new year – The Endo Zone

2020 So Far: A New Direction

For months now, I’ve intended on joining the army of bloggers who faithfully post each week. It was even one of my 2020 resolutions! But, one month into the new year, I haven’t been able to make it happen.

Until this week.

That’s my goal this year: to post weekly.

My blog has been dying a slow death the past couple of years, despite my earnest intentions to keep it updated. I’ve never been a huge social media poster to begin with (though I do stalk it on the regular). This blog feels different than social media in a way, but I’m not sure if it is indeed different. Throughout the course of my days something will often happen that causes me to think, “I should blog about that!”… but then I never do. Maybe it’s the effort required, since I’m not quickly posting a pic with a cute caption and moving along like most social media. Blogs take more thought, more intention, more planning. More work.

Through a long—and still continuing—process, I have moved on from the Trying to Conceive world to the Childless Not by Choice world. I’m still new to CNBC, and don’t yet have both feet firmly planted in it because I harbor some reluctance to completely let go of TTC. Is that due to stubbornness? Fear? Worry that I’ve given up too soon? Maybe it’s all three. From what I can tell so far, the TTC world is a kind of subset of the general (fertile-aged) society. The CNBC world is a subset of that subset, and its defining lines are very blurry.

Since all of that is going on in my life, I’ll be making some changes to this blog in the coming months. So stay tuned! Among other things, I want to move to a new paid URL without losing content or subscribers, and also change the blog’s name. I plan to do more posting on exploring life CNBC and less with TTC, if anything at all. As for endometriosis, well I think I’ll always be blogging about that, because it’s the foundation of how I landed here in the first place! I do have a few upcoming posts in mind, so please, everyone, hold me to it to post weekly.

Until next time,

Peace. ❤

So Long, Farewell, I’m Thrilled to Say Goodbye (to 2019).

mural-1347673__340

It is currently evening on New Year’s Eve, and as I ~~schlep~~ sit here on the couch in my comfy clothes with a nice glass of red and Puppy by my side (can you say ‘party animal’?!), I can’t help but feel extremely grateful to be seeing the tail end of 2019.

Although I’m not usually one to classify an entire year as being either all-good or all-bad, I must say that the vast majority of 2019 has consisted of the latter. Hence, a big portion of my blogging absence this year, a problem which I plan to remedy in 2020.

For starters, I hope to take this blog in a new direction in the coming year, including moving it to a different URL. While it may have started nearly five years ago (what?! *gulp*) as an infertility blog, I feel strongly that that chapter in my life is closing. However, I still want to blog: about what exactly remains to be seen or to reveal itself.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve become disingenuous on my blog and for that I apologize. Truth be told, the whole infertility aspect of my life has begun to take a major backseat. I still follow other IF bloggers and have made some lovely Instagram friends via infertility and childless-not-by-choice tags, but I feel myself moving away the tenacious grip that failure to procreate has had on me.

One example of this dis-ingenuity? My marriage has had a horrible year in 2019. Like, in-the-gutter-type horrible. I’ll not expound on details here, but it’s been kind of hard to bemoan my childless state in 2019 when, throughout the first three quarters of the year, I worried strongly that I’d even have a husband with whom to try to procreate. Other examples include financial hardships, Jake’s unemployment for the majority of the year, us having purchased what was definitely the wrong home in the end of 2018, and a general loneliness and disconnect that has seemed to plague me for some time now. Oh yes, and that most recent miscarriage in the end of the summer… That was a hurt with which I still haven’t really dealt, as in the scheme of things this years it’s gotten lost in the shuffle. That sounds horrible, but in the name of being honest, let’s call things for what they have been. Sometimes it’s all we can do just to survive.

Lately life has taken turns for the better, albeit in baby steps. The pieces are fitting back together, and I’m trying very hard to be patient in that because I know no one’s life pieces ever fit perfectly.

Now, with all that depressing business out of the way, I have big plans for 2020! Although it’s a sure bet that I won’t be reinventing myself in the span of the next six hours and emerging as an entirely different person, I am gratefully anticipating the new year and new decade. Change—even the prospect of it—can be so refreshing.

For all those reading this who may have also had a difficult year, I emphasize and sit with you in the pain, even if your difficult circumstances were not something I directly experienced. And for those of you reading this who have had an excellent year overall, I pray nothing but the same, and better, for you in the coming year.

Cheers to 2020!

Peace. ❤

2017 blog review.

I can’t be the only person who’s thrilled to see the end of 2017, amiright? It wasn’t a good year for me like at all, both in Fertility Land and in my offline life. I’m usually not the kind of person who classifies entire years as either ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but 2017 was just straight up rough. I’m still kind of stunned that I came out of it intact.

I’m clinging to hope of 2018 being worlds better! So far it has been better, except that our elderly kitty, Grumpy Cat, fell ill this past weekend. But God has been so very good and gracious in the situation, and I’m 100% believing that GC is in His excellent hands and will be okay.

Now that that’s out of my system, I thought it’d be fun to look back over my blog in 2017 and see what all went down. I’m like the worst at checking the stats to this site; I’m forever forgetting to look at that kind of thing! I pulled the year’s stats and was surprised at which posts were most popular. That’s how it is in the blog world I guess: some of what I though were my worst posts fared excellently. Other posts that I [humbly] believed were pretty good, tanked.

Anyway, here’s a look back at the Top Five posts of 2017:

#5. Back at Square One: an unforgettable ER visit and continued frustrations about IM bleeding

#4. Infertility and Job Interviews: recounting a job interview gone very wrong

#3. Conceiving to Conceive: post-surgical hope for a pregnancy

#2. Surgery Recap: Part 2 of 2: entirely too wordy—and far too detailed—post-op musings

and

#1. Hysteroscopy #: Arcuate Uterus: a 2016 post all about weirdly-shaped uteruses (or is that ‘uteri?’)

I’d like to think that this here ‘lil site has helped someone else struggling with fertility and endometriosis in 2017. WordPress helpfully gave me this here map…:

2017blogstats

… so I’m ever hopeful it has reached another person and helped her along her way in life, encouraged her, or let her know she’s not alone.

And rather than seeing this new year as twelve more tries at a baby, I am instead choosing to focus outwardly in 2018: What can I do this year to help others? How can I be a blessing to other women? in my community? at my church? to my family?

Believing good things are in store this year, for myself and all my IF friends.

Peace.

REPOST: Year in [fertility] Review: 2017

images (2)

**originally posted on December 15, reposting today because, well, 2017’s end is imminently looming. Praise God for a new year!**

Somehow—in a blur of time and events and dates—another year is quickly drawing to an end. I’m kind of stunned to find myself writing about 2017 ending, and so soon it seems! And I’m kind of [read: very] disappointed to find myself still blogging about fertility stuff as we move into another year. Even so, I’m immensely grateful for God’s goodness and protection during this year. Fertility issues are just one part of the whole of my life.

So for those and myriad other reasons I can’t write here, I’m okay and moving still toward a deeper peace. I continue to have moments of anger, frustration, and sadness about our inability to conceive. Some days I can’t sense the light; I can’t see how this infertility will ever resolve; I feel my faith weaken. But, overall, I am sustained by God’s peace and a strong sense to continue to wait patiently… although I’m notoriously impatient. Character is being built here. The process is uncomfortable.

As I look back over the year, here are the highlights of 2017 when it comes to our TTC sojourn, good and bad:

SUCCESS: A successful laparoscopy in March that opened my Fallopian tube and cleared away lots of adhesions.
SUCCESS: Ovulated 12/12 month this year.
SUCCESS: Normal cycle lengths 12/12 months this year, ranging from 24 to 31 days long.
SUCCESS: 11/12 luteal phases that were 14+ days. Goodbye, luteal phase defect of 2016!
FAIL: My average 2017 ovulation cycle day was CD12, usually falling on CD 9 or CD10. Hello, too-short follicular phases.
SUCCESS: Diagnosis of mystery bleeding. Finally!
FAIL: Diagnosis, but no cure for mystery bleeding. Intermenstrual bleeding continues.
FAIL: Why, in my mid-30s, do I still have monstrously painful periods? I thought that period pain decreased with age? (Actually, when I think back to my teen years and early 20s, my current period pain looks like a walk in the park.) I still have to take prescription painkillers and spend a day or two in bed each month. So, this mini-rant counts as a fail.
FAIL: Perhaps the biggest fail of them all: still not pregnant. Yeah…

Our 2018 fertility plans remain open-ended. Jake and I are in preliminary talks about going another round with IVF. I’m quasi open to it; he’s much more cautious. We totally cannot afford IVF and if we do decide to do it, I’ve no idea where the funds will come from. Like I said, it’s preliminary.

I’m in the process of changing my health insurance over to Jake’s plan. I found a clinic that—believe this?—SPECIALIZES IN ENDOMETRIOSIS (huzzah!). And when I say specializes in, I mean that endometriosis is ALL THEY DO, all day. The entire office is dedicated to patients suffering from endo. Once my insurance has been squared away, I plan to make an appointment. I so need a doctor who will actually help me, and I’m hopeful that this place will be the answer. It’s an hour away and 90% of the drive involves major congested roads but I don’t even [mostly] care.

Even though it’s two-odd weeks til the new year, I’m pleased to see 2017 on its way out. Never liked the odd numbered years as much for some reason. I’m ever hopeful that 2018 will usher in new beginnings in our fertility sojourn.

Peace.