This Week Just Keeps Getting Better

If you know me in real life, you probably picked up on the fact that the title to this blog should be read with a lot of sarcasm. Last week, Russ had an appointment with a doctor for a physical. Turn your head and cough...you know what I mean. Russ told Doogie Howser (this is what we will call him, though, he's 52 according to WebMD) that we are trying to concieve and told him about my infertility treatment. So, Doogie had Russ get a blood draw. He got the results in the mail today. They are as follows:

Blood Sugar - normal, 92; normal is below 100
Total Cholesterol - normal, 186; normal is below 200
LDL (bad cholesterol) - normal, 128; goal is below 160
HDL (good cholesterol) - slightly low, 32; goal is above 45
Triglycerides - normal, 131; goal is below 150
Electrolytes - normal
Kidney Function Tests - normal
Total Testosterone - 265; should be around 600 to 700

What this tells us is that his testosterone is super low. He had a semen analysis in February and it came back fine. He has a follow-up on Monday with Doogie and if things happen as they should, I will have an appointment with the coochie cam and Obi-Wan on Monday. I will be taking his results to talk about them with Obi-Wan. After all, it really is his opinion that matters, not Doogie's.

Also, just to keep this fair, here is a list of some of my blood work results.

Follicle Stimulating Hormone - 5.54, normal
Prolactin - 22.9, normal
Thyroid Stimulating Hormone - 1.19, normal
Total Cholesterol - 133, optimal
LDL - 70, optimal
HDL - 50, optimal
Triglycerides - 66, normal
Glucose - 90, normal

I guess I should also say that I'm glad we found this. At least we are working our way toward an explanation of our infertility and now we can hopefully treat it better.

Stay Healthy Blogger Buddies!

Locked in our Bedroom

Russ and I were chatting yesterday and he asked me if I remember the time we were locked in our bedroom. I, of course, said yes and then said that I should totally blog about it because it is so funny! So, here goes:

When Russ and I got married, we moved into this ghetto townhouse down by the railroad tracks. It was on the right side of the tracks, but was still ghetto. We were always have problems with the place. Our upstairs bathroom leaked through the ceiling and our water heater grew mushrooms while we lived there. We also had some scary neighbors who I'm pretty sure were drug dealers. This was not a good situation at all!

Well, one of the problems we kept having is that we had a couple of doors that had door knobs that would stick. Our bedroom door was one of them. For some reason, we always shut our bedroom door at night. We really had no reason to do that. I guess it was just habit. So, we go to bed one evening and wake up the next morning and I get up to go to the restroom and I can't get the door open. What in the world?!?!? I pull and I tug and I get sweaty and by this time I have to go so bad that I'm starting to do the potty dance. So Russ tries and fails to get the door open. Now, we are about late to work so I have to call my boss and leave a message saying I was stuck in my bedroom! I was so afraid that he wouldn't believe me!

Well, I had called about this problem a few times and the landlord never did anything about it so I called him. He didn't answer (of course! This landlord was the worst landlord ever....he was also a cop but got fired from the force for being "unprofessional" to some college students). I called my Mom next. BTW, our bedroom was on the second floor so we couldn't just crawl out the window (though, that wouldn't have gotten us anywhere, either). She doesn't know what to do, either. She suggested calling 911, which we decided to use as a last resort. Neither of us had house keys in our bedroom so we couldn't throw them out the window so she could get in.

By this time, I'm fed up. So, I called Shayne (the landlord) and I left him a voicemail yelling at him that if he's not going to fix the problems at our place then he needs to at least answer his stupid phone and that we are locked in our bedroom and we can't get out!!!

Finally, after trying to kick the door down and trying to take the hinges off, we had to get creative. We didn't have any tools in our bedroom and the door jam was on the opposite side of the door so kicking it wouldn't have worked anyway. So, I grabbed a belt and started prying the door moulding off with the tongs of the belt. When I got the moulding off about a centimeter, I then took a candle snuffer (the only other thing in our bedroom made out of hard metal and pried it off the rest of the way. We saw that what had happened was the tongue came out of the door knob contraption and got jammed in the wood plank that it was supposed to click into. (I'm sorry that I don't know the technical terms for all of this, but if you've ever seen how a door works without the moulding on the wall, you should know what I'm talking about.) So Russ jammed his fingers into the crack between the door and the wood plank and pulled the wood plank back from the door while I shoved my fingers into the crack to try to pull the tongue out of the wall. This process took us at least thirty minutes before we were successful.

So, we made it out of our bedroom after an hour and a half of being trapped. I went into work an hour late and took the pieces of our door as evidence. My boss said to me, "Lisa, no one could make up a story that stupid so I know it has to be true." Thanks Boss.

Maybe This is the Problem???

Let's talk about hormones for a moment. Mainly, progesterone. My progesterone. If you direct your attention to my sidebar, the last four entries under "The Years in Review" tell you what my progesterone (P4) level has been at seven days past ovulation during four cycles. The number tells me whether or not I ovulated. Anything higher than a 5 means that I did, but Obi-Wan wants to see that number higher than 10 and some doctors want to see that number higher than 15 with a medicated cycle. So, basically, my P4 was good the first cycle, great the second cycle, okay the third, and not okay this cycle. Which, unfortunately, also means that this cycle most likely didn't work...we'll find out for sure later this week.

So, what is progesterone, you may ask. P4 is a steroid hormone, is synthesized from pregnenolone, a derivative of cholesterol. It is produced in the adrenal glands, the gonads (more specifically after ovulation in the corpus luteum), the brain, and if you are lucky enough to be pregnant, the placenta. The levels of P4 should be low before ovulation. Then they will rise after. Like I said before, if it is higher than 5, that indicates ovulation, but doctors like to see it higher than 10. If you are pregnant, those levels should continue to rise. If you aren't pregnant, your P4 will drop and trigger the release of your lining, your period. Obviously this information is in regards to females during childbearing years. P4 levels are low in children and post-menopausal women. Men also have P4 levels that are comparative to adult females during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle.

I copied this graph from Wikipedia. That's also the resource I used to explain P4.

All that said, my P4 is not nearly high enough to maintain a pregnancy. Which will probably lead to progesterone suppositories. I can't wait to start those bad boys!

A Little Blue and a Little Bitter

It is extremely difficult to keep the blues and bitterness at bay during infertility treatment. When you yearn for something so much and it seems to always be just out of reach, it wears on your soul. I have to constantly tell myself that God is in control and I need to trust Him and His will. But, I can't help but think: What if God is giving us the answer and we're not listening? How does one make that judgement? Does He want us to move on to adoption or does He want us to be patient for a biological baby a while longer or does He want us to live child-free? Each one is a possibility and I don't know how to discern the correct answer. I guess the only thing I can do is pray about it and study His word and try to live my life the way He tells me too. Will I ever know the correct answer to these life altering decisions? Probably not during my lifetime, but it is great consolation that He is watching over me and that my trust and faith lies in Him. So, I must strive to keep those blues and that bitterness away, no matter how difficult. I have to keep my thoughts centered on Him and He will help me through these tough times.

Look to Him Blogger Buddies.

New Features and WOW!

I would like to direct your attention to my sidebar and a couple new features I added on Thursday evening. My counter is one and the feature that has where the hits are coming from is the other. Since Thursday evening, I have had 153 hits on my site. WOW!!! I know that a few of those are mine from posting and seeing who had updated, but that can only be about 10 of them. That leaves 143 hits to my site in roughly 72 hours. Thanks Blogger Buddies! I hope you enjoy this blog about my life and please keep reading!

Keep Reading Blogger Buddies!

Why Do I Do This To Myself?

I am a person with very strong convictions on some things. I believe in the value system and that many Americans have forgotten what that even is. I also strongly believe in the morals brought to us by the Bible. God has the answers. We should listen to Him and what He wants us to do. It's not that hard. He gave us a handbook. But, for some reason I insist upon reading blogs by very opinionated people that I don't agree with. I don't know why I keep reading them. They just get me riled up and I feel compelled to comment and then inevitably I don't fully explain myself in the comment and they come back with a rude retort. After reading back over what I had said, their retort makes sense for what I said and I am left defeated. It's a stupid cycle and I don't know why I continue it. And why do I need to add more things to my life that will just raise my blood pressure? Why am I getting upset about something someone that I've never met in person wrote on their blog? So, I'm going to fix this and I'm not going to read these blogs anymore.

Re-Instating the Ban

I wrote about banning the television for three weeks a while back. After the initial ban , which we were able to do just fine, I did really good, but lately I've been watching more and more television again. The problem lies in the arena of Russ being on the job hunt. It's been a month now, and nothing. So when I get home from work every day, the TV is on. I assume it is on most of the day. I guess when you don't have a job, TV is a staple. I don't think that Russ doesn't look for jobs. It's just that most job applications are going online now so there isn't any reason for Russ to go into the stores and fill the application out. Plus, Russ' handwriting is atrocious and they wouldn't hire him if they saw it anyway. So, I am re-instating the TV ban, this time for longer. We are going to go four weeks and I hope this makes a difference in our lives. Our marriage has been a little strained for a while because of the whole trying to have a baby thing and I have high hopes that this will help us reconnect.

Things I can do during the TV ban:

1. Daily Bible Reading. I participated in the "read through the bible in a year" last year and started this year, but lost my chart a few months into it and haven't picked back up since. I know I can catch up so I'm going to start again.

2. Spend more quality time with Russ. We have disconnected lately and we really need to spend more time together talking and be a little more loving towards each other.

3. Scrapbooking. I'm so far behind, it's not even funny and there is no end in sight because I can't stand not taking pictures of everything!

4. Finish other craft projects. I have a cross-stitch that I started in college (6 years ago) that I haven't finished and I have letters that I need to paint for my nephew.

5. Walk more. I walk a ton, but I can always do more.

6. Work more on eating healthy and living healthy. I have slacked off a little due to the fact that I am less than ten pounds away from my goal, so I need to get back on the train. I also need to get more active than I am.

7. Read a book. Reading is fundamental and I would like to read books besides ones about infertility and adoption. I need to freshen up my brain.

8. Clean my house more. I am horrible at keeping my house dusted and uncluttered. I was good about it when we first were married, but I've never been the type to keep it spick-n-span. I need to, though.

9. Teach VBS. I was actually thinking about sitting this year out due to the stressors in my life right now, but I think it would help if I had an important project to dwell on instead of having babies.

10. Clean the car. We just bought our car in December and we haven't cleaned the inside once. We keep the trash and stuff out of it, but as for getting the hand vac and going to town, we haven't.

So, there's my list. I know I can do all these things so I'm going to.

Stay busy Blogger Buddies!

I Love It

When my nephew and niece come to my parents house. This is what I find:

Anything that can be filled with candy, has been. And it's always the best candy: skittles and starbursts!

Stay Sweet Blogger Buddies!

Right or Wrong?

Russ and I had an interesting conversation after bible class last night. We were talking about my blog and in the middle of a statement, the guy we were talking to said something to the effect of "we need to be open, like how you are on your blog, right or wrong..." What? Right or wrong? I didn't say anything then, but last night and today, I keep going over that in my mind. I never even thought that blogging could be considered "wrong." Is it the way I am comfortable telling the internet my most personal life details, but that I don't feel comfortable telling them to people face to face, especially people from the church? That is the only thing I can think of that would make this wrong. Well, I obviously don't subscribe to the feelings that blogging is wrong since I'm blogging about it. But, I just wanted to make some things clear. I blog because I am not an open person in real life. This is a stress release for me. It's therapuetic to be able to write down your feelings and events that take place in your life and to be able to get comments back from people that may be going through the same things as you. I am a person that will bottle up emotions and let them stew until I blow up like a bomb. This isn't true with everything, just the harder things in life. I am honest and open about the small stuff. So I've been really working at helping myself to manage my emotions better and blogging is one way I do that. It really does help and that's what makes it "right" for me.

BTW, if you think my blog is open and depressing, you should see my journal!

How to Deal

Isn't that the name of a movie that came out a few years back? If I remember correctly, that girl didn't deal well with anything, but it was a chick flick and it ended happily ever after. Oh, if that were the way it always happened. But, no, sometimes it ends like A Perfect Storm....where we don't make it. Wow, that was depressing (the movie and the statement). I just mean that it doesn't end up the way we want it to. I promise I'm not planning to die anytime soon, but infertility is really kicking my rear end. I am at a crossroads of whether I want to tell people about our issues or not. On one hand, I do, just to get it out in the open. But, on the other hand, I don't. People that haven't been through it don't understand and, inevitably, they won't say the right things. So, I've been struggling with this for a while now and as much as I want to just yell "I'm infertile!" from the mountain tops, I'm being held back. By something. What is it? Maybe it's the fact that people will tell me things like "relax" or "just stop trying." Or the fact that they will still insist upon showing me pictures of their bundles of joy while my arms are still empty. And while I am happy for people who are living out their dreams, I am also insanely jealous. I want what they have and I don't want to wait any more. Though, I have resigned myself to the fact that waiting is a part of this emotional game and I will just have to deal. Somehow.

That's Right....

It's raining....again.

Just to put this into perspective:

The annual average rainfall: 44.97 inches.

The rainfall for this year to date: As of June 30, over 30 inches.

Here's a picture of the golf course that we are so lucky to live on.


It's a lot prettier without the river flowing through the middle of it!

Here's my uniform for the year...galoshes!

Aren't they adorable?

My Second Obsession

As you know, I am obsessed with fertility treatments. But, let me introduce you to my second obsession: crafts. I can't get enough and do all kinds of different things. Here are a few of my projects.

I made this the day I bought my Cricut machine. BTW, I love Cricut!

I made this one for my Marmie for Mother's Day. Each tag says something I love about her.

I decorated this cake for my neice, Kaylee's, sixth birthday.

I love to make cards!

Get a Hobby Blogger Buddies!