burnt toast life

mama called the doctor and the doctor said…

Yesterday my friends and I planned a day at the beach to celebrate one friend who turned 29 on July 1st and one who turns 29 today. The weather ended up being absolutely horrific – I’m talking a downpour on the way there, overcast and freezing when we got there and gloomy all around. But we did have a lovely time just hanging out all together and even sat our butts on the gray and cloudy beach for a whole hour before the skies really opened up (and we thanked our lucky stars for the existence of beach tents and umbrellas). The day was pretty terrific except for one little thing – my throat hurt. A persistent tickle started midway through the day and progressed into full-on sore throat as time went on. I was, understandably, freaking out. Did corn syrup somehow sneak into my food?

My only stray from bottled water was when I stopped for coffee at Dunkin Donuts. I ordered an iced decaf with milk and Splenda (that’s what I always drink), but maybe they used creamer? Or something else evil? Usually creamer doesn’t even have corn syrup, plus I ordered milk, but I can’t think of any other explanation. Something I ate or drank was an epic fail.

I tried my damnedest not to worry about it too much and just enjoy my day. By that point it was too late to do anything anyway. I got home in the early evening and settled in to watch two glorious hours of The Bachelorette. I was home alone (Eric was off on a road trip buying a truck from a coworker) when all of the sudden I felt a “whoosh!” down below. Don’t panic, I thought. Until I went to the bathroom and checked. Bright red blood. Bright freaking red.

I bled for a minute, tops. I’d estimate it was no more than a teaspoon, and it stopped as mysteriously as it started. I walked carefully back to the couch, sat down in a daze and started calling everyone who could offer any words of wisdom. Eric said it’s totally normal and I should calm down because stress makes it worse (uh, yeah). My sister said she bled for hours like a period while pregnant with her son. My mom bled with my brother. I started to feel marginally better, but was still on edge. Between the corn syrup scare and the bleeding, July 1st was not a very good omen.

I woke up with an incredibly stuffy nose and a less sore but still not back to normal throat. I didn’t bleed all night (trust me, all I could imagine was waking up to sheets soaked in blood). I went to work since sitting home would only make me more stressed. I called the OB/GYN first thing in the morning and was half hoping they would say, “No big deal, don’t worry about it.” Part of me was terrified to wait until Monday to do an ultrasound after yesterday, but another part was worried that them bringing me in signaled a reason to worry. Probably because of my history, they did request that I come in for a scan. So I got a surprise ultrasound this afternoon.

I was a bundle of nerves in the morning but as the day progressed I calmed down significantly. Everyone kept telling me to relax and I kept trying to relax but I know how wrong these things can go. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I kept trying to logically think why there would be blood. I mean, there shouldn’t be blood, right? Why would I bleed? Last time I was spotting post-intercourse but it was traced to that specific event, plus it was light pink and non-threatening. This blood was so red it practically glowed. AND the nurse asked me that – what color was it, did you have intercourse prior. So I assumed them forcing me to come in had to do with the fact that neither of my answers were acceptable.

I had to wait until 3 for the appointment. I won’t beat around the bush: there is one baby and one THANK GOD I CAN SEE THAT LITTLE FLICKER heartbeat. There is also, somewhat alarmingly, a large gray mass in there which the tech had a few suggestions for. She said it could be super fattened up lining from the PIO shots, it could be subchorionic bleeding (basically, blood clots in the uterus that are usually benign but can cause some bleeding) OR it could be the other embryo that attempted to attach and did not develop properly. No matter what, there was a 6 week 1 day little bean in there looking just fine.

There was a huge sense of relief in seeing that heartbeat and in the nonchalant way everyone talks about first trimester spotting. Really no big deal. But then as I was standing at the reception desk scheduling my next appointment, I started bleeding again. And, well, I’m still bleeding right now (3 hours later). It’s kind of on and off but it’s definitely more than a teaspoon this time. The only thing keeping me from absolutely losing my mind is that I know her poking around in there with the ultrasound wand probably disturbed Weird Gray Mass AND that three hours ago, one of my babies was doing just fine. But damn. Can the flow just stop now so I can stop worrying for half a second?

The tech said that New Hope should be able to determine what Weird Gray Mass is at my next appointment or the one after as things develop further. In the meantime I’m laying on the couch like it’s my job and wishing like hell that I had a backup supply of maxi pads, but I figured keeping them in the house would “jinx it,” so I literally have none.

And in case anyone was keeping track, this is all right in line with what the psychic said. My friend said earlier that my gender reveal party will be the most underwhelming thing ever since clearly I’m having a girl in February. Honestly, that’s one of the few things keeping me from curling up into a ball and sobbing at how much a jerk my uterus is, messing with my mind like this.

That’s all, folks. A healthy dose of drama as we march on towards Monday.

can we please talk about something else?

First of all, I got the results of my allergy test back today. “You do not have food allergies,” said the nurse, in what I consider an accusatory tone.

What. the. hell.

I know I’m allergic to corn syrup. I KNOW IT. Even when I’m not pregnant, I can feel the effects of it minutes after drinking it. A coating forms down the length of my throat. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not life threatening. Pregnancy made it practically unbearable, causing me to lose my voice for days and feel like I was in the throes of the worst case of strep throat ever. Don’t tell me I don’t have a corn allergy when my body clearly disagrees.

I have an appointment with my PCP on Wednesday at his insistence, probably because I keep ordering all these random tests and he hasn’t seem my face in years. He’s a nice enough guy but I don’t really trust him to believe my crazy theory, especially with the results of the immunocap. Then again, do I need him to believe me? I’m the one in charge of my diet and nutrition here.

My pal Google revealed a fertility immunologist in Manhattan who specializes in recurrent miscarriages and immune system disorders. I guess I’m not technically “recurrent” even though I did lose two at once, but it’s somehow comforting to know this guy is out there. So if it does happen again, I have somewhere to turn.

I finally went back to work today. It was weird showering in the morning and putting on makeup. I literally haven’t blow dried my hair in over a week. I only cried once at work – when my friend/coworker came over with tears glistening in her eyes and gave me a huge hug. Hence the, “Can we please talk about something else?” title post. I’m absolutely fine if I keep trudging along and avoid thinking about it. Repression and aversion are my tactics for surviving the day.

The one thing I keep doing is noticing things in a “before” and “after” light. Like, I’ll find a receipt for gas and think, “When I pumped this gas I was pregnant.” Today I got to work and thought, “The last time I sat at this spot I was blissfully unaware and still pregnant.” I can’t help but notice that today would have been my graduation day from New Hope if there would have been heartbeats last week. I would have been released to my regular OB and would never have to go back to NYC for fertility related issues again. I think today will be the last of these faux-anniversaries, though. I’m actually grateful that I was never given a real due date, so I can’t fixate on that. I deleted the pregnancy tracker app from my phone without opening it.

Ugh, I am so impatient. First of all, it’s only Monday and I want to be on the beach right now. Second – and so much more importantly – I want to be pregnant again. It’s so frustrating to be bleeding. It was such a slap in the face to go the grocery store and buy freaking sanitary napkins (what am I, 12 years old again?). I was supposed to have babies this year. 2013. Now, if I’m lucky, I’ll have one at the beginning or even the middle of next year. I know, I’m lucky to have this chance at all. I’m lucky to be able to get pregnant so easily (“So easily” = when doctors inject pre-fertilized embryos directly into my uterus). But I can’t decide – is it better to get pregnant and lose the baby or never get pregnant at all? What a morbid either/or. Ew. I can’t believe I even just thought that, let alone wrote it down.

Oh, and as a final aside to the male coworker who thought it appropriate to include me on an email entitled “Look at pictures of my baby!!!!!!” (full well knowing my situation as he was included on my sad update last week): seriously? A little sensitivity never hurt anyone. Sheesh.

a hypothesis and a plan

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I pre-write a lot of my posts. Yesterday I was so fired up I wrote two posts – one for immediate release and one for today. I’ve been doing this for a while now. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn’t. Like tonight. Last night I spent two hours drafting and rewriting this (hopefully) eloquent post about strength and had every intention of posting it today, but now instead I have other things to say. Tragedy is a great catalyst for posting.

Today… well, a lot of today was all right and then parts of it were a train wreck. Let’s see… I had to wait until 3:30 for my follow up appointment at the OB/GYN. As expected, there were still no heartbeats. This pregnancy is officially over (yes, of course there was still the tiniest glimmer of hope that the doppler yesterday was broken. That’s why it’s positively inhumane that they made me wait until 3:30).

My doctor – and my mother, who I am beyond grateful attended – both talked me into the D&C. For one, it’s guaranteed – I won’t have to wait days or months for my body to do it’s thing. For another, the bleeding will be moderate, not catastrophic. And probably the most compelling reason is that we can send the tissue out for testing and make sure everything was genetically normal.

After the appointment, my mother said, “I sure could use a drink, how about you?” We went around the corner to the TGIFriday’s and got some apps and cocktails. We formed a plan. We talked. You know what I learned? I’ve been incredibly misinformed about her miscarriages. Please disregard everything I’ve ever said about diet pills linked to loss in my family. It was the diet pills – or rather, the high caffeine content in them – that kept her from getting pregnant at all. Her seven miscarriages all came from… ready for this one…immune system issues. At least, that’s what she thinks. My mother has moderate to severe food allergies that were all exacerbated during pregnancy. Not only did she lose most of them at 8 weeks, but she also heard a heartbeat before each seemingly inexplicable loss. She went to specialists and no one could figure it out. The difference in her case is that she had three healthy pregnancies before this started, which she admitted makes it a bit easier to deal with. For some reason her body just started attacking the growing embryos based on the foods she was eating. She carried my sister Allie to term after she restricted her diet and stopped eating the food that was giving her trouble.

So does any of this sound familiar? Um, yeah, just a little. Remember that one of my first symptoms was this ridiculous reaction to high fructose corn syrup. I thought it was cute, but never in a million years did I think it would lead to this. I kept on eating it because the reactions got less intense, especially to solid food form, and because it was Easter and there was lots of candy around. I could sit here and blame myself for not heeding warnings all day long. But who does this happen to? Who? Who loses a pregnancy from freaking food allergies?

I’ve been doing some research and there are numerous links between gluten and miscarriage, but none that I can find about corn syrup. Again, I guess I’m just weird. And of course this is all a theory… until I get the results of the testing. If it comes back normal, which it always did for my mother, then I just think I might be on to something here. It feels so much better to have this theory than it does to just say, “What the hell, this shouldn’t have happened.” I trust genetics. I also believe that the food we eat has massive implications on our health that we cannot fully comprehend. I’m not some high and mighty farm-to-table only nutjob. I’m just a girl who has a strong suspicion that food allergies caused her body to attack healthy embryos. And you know what I can control? My diet.

My plan for now is to eat like shit for a week, drink like a sailor when I feel like it and then go to Cayman and do the same, but tenfold. When I get back I’m going all Paleo. I figure this will take care of corn, dairy, gluten, preservatives and whatever else may be lurking in there. I’m going to request a full allergy panel from my doctor this week but no matter what the results say, I think Paleo is the safest course of action. I would (obviously) do anything to help my chances of not having this happen again. Calming down my immune system seems like a safe bet. And if I somehow manage to drop a few pounds in the process? Well, that’s just an added bonus.

This is nothing at all like the post I planned for tonight. I’m all off in allergy-ville when I wanted to talk about how resilient I was feeling. Maybe I’ll post that one tomorrow.

So my friends and I had planned to meet at happy hour tonight and I’ll be damned if I was going to cancel. My appointment ran a little long since I was bombarding the doctor with questions, and then we went for the apps and by the time we were done it was 5:15. I was supposed to meet up with them 20 minutes away at 5:30. Seeing that I was wearing yoga pants and a plain tee, I convinced my mom to switch outfits with me in the bathroom, pulled my hair into a top knot and left straight from there to go to happy hour. In the course of my travels I somehow dropped my phone under my seat to some unreachable realm, got on the highway going the wrong direction, tried to call my friend using voice command only to get the automated voice to say “POUND! STAR STAR!” and got caught in the turn only lane during rush hour. I am ashamed to admit that I did yell, “Let me in asshole, there are dead babies inside of me!” but thankfully the windows were up. I made it to happy hour – makeup-free, greasy, sweating and wearing my mother’s dress – 15 minutes late. I should note that there is an Old Navy right next to the bar and my original plan was to drink water, then go over and hunt for clearance maternity wear. Instead I used that $20 to buy vodka as I tried to ignore the pregnant person in attendance. It felt weird to drink.

I’ll leave you all with something my mom said. It was actually quite familiar. I have a coworker who is in her 30s and who was just diagnosed with breast cancer. She got the testing and eventual treatment because her mother passed away from it, otherwise she would have had no reason to do the tests. She says that her mother died to save her life. It’s terribly sad, but it does make sense. Today my mom said, “Maybe I suffered all those misses just so I could figure out what’s wrong and tell you.” Again – tragic, but maybe true. She never knew why it kept happening, but she had a good guess. Now today, with the same thing happening to me it seems like it was meant to happen this way. I have a possible cause and solution. Right now, there’s really not more I can ask for.