My acupuncturist really, really wants me to eat meat.  He said even if not meat, then you can get shots of bone broth. He continues to think I am so exhausted and that, whilst the  iron supplement might help, it won’t be strong enough to strengthen me.  Seriously, I don’t know if I believe any of this shit.

He said you can get shots from animals that have been grass-fed and ethically raised.  I just don’t want to.  Just the thought made me cry.  I can’t make a decision like this.  I don’t want to 😦 .

This is a pick-your-own-title adventure.

As a friend said to me today, this blog is just HILARIOUS <jk>.  Stick with me kids; it is full of pain and suffering and grief.  And occasionally intimate details about embarrassing bodily parts.  And even when there are tits, they are covered in cabbage.  SO NOT HOT! 😉 .

I’ve become too introspective over the years.  (I am writing a blog, for chrissake!) I am hoping this experience will change me for the better.  Some good comes out of everything in life.  Right now, I feel I am being more extrospective.  More open to finding out new things, listening to other people and not being such a know-it-all. I want to try and foster this.  And I think I will only really be able to relax when I stop being such a perfectionist.

This whole experience has made me more giving, more generous. I have just had more time to be more thoughtful, been able to buy “just because” gifts for friends, donated to charity, reached out to people that touched me in the past. I am sure the medical opinion is I am “trying to fill the void of grief” and that it will past – but I hope not. I like this part of me and I hope it will stay.

Hopefully I might get a bit less vain.  One day, I actually considered getting out of bed before friends arrived and blow-drying my wet hair, even putting on make-up because I was too vain to look so ugly and too proud to look so pitiful.  I don’t expect this to stick.  I wonder if it just a sliding scale between self-pride and vanity.  I can only hope to stay in the right zone.

For what she says is “want of a better world”, my friend Kelly calls this awakening “ a gift”  and I think I agree.  Right now I am in a long, dark tunnel and I can’t quite see the end properly.  But I have memories of what it is like out there, and I know the tunnel is going to end.  When I get there I will blink and appreciate the light. Yes, I believe it is a gift.  In a year’s time, I will know what a gift I have received.  Hopefully I will be a better person because of this.  Maybe only then will I be able to be glad it has happened 🙂 .

Who knows what I will do next?   The only time I am like to be glad to say these words in my life “YAY, I GOT MY PERIOD”.  That means body is recovering and  normalizing.  I have never been so pleased to have period pain 🙂 .   I am going to leave the IVF alone for at least 3 months, I think.  Of course, the insane 40-year-old in me can just hear TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK.  But the part that is learning to relax is winning right now – and trying to let what will be… be.

My friend Joe just sent me this. From the play “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire:

BECCA:  Mom? Does it go away?

NAT:  What.

BECCA:  This feeling.  Does it ever go away?

(beat)

NAT:  No.  I don’t think it does.  Not for me, it hasn’t. And that’s goin’ on eleven years.  (beat)  It changes though.

BECCA:  How?

NAT:  I don’t know.  The weight of it, I guess.  At some point it becomes bearable.  It turns into something you can crawl out from under.  And carry around – like a brick in your pocket.  And you forget it every once in awhile, but then you reach in for whatever reason and there it is:  “Oh right.  That.”  Which can be awful.  But not all the time.  Sometimes it’s kinda … Not that you like it exactly, but it’s what you have instead of your son, so you don’t wanna let go of it either.  So you carry it around.  And it doesn’t go away, which is …

BECCA:  What?

NAT:  Fine … actually.

Maybe I am finally getting to the stage where I will have good days and bad days.  I think now I have got the message loud and clear, my body and my mind needs to rest. I’m actually a little surprised that none of the doctors actually mentioned that this might be a big deal and I should rest afterwards.  I went hiking…. A friend gave me an exercise DVD and I did that in the living room with ice packs stuffed down my sports bra.  What was I thinking?  [An update to this: Trevor said that ALL of the doctors told me to rest and that I just didn’t listen.  Hmm, embarrassing, but this might actually be true!]

I don’t have to be a vegetable.  I still work from home, but I am trying to limit my hours on the computer to the battery life only (twice a day).  I am not watching scary movies right before bed,  I am eating well and taking as-natural-as-possible supplements.

Maybe this exhaustion is caused from the stress of the surgery and running around like a mad thing and not resting?

Maybe it is a side effect of the antibiotics?

Maybe it is anemia brought on by iron definiency causes by blood loss?

Maybe it is lethargy caused by grief?

Maybe it is debilitating stress caused grief?

Whatever it is, for multiple days, I went without brushing my teeth or my hair.  I cried at the idea of having to take a shower and I could barely lift a soup spoon to my mouth.

Let me tell you, it sucked.  Today I think I am turning a corner (the first of many, in ever-decreasing circles?)  My friend, Belinda, came over and made me lunch.  She took me out to get our nails done and sit in a massage chair reading crappy magazines, and now I am ensconced back on the sofa.

I am trying to teach myself to leave my phone in the next room (thanks, Dana, for the tip) and read a book. On the bright side, I think I will learn through this to relax occasionally.  I’m sure Trevor would like that 🙂 .

I saw this image on a support group website  (Dear me, yes, I have started to read those, too.)  The posted wanted to know if it signified “grief”.

And I think it does.  It is long and lonely and so deep grieving.  All others can see it the above-water grief.  They just can’t imagine the depths of this grief.  Nobody.  Nobody can be with me at the depths of this grief at this time and take away my loneliness. Trevor is doing everything he can for me, but he is so strong.  Maybe just strong for me.  But I am alone in my despair.

Those that have felt “grief” of any loss (be it a brother, a husband, a father) can just talk to me about it and they way they felt and how they dealt it with.  That at least makes me feel sure I am not over-reacting and it is temporary.  Just hearing them talk and talking to them about what I am going through has kept me sane. Several people have suggested I might try seeing a grief counselor or a retreat for women who have lost their children.  (But as I told Mags: don’t you know that RETREAT is code for “YOU STUPID FUCKING HIPPIE!)  Now I am starting to think that might help me.  It might at least stop me working for a few days!

My friend Hugh sent me a link to the 7 stages of Grief. I think I lived a long time in the first stage, in the only part of the iceberg you can see above the water. Wow, am I really only in stage 2?  When will I be at stage 7? I am a producer, OCD and uptight, dammit, I need more exact timeframes 😉 . I am so impatient, but I am starting to think that patience and rest is part of the healing process.

When well-meaning people say to me “I can imagine how difficult this is for you”, it doesn’t make me angry, but it is almost like I can’t hear it.  Even when I was pregnant, if I heard about someone losing a baby, I would think “OMG how awful” and think I was emphasizing.   It absolutely didn’t occur to me that I would feel like this.  I thought I would feel sad, get on with it, and just have another go at having a  baby asap – the long end of that tail was adoption and fairly soon it would all be tickety-boo.  In the first couple of weeks, I read a couple of online blogs from people going through this and just though “oh, pull yourself together”.

It has been a very humbling experience for me.

I have realized what wonderful friends I have.  I have always known this, but I have never really seen it in action like this.  Not from the wider group of friends I have.  I have started not puking when people use the word “community” around me.  My friends are falling over themselves to look after me and show me their love and compassion. I actually have to fight them away a little now as socializing tires me out. I hope this doesn’t sound ungrateful, as I will be eternally grateful to the people I have around me and maybe I will value THEIR love even more.   As awful and painful as it is (and yes, maybe you never fully heal because you aren’t supposed to), it is enlightening and ultimately something you grow from.

Of course, I want to get pregnant again, and I will be very very sad if I can’t get pregnant.   But maybe something wonderful will happen.  Maybe I will get the twins I always wanted.  (Molly’s visions showed me with them, maybe she isn’t mad – LOL!)  Maybe I will slow down at work and start to enjoy life in the moment, rather than cram every second of every day with something.  I hear some people get over the need for children, enjoy the extra freedom and money they have.  There is always a silver lining.

As Kim said to me ‘When the student is ready the teacher will come’.  Maybe I am more ready now, just a little bit more open to learning things that can’t be PROVED?

I have read a lot of stories online.  Sometimes this helps and sometimes it does not.  But a caring soul on send me an article which apparently “proves” that mother and soul are connected at a celluar level  (I didn’t look up the credentials of the study.  Maybe it is all bullshit.  Who cares?  Maybe I will just believe anything so I am not ashamed at feeling like this?  Maybe I would like to believe that science can PROVE there is a reason I should feel so shit?)

I am open to seeing a counselor and I probably will, since a friend sent me the details of someone who helped him, who takes our insurance.

Other people have suggested I might try a support group.  I don’t know if I could bear that (or maybe it is that I don’t know if I could “bare” it like that.).  I went to one once to support a friend and they all held hands at the beginning and ommed!  I nearly threw up.  I couldn’t wait to get away from there fast enough.  (Trevor said I might like it “now that you are a hippie”  – LOL!)  And actually, in that one, I might have been reacting to the fact that their moment of silence was not an “om”, it was a very particular Christian prayer – and I despise organized religion.

Maybe I could believe in something like Buddhism?  (I have been to the Dalai Lama’s house in India, but that is a different story 😉 .)  I don’t know much about it, but I could look it up.

I think I might also be open to reading some of the books on dealing with grief that some of my friends have recommended.  2 weeks ago, I would have just rolled my eyes at that.

Here are a few I have heard about.  I would love some feedback if anyone had read any of them.   (Don’t click on any of these if you don’t believe in self-help books.  Just 4-weeks ago, I would have thought was wallow-in-your-own-grief-hippie-bullshit – and believed I could just pull myself up by my own bootstraps and carried on.)  Nope, this one got me.  Welcome to the club, Nina.  We can all fall down.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415924812/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1555913024/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

I have always had to trouble sleeping, even as a little girl.  I had a dreamcatcher above my bed to “catch” my nightmares.  Who cares it it is just a placebo?  It is not going to hurt me.  (Shame they are so damn ugly, though.)

I have never slept so well in my life as the times that I was pregnant. It felt like my body was just taking care of me.  But since the operation I haven’t been able to sleep.  I can’t unwind enough to fall asleep and when I am asleep I wake every hour with screaming nightmares.  (Trevor comes in and sushes me.)

[The gayest man in San Francisco (and that is pretty gay! 😉 ) owned the house before us – and it amuses me that the dreamcatcher above our bed is hung from one of the giant eyehooks that he used to hang his swing to! LOL!]

We can add dreamcatchers to the long line of things I “don’t believe in”, but WTF – it can’t hurt?  (Trevor was very resistant to having these above the bed, but I promised it was just for a few weeks while I get some real rest.  He has drawn the line full stop at incense.  LOL!)

The acupuncturist said the best thing about acupuncture is that you don’t have to believe in it for it to work.  It is sort of the same thing sometimes with Trevor; he will indulge me even if he thinks it’s all bullshit.  Here he is wearing with me, wearing the girls’ bracelets:

Wait, it is chocolate AND booze?  Does foodstuff GET any better?  Thanks Chris 🙂 .

The internets and a midwife friend of mine told me that the pain in my chest is likely caused by anemia, brought on by iron-deficiency due blood loss during D&C, hemorrhaging, and by not eating meat.

The doctor told me it is likely to be chronic heartburn or indigestion caused by the antibiotics I reacted to.

I have joking referred to it once in this blog as maybe just a broken heart

But I just saw this quote on a friend’s Facebook page:

Pain under the ribs? Under the heart? The struggle between it and the brain to gain the upper hand. The brain trying continuously to rationalize, to mend, to save the situation. The pain crowing and tearing like a bird of pray… – from the movie W.E.

(BTW, the necklace was a gift from my dad.  I love it, it reminds me of the Richard Gere movie: Breathless.)

My friend Wendy used to be a midwife.  She asked me if I had been tested for anemia (I haven’t been).  She was pretty shocked.  She said lots of people are deficient in iron after losing a baby at this stage because of the large amounts of blood loss. Now this just seems obvious to me.  Even after the operation, you bleed heavily for 3 weeks straight, additionally, I hemorrhaged and I don’t eat meat.  I am surprised they didn’t test for it.   Anemia causes, guess what? exhaustion (chronic fatigue) and chest pains.

Now I am starting to wonder if the acupuncturist suspected that and that is why he was recommending I start eating meat.  I just found this fat: “meat-derived iron, known as heme iron, is more easily absorbed by the body”.  Hmm, he suspected I was iron deficient, but didn’t suggest a supplement.  That’s odd.

Wendy suggested a liquid iron supplement (AMAZON PRIME!)  I did a bunch of research and taking an iron supplement even if you DON”T have anemia won’t hurt and can still be good for you – so might as well try it. I am so tired and spacey that I stared at the bottle for a good few mins trying to read the dosage, before I realized it was in Spanish.  Maybe my lizard brain was translating just enough?  (One note on iron supplements, you need to be careful with iron supplement pills, they can cause constipation!)

I spoke to both my GP and my gyno just to make sure I wasn’t turning into a self-diagnosing weirdo at home.  They both agree the most likely cause is anemia – and that “someone” (there is passing the blame for you) should have tested me.  GP said to get a blood test and also one for thyroid (as pregnancy can affect that, too).  Gyno said no need to get a blood test if I don’t want to.  I have been taking the iron for 2 days so we might never know anyway – just keep taking the iron supplement and come see them in 2 weeks if I am not feeling better.

YUM! Trevor made brunch: Omelette cooked in butter that has been sautéed with garlic, scallions, minced Anaheims. Stuffed with cheese (strong Bucherondin de chèvre, sautéed mushrooms and spinach).

(I had already had yoghurt and berries, so this is technically – and please say this like a hobbit- SECOND BREAAAAAKFAST for me 🙂 .)