A "graphic" weekend, get it? Proceed with caution.

DH and I headed to my parents' for father's day with the dogs. They live in a cabin in the beautiful woods near the beautiful ocean and we were staying for the whole weekend. Nice right? On our way to the cabin we stopped to let the dogs out of the car to do their thing and get some water and stretch our legs. We found a quarter mile trail out into a marsh and thought - perfect. We'll take a 15 minute break and get back on the road. As we walked from the road onto this trail I felt like I was passing through the wardrobe into Narnia or something. It was like a majestic wonderland of tall grasses, colorful wildflowers, blue skies...everything was bigger than life, purely natural and beautiful, and in stark contrast to most of our drive and civilization in general. The worrier in me started to think about ticks. I seriously pondered whether the walk was a good idea, given the tall grasses. But we'd hiked these foothills countless times before without ever seeing a tick (note: we had never tried this particular trail - if you can call it a trail at .25 mi). I had started to think this area was just not a place ticks liked for whatever reason. And the trail was well-maintained. But those grasses were tall....and it was breezy my friends...

We reached the end of the quarter mile in just a few minutes. I looked down at our new fur baby and the enchanted dream we had wandered into turned into a sort of bizarre biblical nightmare. She had two ticks crawling along her back and another one on her leg. I started to freak out. I HATE ticks. I hate them because I'm scared of lyme disease. I am way more ok with bugs than most people I know. But ticks I can't handle. And I had never seen that many in one place before. Which says a lot because I've been really outdoorsy all my life.

We had to go back the way we had come, there was no other option. I winced, I checked my clothes quickly and DH and the other fur baby. I made sure the dogs stayed close to us on the return trip. As soon as we got to the car I started combing through our clothes and the dogs and found three or four more of those suckers. I was really starting to get anxious about this. How many more were there that we weren't seeing? How many were already burrowing into one (or all) of us? How did this happen? What a stupid idea that walk was!

When we got to the house we explained everything to the parents and found about seven more as we peeled off our clothes and threw them directly into the washing machine on our way to the shower. I only found one that had bitten me. And it had barely bitten me, it came off easily and didn't leave much of a mark. The dogs looked fine (thank you Frontline) and DH wasn't really affected either physically or psychologically by the whole thing. He has this feeling of being invincible. And he doesn't respect the unknown - he expects it will all be fine. And he's pretty ignorant about which bugs are innocuous and which aren't, preferring to rely on his invincibility and not worry about any of them.

In the midst of the panic I was feeling about having been bitten and not knowing the full extent of the infestation, I was standing near the washing machine talking to my mom...and that's when I felt it. A 'gush.' I've heard this described to me by people who have m/c's but I had never felt it. It was unmistakable. I excused myself into the bathroom and it was pretty scary. Blood was everywhere. As if I wasn't grossed out enough by the day already. And it wasn't stopping. It was like a 'light hemorrhage' but I had no pain anywhere - not even any cramping beyond the mild AF cramps, and it eventually did lighten up. But not before I passed....something. Tissue. And, like, a mass of it (I know this is gross, bear with me, the worst is over, pretty much). It really freaked me out. But was a relief at the same time. Maybe this is THE END of my m/c - maybe this is why my HCG persisted for so long. Tissue was still growing itself 6 months after the D&C. And it finally died and my HCG hit negative. And FINALLY, FINALLY, the stuff was expelled. And now maybe I am really all better. Back to normal. The size of it, paired with all the bleeding, really scared me. I thought back about the cramps I had had earlier in the day - they hadn't felt like contractions, but they were about 20 minutes apart and a fairly similar rolling sensation each time. And I've never felt contractions before so how would I know. But I was pretty sure I would have had to be at least a little dilated for this mass to come out.



Recall my parents have NO idea about the pregnancy or m/c. I was in no position to examine what had just happened or 'save' anything (wince) so I just carried on with the weekend. Bleeding heavily, but not out of control. And anxious now about both ticks and the bleeding and tissue. I was an absolute mess.

Somehow I rallied for father's day. Sort of. Well really I just acted like a crazy person straight through. I've been combing through my hair with my fingers for almost 48 hours straight, obsessively washing things - clothes, the dogs, the dog's harnesses, my shoes, (that effing trail, what was I thinking!)....I even left some stuff in the washing machine for the next time my parents run it - I couldn't bear to put anything that hadn't been sterilized back in my bag.

So I had the happy occasion to call both Dr. OBG and my PCP this morning. PCP doesn't seem very worried since I don't have any symptoms of infection so I don't see her until Friday. Dr. OBG hasn't called back. I called about abnormal bleeding and she doesn't call me back? What if I was still light-hemorrhaging? For all she knows, I could have been dead by now!

The most interesting part about this weekend is that my mind has been so saturated with anxiety and potential horrible outcomes to the respective incidents that I can't possibly focus on everything bad that could happen or every bad thing it could mean. It's physically impossible for my mind to worry as much as it thinks it needs to. That's good for me. So my worries of choice are two: 1) what the H@!! came out of me? Does this mean scar tissue? Fibroids? Endo? A second m/c? Were these past few days not really AF (I knew it was too good to be true)? Are my problems just beginning rather than coming to a close? And 2) although the chances of lyme disease are remote, according to Dr. Google (the only one who would see me today), what if? It's a pretty crummy thing to have happen. Is it worth taking two hours off of work and a prophylactic round of antibiotics that make you vomit just to attain some peace of mind?

And a final thought that came to me yesterday...

When I was young, I thought infertility was a black and white thing. Like once you wanted to have babies, you'd find out soon enough if you couldn't and that would be that. Someone would tell you, point blank, with utmost conviction in no uncertain terms, that you cannot ever have kids. And you would be very sad but then you would know and you'd be able to move on. Plan accordingly. Adoption, surrogacy, child-free, there were still options. It never occurred to me that the concept of fertility could be so rife with uncertainty and frustration and so demanding of patience and time and money. And it makes me almost wish I could know. For good. Will it happen for me? I'm not yet at the stage where the cost (the potential of having all hope removed) would be worth the benefit (knowing.). But I imagine if things don't go well in the next year or so, I will get there. I am the type that would rather know than not know. It surprises me even that I would want to wait a year...but for me (a pessimist), hope is such a rare thing to come by so I guess I'm embracing it where I can find it.

Twisted

This AF is a doozie. I am in SO much pain. I should NOT have worn the almost-white chinos to work today, I feel like I need to be super cautious whenever I move or sit or stand or exist. And please note that I am not complaining - I say this all with glee in my heart and tears of joy in my eyes. What a twisted world this is.

I seriously had cramps so bad yesterday that I could barely breathe for long periods of time. And I relished every minute of it. At one point I became aware that a bizarre, twisted, unintended thought was crossing my mind - AF is so wonderful, I feel so healthy, that maybe I don't even want to get pg again. At least not for a long time. I just want to be healthy. And without overriding anxiety about maintaining some fragile state or ridding myself of unwanted disease. But it was just a flicker of a thought, not a real one that I consciously crafted and mulled over - just a flash of insanity lashing out from my currently aggrieved but very much functioning uterus. Probably a result of my semi-asphyxiation. Of course I'm excited to dive in again. The possibilities seem more real every passing moment. But I will approach with trepidation. LOTS of it. So maybe it won't be so much of a dive as a sticking my little toe in. Then another, then my whole foot...I'll probably think and blog more about my next TTC process when it gets closer. I don't want to count my chickens or get ahead of myself here.

AF has also triggered my normal onslaught of "follow-up" worries. Now that the big fears have been swept out of the way in one fell swoop - my HCG did go to zero, I did get AF, I probably don't have Asherman's (or at least not severe Ashermans)....what else can go wrong? Could I have scarring still? Will I miscarry again? And more importantly, why? What is wrong with me? Are my eggs or DH's sperm (or the combination) incompatible with life? Could I have endo? Will I have a(nother) molar? An ectopic? Haywire HCG? Could I have irregular cycles now that I've had a m/c? Will this AF go on for weeks and weeks indicating that it is not, in fact, marking a return to normalcy? Did I actually have GTD? Or left over tissue....or a second pregnancy....was any of it molar? Will it recur? How long should I wait to TTC again? What if my doctors say 3 months? Will I be ready that soon? What if they say a year?

I told DH all the news. He was relieved. He doesn't know much about the medical details I've been navigating over the past...well, almost a year now since I quit bcp's. And probably because of that he feels very scared when he learns that I'm not well, when my body doesn't work. He doesn't know the why's or the when's or how's and because it makes babymaking seem like a somewhat grotesque process, I try to avoid the details with him and he doesn't ask for clarification. But I have to say, I was relieved at his unbridled relief. Especially when he said to me "you better start saving for daycare." It didn't bother or surprise me that he said "you" instead of "we" because he's been on my case since my last Coach purchase about fiscal responsibility in our household. Mostly jokingly. And he's right. I can be pretty materialistic when I get the bug. Which is roughly once a week. But mostly I wasn't bothered because he was talking about how we needed to save for DAY CARE. Which means we would need a baby first. So I tested the waters a little: "I will. I hope we ever need it." You'll have to excuse my late-night wine-inhibited grammar. I think I got the point across 'cause he said "me too. me too." I think he's starting to actually want kids. Like not just because I want them and because I'm brave enough to handle it and obviously equipped judging from how well I do with babies and how well I've done with the dogs (I think he really compares kids to dogs - our friends think he's crazy). Like he wants to have a kid already. HE does. For him. It's something he wants in his life independent of my interest in it. I think it was a sign of that anyway. He's probably starting to get tired of waiting. He's probably starting to feel like we better get to it. It was a huge relief. This week, in a year of hell, is full of relief and I intend to continue soaking it up.