Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Square One?

In August 2013 I took my first Lupron shot. I worried that I would spend the next six months a crazed, hormonal shell of a human like the horror stories on the Internet. I worried about bone deterioration and depression. I worried that my ovaries would never recover. I worried that I would never get to be even the endometriosis-ridden version of my 27 year old self that existed before I took that shot. I worried that all of this effort would not result in a pregnancy. The only worry I have left today is the last one. Eight months later I have returned to pre-lupron Katy. In fact, I assume I am a more healthy version of myself. My ovaries work again. All one and a half of them managed to crawl out from their medicinal hibernation. All one and a half of them managed to prove the women on the message boards wrong. We're back. I've been in Mexico for the last two days playing phone tag with the nurses at Dr. Bell's office and relaying the news of my return from menopause. I found myself asking the same questions I was asking nine months ago. Infertility Groundhog Day. "What do I do now?" "Am I okay?" "Am I normal? " "Do we just try to get pregnant? Like everyone else?" "How do I get pregnant?" As before, the answers from the other end of that phone line were delayed and hard to understand, no matter if I'm in Arkansas or Mexico. At the end of the phone conversation, we decided on an ultrasound on day fourteen to determine if I ovulate. This is the same process that resulted in the finding of the cyst on my left ovary a year ago. This whole infertility mess is just a system of circles. Monthly circles. Yearly circles. We just keep running the same race over and over again. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be off of Lupron. It wasn't as bad as I imagined it might be, but there were some notable issues associated. I haven't felt particularly healthy for the past few months. I've broken down in tears in front of a middle-aged man (whom I still have to answer to on a regular basis at work) in the midst of trying to fight for my female athletes to receive the same treatment as male athletes. The embarrassment I still feel about crying while trying to convince a man that we are equal human beings is simply too much for me to bare. A few weeks later I adopted a dog that I stalked for days and days. I cried uncontrollably as the flea-ridden canine sat on my lap in the car. I referred to her as my "spirit animal" in between breathless sobs of appreciation as my husband sat stunned in the driver's seat. It's safe to say that Lupron has had some interesting side effects. I am glad those things have subsided. Despite all the tears and weirdness, there was one good thing about the last eight months of Lupron. I got a break from the race. There were no negative pregnancy tests to be taken. There were no days to count. There was no timed intercourse. There was no analysis of basal body temperature or other bodily predictors of fertility. There was nothing to worry about. No disappointment to be had. It was easy. I have to admit the reality of trying to get pregnant month after month is a much more difficult race to endure than the side effects of Lupron. I feel like I'm back to square one and as confused as I've ever been about pregnancy. Also, this time around I am even more invested in making this work with the scars (both physical and emotional) to prove that I am willing to sacrifice for the same outcome that some of us experience with such ease. I am willing to work for a child although the past two years of childless life have certainly left me with a notably different perspective on creating life. I tell myself that years from now all of this will make sense; the resolution will be evident. The longer I live without a child of my own, the more I realize that the much sought-after resolution does not necessarily have to involve me being a parent. Parenthood is no longer the only acceptable ending for me or us. It's taken two years to understand that the infertility race does not always end with a child. I feel like I should confess that the articulation of my new acceptance of infertility struck me while lying by a pool in Mexico as I stared at the ebb and flow of the Gulf of Mexico. We all know a good beach can round the edges of even the most jagged stones in life.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Did I get had by Aunt Flow?

 I started my period in the wee morning hours of a slumber party in 1996. I was almost twelve-years-old and celebrating the end of a school year and a friend moving away. I wasn’t the first. I guess I was aware that the same fate would befall me as it had some of my friends. Nonetheless, I was embarrassed and upset. I remember refusing to utter a word to the throng of tween girls strewn throughout an empty living room piled high with sleeping bags and pillows. Remembering this milestone years later, the paradox of a slumber party and menstruation strikes me as an accurate portrayal of growing up.
         After a few hours of careful analysis, I finally accepted that I must share this occurrence with at least one person in this world. My mom would hand me a Maxi pad and ask a few uncomfortable questions about the occurrence and then we moved on. Silent partners in the world of women. Sometime later, after the initial shock wore off, my period became public knowledge amongst my sleeping bag friends. My mom eventually assured me that periods were not the end of the world (granted, all of this conversation occurred in hushed voices) and that I should actually be grateful for this dreaded monthly happening, for a period would allow me to fulfill what my mother still touts as her proudest accomplishment: having children.
        My friends and I were notably less sold on the power of a period. We spent years sharing tampons and stories about the trials and tribulations of growing up female. Some of us cursed more than just the inconvenience of a period, angered by the sacred possibility of pregnancy in our hormone-driven world of adolescence. I always respected reproduction far more than most of my friends. My seemingly regular cycles bolstered my mother’s “be grateful” approach to menstruation. I always trusted that the agony endured would one day be worth it when I was thirty and married and a mother.
        I haven’t had a period in eight months now. Lupron fulfilled its promise of “shutting down my system” as the doctors communicated to me. I feel like I have caught a glimpse of life on the other side of womanhood, a snapshot of menopausal Katy, complete with bone pain, hot flashes, and unwarranted tears. Even after Lupron is technically out of your system, a person does not immediately go back to a normal reproductive being. There is a window of time before a patient starts producing hormones and eventually has a period. This is what got me thinking about periods and puberty. This flip-flop between a healthy twenty-something-year-old to medically-induced menopause and now to waiting and wondering when (if?) these busted ovaries will ever start functioning again. I am becoming a woman. Again.
       After I was diagnosed with endometriosis, I started wondering when the disease started setting up shop inside of me. Were the cells of my uterus attacking their reproductive friends since that fateful summer night in 1996? Is the moment that I walked through the door to being a child-bearing woman also the exact moment that my body started fighting against itself? Did I endure the “be grateful” advice from my mother for nothing? If I had ever had uncommitted, unprotected, premarital sex with anyone, could I have even become pregnant? Or was all of this a sham? Have I been unable to have children for as long as I thought I could? Did I get had by Aunt Flow?
       I used to believe that people get what they deserve. Call it karma or blessings or whatever you will, I used to think that things work out the way they should. The longer I exist with the ever-present infertility cloud hanging above me (and my husband) I wonder if maybe all of this is a lot more of a crap shoot than I’d like to believe. I worry that those years of periods were nothing more than annoying.