PANIC ATTACK!!!!

Well, yesterday went downhill fast. If there's one thing an infertile doesn't need when trying to conceive it's stress or worse a panic attack. The day was going okay, not great, but okay. I am the first to admit I am not a morning person. So, I got to work and was easing into the day. I finally was getting into a routine and suddenly half the day was gone. I decided to grab lunch with a co-worker and that was my big mistake. I am definitely a "hate to lose control of the situation" person. Little did I know that not only would I not be driving to the fast food joint, but we were being joined by other co-workers (I barely know) who would be doing the driving. What I thought would be a quick 1/2 hour lunch turned into a 1+ hour lunch with me going into full panic/anxiety attack mode because my carefully scheduled work plans for the afternoon were rapidly disintegrating. I was trapped. I couldn't leave. I kept surreptitiously looking at my watch and was trying to control the rising panic that I would be late for a scheduled meeting. My mind was racing with freaked out thoughts and all I could do was smile politely and try to act like I wasn't about to scream with frustration! When we got back, I ended up going to the bathroom to sit in a stall to close my eyes, repeat the mantra "Om, shanti, shanti, shanti" (Om, peace, peace, peace) and try to do some rhythmic breathing to calm down and stop the massive panic anxiety attack I was having. It helped some and I worked through the 1 1/2 hour meeting and the rest of the afternoon. I went home and watched a movie (Babel) that I needed to return soon, but it didn't help. By the time bedtime arrived the panic/anxiety attack was in full mode with chest pains, tingling, heartburn, etc. It was a bad night and in the morning (even after getting a little sleep) I still felt horrible with chest pains so I caved in and had my guy call the doctor's office (on a Saturday no less) and next thing I know they are telling me to go straight to the hospital. [Apparently chest pains = do not stop, do not pass go, go directly to ER.] They were nice at the hospital, but after 3 hours, an EKG, some blood work, and a shot of some kind of acid reflux medication, I was informed by the nice Intern that yes, it was an anxiety attack, not a heart attack and would I like a script for either anti-depression medication or an anti-anxiety medication? I chose the later after she assured me it wouldn't be harmful to a pregnancy/fetus and that I only needed to take it when I was having another anxiety attack. On the way home, after grabbing a VERY late breakfast/lunch/dinner rolled into one my guy was too tired to hit the drugstore and the pain was less, so I will be filling the script tomorrow. (Hopefully not to use it but just in case.) Even though we didn't do an IUI this month because I had a cyst (3.1 cm/right side)-we had a boatload of sex to try for a natural PG. After all this stress, I'm thinking the chance of anything sticking if it did actually work is probably nil by now. I'll still check next week with an HPT, but who am I kidding? Stress is an MF when it comes to living my life, let alone getting pregnant.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

So, one of the first things I had to do when starting this blog was think up a name. That meant trying to figure out the main theme of my story. Oh yeah, infertility-got that! But, I knew that there was more to my story than just plain old vanilla infertility. One of my main infertility issues, something that gets mentioned over and over again, is the fact that I am....weight, I mean wait...here it comes...the fact that I am overweight. It's one of the first things that gets mentioned by any doctor I visit, noticed by mere acquaintances and is usually followed up with the key phrase "the simplest thing to do to help with your health problems/infertility is to try to lose some weight." Duh...like I'm not already aware of that. Well, if I didn't realize how much it impacted my fertility in the beginning, I certainly know now!" So, there you have it. Two of my biggest nemesis: infertility and fatty tissue. I wanted my blog to reflect this somehow. A blog title that would allude to the biggest issues in what has now become my race against time for a child to call my own.

I played around with some titles:

-Weighting to Exhale-Taken. Who knew there were so many blogs out there dealing with compulsive eating?

-I played around with synonyms for "weight" and "pregnancy" like Expectantly Weighting or Weighting Expectantly They just didn't sound right.

-Then I thought my BA in English had finally paid off with a little play on words straight from Dickens = "Great Expectations" (I knew taking that "Victorian Literature" class was a smart move!)-Again taken. Not just by the obvious Dickensian fans, but strangely enough a Google search came up with a type of site that starts with a "p" and rhymes with "corn". I didn't even want to go there--those repressed Victorians. I should have known better.

-So, I began thinking about my goals:lose some weight, embrace aerobic exercise, and conquer my infertility. What makes you think of all those things? Bingo: "The Baby Race". The more I thought of it, the more I realized it's not just a marathon for me. It's more like a triathlon: swimming (sperm), cycling (ovaries), and running (to beat that ticking biological clock). Eureka! I found my blog name! It's not just any old triathlon. It's My Infertility Triathlon. With a little luck, I'll be swimming, cycling, and running my way not only towards weight loss, but more importantly towards my fertility goal; an ovulation cycle that actually gets me pregnant and results in a healthy baby boy or girl.

As good a place to start as any...

Well, this is it. My first post on my first blog! I've wanted to start a blog for awhile. There are so many cool ones out on the web already, getting up the courage to enter the online community and post my thoughts took a bit, but I'm finally here. Frankly, I need the support. I thought long and hard about what the topic of my blog should be and found that I've already been getting a lot of silent nods of understanding just reading the many great bloggers out there going through the same thing I am...infertility. It's a hard road to walk. It's not something you think about until it happens to you. Infertility is frustrating, scary, and for someone who likes things to work "as planned", it's like a flash flood that wipes out the very foundation of your being. One minute you're living your life, not worrying about the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes passing you by and the next you're having the word "infertile" stamped on your passport and now every second counts like a ticking time bomb...Will you be able to diffuse the bomb and have a baby? Or will the bomb tick tock it's way to a point when your ovaries explode and any chance you had at achieving a pregnancy, having a "biological" child is wiped out forever? So, what's a gal gotta do to stay sane in such stressful times? Start a blog so that she doesn't annoy her husband, friends, or family with her constant infertility angst. Maybe no one but I will ever read this, but at least it will give me a place to ponder, to vent, to get things off my chest. If I'm lucky, it's a means to an end. At best, maybe someone else out there who is going through the same issues I am will read these posts and realize that there are other people out there who feel their pain and understand what they are going through when it comes to trying to conceive.