I've decided it is time to really open up a little and explain some of the craziness I was dealing with which really led to the summer break Scott and I decided to take. In April, after several months of fertility treatments, we still weren't pregnant. Scott and I were relaxing one evening when his friend told him that his wife's TB skin-test she had to take for her new job came back positive. Immediately my heart started beating rapidly, I got hot and flushed, and was convinced that I had TB. We had just spent an entire weekend with our friends at their cottage. I had slept in the same house as her.
Within thirty seconds of hearing this, I was not concerned about her health, about what it could mean for her starting her career as a nurse, nor was I concerned at all about the health of her family. I was only concerned with the possibility (in my head and not in reality) that I had contracted TB which would result in being completely infertile. I mean, Mrs. E had TB which settled in her fallopian tubes causing scaring, and leading to her inability to conceive.
Surely the same thing happened to me the weekend I stayed at my friend's cottage.
I called my mom. I called my mother-in-law (a nurse) and I called my grandmother (also a nurse). Everyone told me that a positive skin test only meant that my friend had been exposed to TB, not that she had an active case. And that you can't contract TB unless someone has an active case. But I couldn't and wouldn't take the chance. The next morning at work, I called my RE's office. The nurse explained the same thing but told me that I should call my general practitioner and schedule a skin test just to be sure. So I called my doctor, but they couldn't get me in for a week. Surely by then there would be no chance that I cold be treated, only ensuring the fact that this was the fertility kiss-of-death.
So I did what any other TTC-obsessed woman would do. I called the health department to schedule a test. I left work at lunch to drive the 30 minutes to the county Health Department to have the skin test administered. I left work two hours early two days later to drive back to the county Health Department to have the test read. I cried every night.
The test came back negative. Which now I realize, of course it would. My friend had additional tests which showed that she was probably exposed to TB at some time over the past few years, and of course she did not have an active case.
That was when I realized I had completely lost it.
The treatments, the medications, the hormones, driving to the RE's office multiple times a cycle for blood work and monitoring, it was all way too much for me. This wasn't how I had pictured starting a family. And this definitely wasn't me. It was then and there that I decided I needed a break. I needed to find my sanity again, or at least some semblance of my former sanity.
The thing is, once you've been here and been through this, there is no turning back.
It has been over two years now that Scott and I have been trying to get pregnant. It has been ten months since we first started fertility treatments.
I am still not pregnant.
But, I am in a much better emotional state than I was just a few months ago. I think the break was just what I needed to let myself regroup and calm down from the hysteria that surrounded my treatments and my life at that time.
I also think that this experience, and this post, has allowed me to open the door a little to what I have been feeling and experiencing. Thus far, I have been very cautious with my posts; with what I write and what I share. But the truth is that dealing with infertility is not easy, and it is not always (or ever) pleasant. So, I think that in my future posts I may be more open and honest with what is going on and with what I am feeling.
