Recovering, Trip Anxiety, The Internet Is Not My Friend, What A Wonderful World

Okay. I have a had a few days to get used to this new lovely turn of events, to a new piece of less-than-optimal news, to another delay. I am no longer on pain meds of any kind. I am ready to start a new week of school and pretend to be a well-adjusted person again. I could not decide on a title for this kitchen-sink post, so you get them all.

After this hysteroscopy where my lining was Krueger-esque, my pain levels were a bit higher than usual. I have a sensitive little ute. (You like that? I have decided to rename my uterus into something different, because I am tired of the word "uterus." Maybe it will catch on.) Procedures that are supposed to be "uncomfortable" are usually downright painful, and procedures that are supposed to leave you crampy for a little bit leave me crampy for a lotta bit. This time I was on my couch on Friday, writhing in pain, sobby and nervous that the pain was scar tissue reforming. On my ute. I was in touch with my doctor, and I started taking a ridiculous amount of ibuprofen, and then added a little hydrocodone to the mix. SO GLAD I took Friday off. I had felt ok, crampy but ok, until I decided to blow out my hair after my shower, a shower that is always frustrating because I can never get all the gummy adhesive from the monitors off my chest. I think some is still there, lurking, even though I have taken MANY SHOWERS since Thursday. I wanted to look good, to try to encourage my insides to feel as good as my outsides looked, and I wanted to go out for Mexican food as is our weekly Friday tradition. No dice. Apparently standing for the 30 minutes it takes me to transform my curls into swooshy straightish hair was not what my body wanted. It sucked.

I was supposed to go visit my best friend this weekend, seeing as how it's a three-day weekend for us school folks. I had the green light medically, as long as I took it easy. She had given her three kids the strict no-jumping policy, and let them know that I was not quite as fun as usual this time -- no lifting, no throwing, no chasing, no plasma cars. I was all set to leave Saturday, and then Friday came and my body was very, very displeased. I wasn't planning on leaving until Saturday anyway, but I decided to leave a little later.

My mind was also a mess, because I had googled "uterine scarring infertility." Do yourself a favor. If you have that discovered in a hysteroscopy, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, DON'T GOOGLE IT!!! It is horrific. I apparently don't have the worst of it, even though technically it is Asherman's Syndrome (pardon my spelling, I can't factcheck it because I don't want to see the horrors associated with it), it's not the horrible stuff. It's not webbing that is adhering the walls of my ute together. It's not preventing me from having a period. It's not as severe as what's all over the interwebs. But, the information I found on the impact on fertility was...scary. Horrifying. Depressing. Things like implantation difficulty (like I don't have enough of that), preterm labor, complications, fetal death... nothing good. A lot of talk about gestational carrier for severe cases. So, uh, let's hope my scarring goes away by my early November HSG. Let's hope that none of that applies to me.

I had asked my doctor, tearfully, if this was the beginning of the end. He said no, but he was worried. We are worried. What if the worst case scenario is not it, but it IS a road to badness? We feel closer to the end than ever. But not upset about the delay so much. I feel like I'm okay with the delay. What's another delay? At this point, all I care about is the endgame. Just tell me there's still an endgame, tell me that we're still in this game in some way. Timing never quite works out the way you plan, so if that's gone... so be it. Just let there still be a game.

I did manage to get on the road to see my best friend and her very busy family of five, after two hours of waffling and tears and decision making that was way harder than it had to be. I wasn't sure I should go. What if going made the scar tissue come back? (Ridiculousness) What if I got there and felt like crap and couldn't make it home? (Unlikely) What if what if what if? (I could do this all day) In the end, I went. Bryce convinced her it was the best move, and convinced me too. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to get away from the mopey house, to go somewhere different and try not to think about everything so much. Maybe it would make me feel better, emotionally. Because Bryce was very wise when he decided that the worst pain I was feeling wasn't physical, but emotional. I had a case of the hopelessness, of the why-mes, of the everything-is-doomed-itis. The thing about being around three children 7, almost-6, and 3 1/2 is that they don't let you be gloomy-doomy. You end up reading silly books and getting jumped out at and having to lock the bathroom door every single time because the one time you don't you expose your booty to a delighted three year old girl. "I SAW YOUR BUTT! THE RUDE ONE WITH TWO Ts! AHA HA HA HA HA!" Three year olds are hilarious. And also kind of like insane terrorists. But mostly hilarious.

It was a great weekend. I felt like crap for some of it, but I got to have fun times with the kiddos and fun adult times with my BFF and fun times with her husband, too, because I went to college with him (small small small small world), and I got to see my BFF's mom and aunt, who I haven't seen in forever, and so it was a lovely visit. I didn't get too terribly sad. As in past visits, the contrast between their home and ours was incredible -- the activity, the beautiful chaos, even the screaming and whining and sneaky kicks under the table. I want it, all of it, and it makes me really sad to think that the day we have it seems just so far away. But I didn't cry myself to sleep, and I didn't feel horribly sorry for myself most of the time. The only time I was really teary eyed was this morning, because of a beautiful handmade book from school that the middle child made to the lyrics of the song "What a Wonderful World." On thinking about it, I'm pretty sure he showed me this book last time I was down there in January, and it made me kinda sad then, too, but it was beautiful. Each line was it's own handmade picture (red roses, skies of blue, dark sacred night...) and the lyric typed and glued in. This song gets me every single time I hear it, like makes me sob uncontrollably, and when it gets to "I hear babies cry, I watch them grow" I lose it, utterly. So to have this amazingly clear five year old voice singing it and seeing the three baby pictures of my best friend's beautiful babies made the leakiness come from my eyes. Did I sob and dissolve? No. Did I need to excuse myself? No. Did it hurt my heart, and maybe my ute? Yup.

(On second thought, "ute" sounds kind of crude, maybe a little gross. But I still kinda like it.)

So I sat and leaked and was filled with so much love for this family and for the family that doesn't exist quite yet, and was very very glad I had come. I was also very very glad I was going before I got too sad sappy and scared these lovely children and their mommy. It was a good visit. I'm sore, and tired, but I loved loving on those kids. I loved walking with my friend and catching up. I loved imagining what it would be like to have a third of that activity in my own home, to have a construction paper book that could pull at my heart strings for different reasons, to have so many baby pictures on the walls. It makes it so I can almost picture it again without feeling kind of broken and lost.

I'm healing, in every possible way. I'm hopeful that the next few weeks bring my lining back to its original state (if not a little better), and we can be on the road to having our own little family causing chaos and sending out massive ripples of love throughout our home and our lives.

34 years of friendship, right there! Was my head always so much bigger???

So, in this picture I am actually about to fall over because I overestimated my
sense of balance. But, you could see it like I have my arm around my invisible
future child, who will be in this picture in a few years but hasn't quite appeared yet.
Or does that make me sound crazy?