul­ti­ple scopes and even a laparo­tomy to clear out some pretty bad endo … only to find out that in the midst of my IVF work-​​up that I also had PCOS. So not only am I in pain pretty much with every cycle, but my hor­mones are seri­ously whacked-​​up. (Why do I have the urge to cross my arms like Rev. Run from Run DMC and say “Word!”?) And after the failed IVF and sub­se­quent deci­sion NOT to go through a frozen cycle with only one embie, I just drifted into a haze until that fate­ful day in Novem­ber of 2006.

I know I’m a much bet­ter per­son emo­tion­ally now, espe­cially since start­ing to blog about these issues. And I know that I’ve taken that small baby step for­ward towards the adop­tion front.

But yet …

Is it nor­mal to still feel like a fail­ure? That after ten years my body is still refus­ing to do what it’s told? I cycle every month now … every 27 days like clock­work. And every month it’s a con­stant reminder that this body refuses to become preg­nant. And to top it off, it’s not just a phys­i­cal reminder … it’s very much a painful “Geez, I can’t even think straight, let alone stand up straight or lie down with­out feel­ing the cramps”- kinda reminder.

I find out the actual results two weeks from now. And from there, it’s a deci­sion of whether or not I’ll be treated med­ically or sur­gi­cally. My doc does not want to start out sur­gi­cally to clear out the endo, as there is always the risk of cre­at­ing adhe­sions (or scarring).

What he would like to do is either put me on Lupron for a period of time, or place me on birth con­trol pills. And I’m hes­i­tant to do either. If you can believe this, dur­ing my whole “repro­duc­tive life,” I have never been on the pill. And quite hon­estly, I don’t feel like start­ing on it now … some 25 years after hav­ing my first period. As for Lupron, I hate what it did to me the first time around. While I don’t think I was a rav­ing lunatic dur­ing those six months, I do think I was emo­tion­ally detached from every­thing and every­one (includ­ing Hubby) around me.

There’s a part of me that thinks, “Just take the damn things out already!” I mean, they’re not doing the job they’re sup­posed to be doing any­way. I’m just about at the point where I don’t want to have to deal with the pain any­more, both phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. I don’t want to have to be reminded every month that I can’t get preg­nant. I want to say that I’ve been able to close that chap­ter in my life – and by hav­ing my repro­duc­tive organs removed, it would cer­tainly make that final. I would never be able to get preg­nant and I would never have to think “what if …”

But then …

I guess it boils down to the fact that I know I prob­a­bly don’t have a chance in H-​​E-​​double-​​hockey-​​sticks, but I still want to know I have the option to become preg­nant. After all, my Aunt who tried for many years to get preg­nant finally had her dream come true nat­u­rally some 20 years after get­ting mar­ried. And by that time­line, I’m more than half-​​way there.

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