Where do we go from here?

There are studies that show that the stress of Infertility is comparable to the stress people go through when dealing with a terminal illness.  That is sometimes hard to believe, and other times less hard to believe.  My life is not in danger from this, obviously, and I try not to make comparisons between different pains and hardships.  All the same, though, this is a disease and it is choice-limiting and it has the potential to majorly change the course of my entire life and my plans for it.  When your Plan D turns into a plan A and you have to start thinking about Plans E and F...  Stress?  What stress?  I'm out of sick leave, out of insurance, and about to enter another set of medical procedures that are overwhelming and scary to even think about.  So, that.  Some might see it as a choice I am making, and in some regard it is a choice.  Oh boy, though, does it not really feel like a choice.  This or what???  Well, this or Plan F.  Which we may get to eventually.

This article was making the rounds a month or so ago, and I thought it was really eye-opening in terms of how to handle people who are going through anything that is hugely challenging and hard to understand.  The author of the post is talking about when his wife had breast cancer, but of course I read Infertility in everything.  I'm sure you can read this same post and think about challenging things you have gone through and see how it relates.  To me, it is a concept that is just useful overall in how we think about other people and how we provide comfort.

I was planning to make a post about some of this a couple of week's ago, when it was National Infertility Awareness Week, but i didn't feel like delving into it then.  I was in Ohio spending time with family and friends and enjoying my life.  I did, though, post a banner on my facebook page, because I do think it is important - the whole awareness thing.  I am so open about all of this compared to most, and I still feel a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and a lot of discomfort around this.  I fight it as best I can and I power through the same way I've powered my way through other uncomfortable emotions in my life (painful shyness, debilitating jealousy).  What I want, though, is for it to not feel like this for women (and their partners).  I want health insurance and health care to be more fair around this particular disease (it's not the only one, I know, believe me - but don't get me started on health care).  Awareness can't hurt, right?  The fact that I cringed every time I saw that banner on my Facebook page is exactly what told me I needed it to be there.

I will say that I do still feel so so lucky in my life...there is so so much good in so many parts of it.  I have to have the most amazing partner in the world, at least for me.  I do know that together even our Plan F life can be beautiful, even if it takes a lot of pain and a lot of mourning before it feels beautiful.  Each loss of a plan is a whole new cycle of grief, loss and mourning before we can move on and each new cycle of grief gets harder as the likelihood of things working out the way we've always imagined our lives working out becomes more and more distant.

I think I'm going to end this here.  My intent was to actually write about what is going on and what our next steps are, but that just seems like too much for one post.  I'll come back in the next few days and update you on the next steps for us.  We had one plan, but it's changed a little bit, due to information we got in our last frozen cycle.  So, I'll be doing some more testing before we move forward.  I'll tell you about that all soon.