Usually
I don't like to give a recap of the past week. It feels so structured and I
feel like people quickly lose interest when they start reading "My Week
in Review." But I was spending some time thinking about what I would write
about and decided that this week was just way too eventful to not share it with
everyone.
It
all started when my dog ate my Juice Plus.
Have
you heard of this product? Whole fruits and vegetables crammed into these gummy
snack-looking things that are absolutely delicious and are supposed to change
your life for the better.
My
dog Toby seemed to think so too.
I
was driving home from work last week when my husband called me. "I'm going
to kill your dog," he growled. Note he has said this same statement over the
years for several different reasons:
“Toby
ate your yoga mat and barfed up little pieces of rubber.”
“Toby
ate an entire bag of trail mix complete with M&Ms.”
“Toby
ate a bird.”
So,
bracing myself, I asked what Toby had done this time.
He
then proceeded to tell me the dog ate my entire bag of fruit Juice Plus that I
had accidentally left out on the table. To put it in perspective, that's roughly
equivalent to about twenty pounds of fruit. Luckily, he probably got too full to
start in on the antioxidant blend containing all the grapes, which are toxic to
dogs. We were warned that he may have diarrhea (he didn't) and that his coat
may become extra shiny and vibrant (it did). So now I am out of my fruit gummies
for this month and Toby is probably the healthiest dog on the planet. I decided
to get him back by posting this embarrassing photo of him to all the Internet.
The
next morning after that was my mom's surgery. In my last post,
I talked about
her recent breast cancer diagnosis, which sounds so weird to even write.
She
was scheduled for a lumpectomy last Friday morning and I had taken off
work to
be there with her and my dad. About three days prior, I started having
some
muscle spasms in my rib cage. Usually these come every so often, last a
few
seconds, making me suck in my breath, and go away. They started coming
more
often lately, and I was waking up with spasms so bad in one area that I
would
have trouble catching my breath. So I did what all nurses do and I
promptly
ignored it. The fleeting thought that this may in fact kill me crossed
my mind
a few times. However, Friday morning, to my dismay, I found I could only
take
the shallowest of breaths upon awakening and realized something may
really be
wrong. So I cried, panicked, scheduled an early doctor appoint, changed
my mind and found myself driving to the emergency room at the hospital
where I was to
meet my parents at in two hours for Mom's surgery.
As
soon as I said the words "chest pain," I was whisked inside the
triage area, bombarded with questions and strapped to machines, which was not
helping the pain when I breathed. The doctor told me he wanted to work me up
for blood clots from the monstrous amounts of hormones I've taken over the
years for infertility treatments. The tech came to do an EKG; the nurse started
an IV and took blood. All the staff agreed on one thing: "Whatever you do,
do not tell your mother you’re here."
My
husband ended up calling my dad and my mom was informed that I was having a
migraine and "would be there as soon as possible." My blood work came
back negative, the chest X-ray was normal and the doctor concluded that I was
not in fact going to die of a blood clot before I see my firstborn, that it was
in fact just gnarly muscle spasms. I grabbed my prescription for Ativan to help
me sleep at night, and the nurse and I flew out of the ER to the main part of
the hospital so I could go be with my mom.
The
surgery went well, even though it was delayed a few hours. We just found out
that the cancer did not spread to the lymph nodes, leaving her essentially
cancer-free. But this past weekend was emotionally exhausting. My mom's
positive attitude is such a blessing, because this whole breast cancer ordeal
is terrifying.
On
the plus side, I started on blood pressure medication again. My last IVF cycle
included dexamethasone, which is thought to improve egg quality. I spent a good
month at the end of 2013 with dangerously high blood pressure and headaches as
a bad side effect and was able to bring it down on medications. Since then, I
went off the medication but my blood pressure has been sitting around 140/90,
causing some concern with this upcoming donor egg cycle. My blood pressure has
finally come down, making everyone involved happy, and the only thing left to
do now is await my next cycle at the beginning of October to make final plans
for an end-of-October transfer.
Enough
for you? I feel like I've experienced more in these past few weeks than I have
in the last few months. This muscle spasm scare has gotten me thinking about
all the hormones I’ve injected, inserted or rubbed into my body and what the
long-term effects of all this will be. It’s a thought that is never far from my
mind as I continue to endure treatment after treatment. Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.Labels: Family, mom.me
