The Presumption of Gambling

I may be living inside my head a little too much. Nothing has touched me.

I'm still dealing with some bladder discomfort (appointment with the urologist next week - his earliest opening) with no idea what is going on. Usually the unknown can send me over the edge for a little while.

While we have been discussing our treatment options, nothing is really gelling for us. A pregnancy and baby we can afford somehow, but the extra hundreds of dollars per cycle it takes to do an IUI are slightly out of our reach for a month or two. I also looked into our RE's IVF plans. $10,000 - $17,000 depending on the number of cycles, retrievals, FETs. I guess that I don't really understand how it all comes down to money. Since they really don't know what we are up against, IUIs and IVF are just treatments that could work. When is the last time you spent a couple thousand dollars on something that might work? So, I sit here feeling not quite as proactive (or rich) as the others I read about who do four or five back-to-back IUIs and then step it up to IVF.

Which makes me hesitant about going to a RESOLVE meeting in my area on Tuesday evening. It's also about 45 minutes away, but I just don't know what to think about it. I don't know or talk to anyone else on this journey. If I get pregnant tomorrow, I will probably say the past two and a half years weren't that bad; how infertile could I have been? But the gut feeling is that it is not going to happen tomorrow, this month, this year, or next. Maybe that frame of mind makes a RESOLVE meeting a good place for me to be. At least I could get the scoop on the REs and obgyns in the area.

Speaking of which, my obgyn has been fired, let go, chased out of Dodge. I don't know why yet, but previously some of her practices did not line up with the hospital's (and the hospital hired her because she practiced a different type of medicine). I never had an issue to see her with, seeing as how I am not pregnant, but I loved her philosophy and straight answers. And with that, I've blown through the obgyns in my neck of the woods again. I figure that I'll let my primary care doctor do the yearly and possibly deliver the magical twins. I do like her and I have an RE now for all of the infertility issues.

Someone I love so very much told me she was pregnant over the Christmas holiday. She was so sweet and matter-of-fact about it all. And it was a quiet revelation, for which I am grateful. I tried to mull over what my reaction was and what it should be. For once, the two are reconciled in one reaction: that of excitement and gratefulness. This is not to say that there was no sadness on my part for myself (how utterly selfish), but these loved ones are having a baby. They are having a baby! And while there will be moments when I put on a brave face, I refuse to withhold any joy for them. Because, in about seven months or so, there will be a new life to love and cherish.

Where does this all leave me? Planning a trip to Minnesota that lines up with a big infertility conference. C has already agreed to go to the conference and we have loads of family up there. I'm not sure that ten hours at a conference all about infertility is the right step, but I still feel the need for more information (or hope?). It will also be nice to take some time off work to spend with C. I can't believe he has agreed to go. In addition to that, I was thinking about going to Vegas in March with my sister and some friends. Unfortunately, that is probably money better spent on another IUI. Which do you think sounds like more fun? Partying, eating, drinking, spending time with friends in the lights of Vegas, or the clomid monster, suppositories, the dildo cam, a shot, and a catheter of sperm threaded into, well, you all should know where by now. This is incredibly humorous now that I think about it: either a trip to a gambling haven, or gambling with an IF treatment. Funniest part: I don't gamble! It's a waste of money. Oh dear, I think I just stumbled across a really big reason why IF pisses me off . . . Imagine that.