How We Got Here

When I was 29, I woke up in a post-operative suite.

Thought #1:  Where am I?
Thought #2:  PAIN
Thought #3:  Is this real?
Thought #4:  I'M PREGNANT.  Oh god, I have to tell them I'm pregnant!  Where am I?  What is happening?  I swear I screamed, but no one heard me.  They all said I didn't scream at all.

They had taken the baby, my only baby, and they had taken the tube.  It had gone well.  I was lucky I did not bleed out.  I was lucky I did not pass out alone, and bleed out on the floor.  I was lucky my husband loaded me in the trunk of the hatchback and called a nurse friend who told him not even to stop to get me a blanket.  I was lucky I passed out and don't remember the pain.  I was lucky I had excellent doctors and an excellent facility which saved my life and both ovaries without even leaving a scar!  I was lucky for the excellent drugs they gave me.  And then my luck ran out.  That was 2012, a long time ago.

I call myself "Patient Subfertility" because of how detached, impersonal, clinical, and cold this process is.  I'm a patient.  Voicemail, last first DOB.

When I started IVF, I thought this was just a blown tube we'd avoid, easy.  HA!  Oh, you're the ruptured ectopic. Salpingectomy.  Diagnosis:  secondary infertility, tubal cause and the dreaded RPL, recurrent pregnancy loss.  Oh, and antiphospholid syndrome (APS) with lupus antibodies.  So I've been a patient a long time.  And I am working on staying patient, if that's possible.

Ruptured ectopic 2012.
Lots of drugs, 2012.
Failed IUIs, 2012-2013.
Failed IVF #1 with chemical pregnancy, December 2014, 5 frozen.
Unicorn "spontaneous pregnancy" in the two month wait to start IVF #2, Jan 2015.  I took cytotec (misoprostol) for my "missed abortion" at 9 weeks.
IVF #2 July 2015, freeze all for CCS, 6/7 normal.

Four known dead embryos.  Five figures spent.  Three pregnancies.  Three years.  Eighty (more?) visits to the fertility doctor.  I'm still here trying, I think.  Well, I'm trying to do something.