How Cleaning Out the Refrigerator Can Bring On a Long, Involved Personal Blog Entry

Disclosure made in the interest of honesty: I started this entry many, many days ago. It has taken me several sessions to write it and even during the process of composing it, I kept thinking that maybe I didn't want to post it, worrying that it would be embarrassing to me and TLS (because even though he has a pseudonym in these virtual pages, 99% of the people who read them know his name - sorry hon!). But I finally decided to just put it out there. 1) Because I have always been honest about these things because ultimately that's just how I am, and 2) because there have already been things that I would have said in earlier blog entries but didn't because they wouldn't have had any context. So, if you're reading this entry, it means that I did hold my breath and hit the Publish Post button.
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I was forced to do a major fridge clean out before Thanksgiving so I could fit the huge container with the brining turkey in there. In addition to tossing the hunks of moldy cheese, half-filled condiment containers and mystery science experiments, I finally threw away something that has been lurking in the crisper drawer for the last two years.

Here's where my blog entry comes to resemble how I tell stories in person, by stopping the narrative to tell another story to finish telling the one I just started. It's all very confusing, but bear with me. There is some deep background that you need to know and while many of you know the whole story (probably much more than you ever wanted to know), not everyone is on the same page. I promise that it will all come together in the end.

As previously mentioned in my inaugural post, TLS and I are generally not in a hurry to make any major life changes--even if they are positive. TLS likes to call us The Universal Constant and I think that is an extremely funny, clever and insightful way to say that we are change resistant and not a little reactionary. (I think I briefly considered blogging as Reactionary Girl, but decided that it made me sound like I should be wearing a beret and riding with Che. But anyhoo... ) So after waiting almost three years after we met to get married, you could probably guess that we wouldn't rush into the whole parenthood thing and you'd be absolutely right.

We waited a few (translation: about 5) years and then decided to take the plunge and start trying to have a baby. Well, maybe not trying to get pregnant but to just stop preventing getting pregnant. (There is a difference in those two states of being, even if it is subtle, and that difference allowed us to take the plunge.) So there we were throwing caution to the wind and....nothing. No double pink lines on those ridiculously expensive home pregnancy tests and not even a late period. "No worries," the books and doctors and other people told us, "it can take up to a year to get pregnant." "Relax." "Take a vacation." "Buy some new clothes." And really, it wasn't like we were TRYING, we just weren't preventing so that bought us a fresh round of hope. And if I may make an observation here, my friends, there is nothing like hope to reach out with a Bruce Lee karate move to kick you in the teeth every so often.

Somewhere around this time, I got serious about getting pregnant. In addition to many of my other good qualities, I am (um, how should I put this?) a little intense and organized about things. I also like to know everything about everything (hence the Masters in Library Science aspirations). I was like a fertility researcher. I had calendars and charts and was comparing information from multiple websites. I was ON A MISSION and on top of that I was hiding all this intensity from TLS so I didn't scare him off. 'Cause you know how desirable men find women who are baby crazy. (I can guarantee that he's reading this right now going...what?!) Let's just say that I was the fertility ninja on a mission. How's that for a mental image?

And still...nothing, nada, zilch. Bupkis as all the yiddishers like to say. I was starting to get alarmed because in addition to being intense and organized, I am also paranoid. (Boy, don't you wish you were TLS? Doesn't he sound like the luckiest sucker in the world?) Oh, and around that time TLS took a consulting job with a large computer company whose logo is blue and this caused him to be out of town four days a week. It seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against us but when I went to the doctor, he didn't seem too worried. "Your husband isn't in town full-time and at 32 you're still young" (Really, doc? Not feelin' it so much). He all but said the words, "Patience, young grasshopper." So, more karate-chopping hope being flung in our direction obscured my panic at least for a while.

Flash forward another year or so. TLS has gone from working for big blue, to being laid off, to taking a job in a neighboring state. We were planning to move as soon as our house sold, but luckily TLS's "Spidey Sense" about his new employer started to tingle within a few weeks of his start date. (And with good cause, as it turned out, since about six months later the company went belly-up and he was out of a job again.) We took the house off the market, hunkered down to maintain two households separated by several hundred miles, and he started coming home on weekends. Again, not the greatest gameplan for conception, so our continued failure still didn't seem too alarming.

TLS found another job in town and throughout our house, there was much rejoicing. Now I could guarantee that he would be home for those few fertile days each month and we'd finally be able to hit the jackpot, so to speak. And again, nothing. Month after month of nothing. Long, interminable stretches of nothing. Well, you get the picture.

My doctor finally agreed that maybe it was time to start giving us a little extra help with conception and we took our first dip of many in the Infertility Pool. After TLS's "men" were tested and judged to be suitable, and I had undergone several painful and invasive tests, we were given the greenlight to try insemination. The gateway fertility drug of choice is Clomid and I swear to you it is the marijuana of fertility drugs. Those five little white pills look so innocent and innocuous but often they are just the beginning of the slide to the hardcore--Lupron and Follistim and Repronex and the like. Those Clomid were only the cost of a co-pay and went down easy. Sure, they caused some hot flashes, but there were the resulting follicles up on the ultrasound machine's screen--shining down on us like hope writ in scratchy gray and white. On the appointed day, TLS would make a trip to Collection Room #1 and forty-five minutes later we would pick up our sample encased in a Styrofoam cup that always reminded me of the containers of nightcrawlers you find in the refrigerated sections of rural gas stations. We would carry the cup upstairs to the doctor's office, I would lie on the table with TLS's hand clasped in mine, and the doctor would complete the procedure. Off we would go to commence our lives and wait. And again, nothing. Four times worth of nothing. And because hope had been hurling a bare foot or open hand into our guts, each time the disappointment would be magnified, but the desire was still there.

I wish that I had been blogging back in those days. It would have provided endless fodder for posts and I would have been able to relate many of the events and emotions that are lost to me today in the mists of time and forgetfulness.

My doctor informed us after that fourth strike, that statistically, we should have already gotten pregnant if insemination was going to work for us and that it might be time to consider consulting a reproductive endocrinologist. I chose a doctor who had been successful with a friend of Youngest's and we met to discuss our options. These consisted of attempting more inseminations using injectable fertility drugs or doing in vitro fertilization. Either way, it seemed that we were going to have to become proficient in the art of shots--the giving in the case of TLS and the receiving for me. Mostly because insemination hadn't been getting the job done, we decided to step it up a notch and begin in vitro.

I hope to regale you in the future with some of the stories from those days, because really, we did manage to find humor in the most odd places. Not the least of which was that the nurse assigned to us for our time utilizing the Assisted Reproduction department was completely without humor. A nice enough and competent enough person, I'll grant you, but nary a laugh to be had from Caroline. And here she was matched with two people that have yet to find a subject for which we cannot find a joke. It was quite the mis-match.

Suffice it to say that after two rounds of in vitro (totaling hundreds of injections and five figures of payments), it all came to naught. We had invested time, money and emotions to be left without a positive outcome. And it was painful. Most painful of all was to sit across from my dear, wise doctor and have to hear that based on my body's response to the medications and the (lackluster) condition of the few embryos that we did create, his medical opinion was that for whatever reason, I was running out of eggs and the ones that I did have weren't good. Whew. That'll take the wind right out of your sails. We talked about how our options from here were to adopt, utilize egg donation, or be childless. And at that moment I realized that hope had brutalized me one too many times. I was through with experiencing the kind of disappointment over which I had some control. Ultimately, in this situation, inertia was the least painful option. And it has been the one that we have pursued, if pursued is the right word to use in this instance.

I tell you all of this not to make you feel sorry for me, because despite the infertility and the disappointment, I am a very lucky person. I have a wonderful and loving spouse who is possibly the best thing to ever happen to me. I have a happy marriage. I am gainfully employed and have a cozy house in which to live and a snazzy car in which to drive to and from it each day. I have money to buy the things I need and those I just want. I really can't complain too much about anything. I lead a full and happy life. But I will always have what amounts to an emotional scar. A psychic hole that has been filled with whatever happened to be at hand. Most of the time, it's virtually invisible, but every so often it will "itch" and make its presence known and then I have to deal with it. Mostly, this means I have to remind myself of all the things I've already listed in this paragraph, but I don't kid myself that it will ever totally go away.

So you're saying to yourself, this is all well and good but what does it have to do with your refrigerator? Well, after all that toil and disappointment, I had one vial of medication left after our second in vitro attempt. Those medications have to be kept cold, which means that they are kept in the fridge. I didn't move that box (little bigger than a deck of cards) at first because I couldn't bear to look at it and then because I thought that I might have a friend that could use it.
Every so often, when it seemed that hope wanted to give me yet another jab, I would take the box out and check the expiration date, but I could never bring myself to throw it away. But the Thanksgiving clean out frenzy caused me to do more than give it a glance and put it back in. I set it out on the counter and really pondered the reasons I was keeping it. And decided that it had come to represent the chance (however infintesimal) that I had to keep trying. And then I realized that I didn't need or want that anymore. I was ready to give up the illusion and send it away. Into the contractor grade Hefty bag it went and I have slept better since then.

Taking a deep breath and pushing the button...