One year

It was one year ago today that my world was turned upside down.

I remember that it was already a bad day to begin with.  A parent came in that morning angry about something and I had to deal with it.  Then during my planning period, a teacher aide decided to leave a [very dependent] student (not mine) in my classroom unsupervised.  So I had to deal with that.  And then deal with the aide getting mad at me for telling him we can't leave students unattended.  And with a million other things going wrong at school, I kept telling myself "I can't wait for some good news to put an end to this bad day."  I was carrying my cell phone with me all day, anxious for the doctor to call me.  After all, SA's can't take that long, and they'd had the whole weekend to review it, so how hard could it be to call me?  Oh if I only knew.
I didn't get the call until after the students were gone, thank goodness.  I was in another teacher's classroom when the phone rang, and then got all excited getting out a sticky note and pen, thinking I would want to write down some numbers and percentages....
Until he asked, "Would you rather hear an unusual finding over the phone or in person?"  Well how are you supposed to wait for that?
"I just wanna know," I said, bracing myself.
"Well...we did the semen anaysis....and there were no sperm found."  *shit!* I thought.  It hurts.  While my tears are welling up the doctor keeps going on with "This is....this is NOT something caused by *being stressed out* or *having a bad day*"   Thanks doc, as if I didn't know.
After I got off the phone, I just started bawling uncontrollably.  And my colleague (thankfully the ONLY person in the room at the time) tried her best to comfort me.  I know she meant well, it just didn't help telling me "Well when [daughter's husband] did it he had nothing...and I mean nothing! But it's because he was taking diabetes medication."  She did however convince me to ask my principal for a day off, as I'm usually really hesitant to take a day off unless I'm EXTREMELY sick.  But I knew I couldn't handle work the next day, so I did go down to the office, barely able to get the words "I don't think I can come in tomorrow" out of my mouth.
Then getting ready to go home I texted DH, I knew he was waiting to find out.  I think I wrote something like "It's pretty bad, but there may be hope."  He was in class at the time but stepped out to call me back immediately.
"There's nothing," I said, sobbing.
".........Nothing?"  That was so hard to hear the shock in his voice.
When he got home we just cried and cried and cried and cried.  That was one of the hardest nights for me.  Asleep, I could forget about everything.  Dream nice dreams again.  But I woke up several times throughout the night.  Each time I woke up, reality would instantly hit me again, and I would cry myself back to sleep.  I thought how will we ever go on with out lives?

Fast forward one year and what a difference a year has made.   We've made such a peace with IF, in a strange way I'm almost thankful for how it has opened our eyes, and brought us closer together.  I thought when this "dreaded anniversary" rolled around I would probably have a bad emotional day all over again.  But it didn't even phase me.  In fact I didn't even realize that today marked 1 year of living with IF (or, knowledge therof) until a few hours ago.

One thing that worries me, though, is if the only reason I feel "ok" with IF is because I'm still clinging to this hope of my dream being fulfilled.  The dream of getting to experience pregnancy and giving birth to DH's child.  This may sound weird, but sometimes I almost feel like we've "betrayed" our azoo brothers and sisters.  Because we got the "good" diagnosis.  The obstructive azoo.  The supposedly easy fix.  There is supposedly still hope for having our own biological child.
I'm getting the fear that this hope I'm clinging to may not be a good thing.  I'm afraid I may not be as strong as I think I am.  That one day all these hopes may be dashed away, and then I may not be able to swallow my own words of comfort.  Looking forward to planning IVF is bringing both excitement and fear in me.

Something good that has changed in one year, is how open DH is willing to be about his diagnosis.  Maybe he just thinks it's a cool conversation topic to tell a friend "I'm a mutant" and see how they react.  Anyway I think this is great that he has this much peace with it and can make a step closer to advocating for IF awareness, without feeling any shame.  Although I don't think it's wise to completely "out" ourselves (i.e. at work, or especially on FB).

I wonder where another year will lead us.

PMS is a bitch

That's all there is to it.  I don't ever remember it being this bad pre-BC.  But seriously, I'm sick of feeling like tearing everyone's head off every time AF approaches.  Alanis Morissette to the rescue...maybe...

On top of that I've been having really weird dreams lately.  I'll chalk it up to anticipation/anxiety over the new job I'm starting next week, as that is usually the topic of my dreams lately.  Like I will show up to work and they tell me my program has to be moved to a different building, which ends of being in the same school I taught at in OK for the last 3 years so I'm feeling like "fuck I'm stuck in this dump again."  Or that we had moved back to OK after only 3 months and I'm angry about all the money we wasted.

Then the last couple nights I've had weird baby/TTC- related dreams.  First it was that we had a baby girl, but everyone was saying the baby didn't look like us.  Then I saw her and even DH and I were questioning if the docs had screwed up.  Last night I dreamed I was learning to give myself menopur shots, and when I realized it was too early to be cycling, I was told this was a "practice round."  So I kept trying to figure out the needle (which was more like a mechanical pencil) and then realized I was sitting in my classroom with all the students impatiently waiting for me to start a lesson. Weird.

Oh well I wouldn't put too much thought into analyzing my dreams.  I'm sure it's just hormones.  Seriously, if most of my dreams had any meaning then what a fucked up world this would be.