Business as usual

 Things haven’t been so great around here lately.  I am in a shocking mood and everything is pissing me off.  Here are a few of my current irritations:

• Annoying Dr S has been approved for surrogacy, but there are still a couple of things we have to sign before we submit our application (that the RTC want lodged by tomorrow).  I don’t really want to sign these documents until she has given us some of the information the document says we have received.  But guess what?  She’s not phoning us back, so I am going to have to suck it up again, and not get what I want, to be the one to compromise.  Fancy that.

• I went on her precious metformin for 6 weeks and it wrecked my egg quality.  Last cycles bloods showed my level of estogen at ovulation to be around 800.  Only two cycles ago it was 1500.  What has changed?  Going on metformin, going OFF T3 and onto T4, all at Dr s’s advice.  Thanks for setting me back another month or more.  Now we can’t TTC until my levels improve.  I was so looking forward to starting this month and I am beyond disappointed that following her advice has turned out so badly.

• My thyroid tests after 6 weeks on T4 are awful.  My TSH did NOT come down below 2, where she wanted it (it went from 2.01, to 2.6) and my T3 ballooned up to 700, the highest it has ever been.  My T3 to reverse T3 ratio plummeted to 58, the lowest it has ever been.  In short, she couldn’t have fucked up my thyroid function any harder if she’d been trying.  I have spent a difficult week coming off the T4 and going back on the T3, and still am adjusting the dose (we took over a year to get it right, initially).  I have been extremely tired and generally felt like shit for the whole time I was on T4, and it hasn’t levelled out yet.  Today I am particularly ropeable.  I hate feeling like this.

• Meanwhile, the lovely Dr H has put me on other meds to help increase my fertile mucus – amoxycillan and gauifenesin.  Yep, antibiotics and cough syrup. The trouble is, I am sopposed to take them from 4 days pre-peak, to 3 days post peak, but my cycles have been so erratic with the bloody metformin and T4 interference that I can’t say when 4 days pre peak will be.  So I have to take them longer, just to be sure.  It is working, though, which is something, but having to remember to take more stuff (including an afternoon dose) is not helping my mood.

• The other thing she has me on is naltrexone.  Oh yes, it has really helped me to kick my heroin habit I must say.  Apparently low-dose naltrexone can influence the reproductive hormonal cascade from top down, and has had positive results in levelling out the wonkiness.  I am only on 2mg per day (half an hour before bed) and need to go up to 4.5, but have had to bide my time due to all sorts of other shit going on.  The side effects of this drug are dry mouth (which is almost gone, after a month) and sleep disturbance- light sleep, vivid dreams (which is almost under control).  For the first 2 weeks I didn’t sleep more than 3 hours solid, then woke about 20 times thereafter all night long.  Very tired and cranky the following day.  Didn’t help the T4 was fucking me over, and I blamed the naltrexone entirely but looking back I suspect it was a double-whammy.  Then after two weeks my sleep was getting better, I was just about to go up a dose when BAM, a close friend died.

•  Saturday 17th of March Mike and I went over to Christine’s (my 1st egg donor) house to collect some clay from their backyard.  Stuart, her husband and our yoga teacher was in the middle of major home renovations and had piles of clay to spare for our cobbing project.  She was in Perth for the weekend, the kids were in the house watching TV and I went in to see where Stuart was. Poked my head in the bedroom and he was asleep so I left him to it, we collect clay and went home.  A couple of hours later Mike gets a call from one of the doctors- Stuart is dead!  We were just in total shock.  49, fit and healthy, non drinker non smoker, exercises. His kids are 4 and 7.  We went and collected them and kept them overnight while Christine drove back from Perth.  Anyway, the short story is that it has been a hideous week, I didn’t sleep much, have been in shock and feeling very deep grief.  I can’t believe I saw him dead.  He wasn’t asleep when I checked on him, he didn’t wake up that morning.  He must have died in the night.  It may be 3-12 months before the coroner releases his report on the cause of death, so none of us know.  Mike and I have been doing major organising for Christine and have had not much time to spare for anything else.  The funeral was Tuesday in Perth.  It was lovely, but very sad.  I am still very very tired.  I am hoping that my thyroid levels out on 30mcg of T3 by the end of this week, because I am really starting to crack up.

• The build will not be finished for Easter. The shell of the room will be done, but the fit out has to wait until the floors can be sanded and sealed, and there just won’t be enough time to make that happen.  I am bummed about that.  I know it is trivial in light of a friend’s death, but I am still disappointed.  Everything just keeps fucking dragging on and on and on.  I just want to bloody well get something finished and enjoy it.

• The gardener keeps cancelling and I am WAY behind schedule for getting things done around the place before Easter.  Combined with Mike and I taking 10 days out to attend to Christine’s urgent needs, we have major backlog.  With my dodgy back and wrists, there is much of it I physically will not be able to do.  When will Mike have time?  I’m feeling pressured and annoyed with the gardener.  Though his cancellation this time is because of injury, he’s generally unreliable, and frankly his body isn’t cut out for this manual labour, he is often getting unwell/injured due to work.  I know he needs the money, but also we need regular help to maintain our property and his erratic availability is always putting us behind schedule.  It pisses me off, and I think this is the final straw. Time to seriously look for someone else and give him the sack.

• Mike’s payrise still has not come through.  All the documentation has been signed, and they will pay back to 1st of Feb, which is great, but no sign of any money yet, and it is almost April for godsake.

• The grant money for the surgery extension build is still not available.  More dicking around required.  We are having to pay someone to manage that for us, which will eat into the grant money considerably, if we ever see it!

So there you have it, the last 6 weeks in a nutshell.  Fucking about with medication, half of which set me back a month or more, the other half of which is either tedious to remember or ruining my sleep. Dealing with another round of grief and loss.  At the mercy of useless paper-shufflers and inefficient people in general.  Business as usual, really.