Turdy.

I have so much to blog about.
I have so much to catch up on, but right here & now, I am going to blog about yesterday, which was a super-shitty day, sprinkled with a tad of good stuff.

In order to explain how shitty yesterday was, I have to back up to Wednesday.

{those who are squeamish or don't want to read about my girly bits can stop reading now.}
Wednesday: I had a hysterosalpingogram done.
What's that? It's a special x-ray with contrast that shows your uterus and fallopian tubes.
How does it feel? It hurts.

Wednesday, Gage was picked up after school by Memaw, because I was busy at Baylor having my test done.

What did Gage find at Memaw's???
A turtle.
His heart was set on keeping it.
What did he name it? "Turdy." Why? Because his little innocent mind has no idea that people refer to sh*t as a "turd." {Man, I really hate that word.}

So, Daddy & Gage go to the pet store, and buy what they think they need, and we get the turtle all set up...






Wednesday night: woke up in the middle of the night. (1) I had a toothache. {UGH!} (2) we couldn't find the turtle. Hubby instantly blamed the dog. I got the flash-light and looked under all of Ranger's sneak-away-to-chew-your-shit-up spots. Nothing. No turtle. Turns out, Turdy buried himself in the shavings/bedding in the little terrarium, so we found him. I downed a few Advil and went back to sleep after a little TV.

Work up on Turd-Day/Thursday, and took Gage to school. Called the dentist for an ASAP appt. Turns out: I needed a root canal. WTF!? Apparently I've got calcification in part of the root of one of my teeth in the way back, and the root there was inflamed, and I'm sure there is some more technical-dental-speak for what was actually going on, but I forget what words were actually use. I will say this: I asked if this was my fault or if I could have prevented this in any way, and I was told that no, sometimes this just happens and it's unpredictable. That made me feel better. There's no infection or anything in there, so that's good.

Who knew that laughing gas for the root canal would be the highlight of my Thursday? If I had known that was as good as it was going to get, I'd have asked them to juice me up a little more!

After the root canal, I needed to stop by a different pet store to get a special heat lamp for this little turtle. Because you know---I was feeling so great & all s/p root canal.

After I showed the pet store lady a picture on my phone of Turdy, she informed me that his habitat was all wrong, because he's actually an aquatic turtle. Awesome. He needs an aquarium-type habitat with a heat lamp, and some other lamp to give him nutrients, something-or-another about his shell not getting soft. He needs to swim. He needs to crawl & dig in rocks. Oh, and it's illegal to sell those types of turtles that are less than 4 inches in diameter across their shells because they can transmit salmonella. {Hi, is this the school? Yes, well this is Gage's mom. Can you go down to his classroom and slather him from head to toe in GermX? .... Oh, no reason, just for good measure. Never really can be too careful now can we?}
$200+ later, I left the store, and Turdy has everything he needs to get a good start in life. If this turtle doesn't make it, it's damn sure not because I didn't try.

So, I went back home. I had all of the stuff in the back end of the car, but it was too heavy for me to get out and assemble by myself.

I decided to lay down and rest a bit before Gage got out of school. Blogged a bit. Then the phone rang.

Dr.M, the Reproductive Endocrinologist called. Not good news. Looks like both of my tubes are blocked now, likely from endometriosis or scar tissue/adhesions from c-section. I could see clearly on Wednesday that the left tube looked like it was blocked, and that's what the Radiologist told me was part of her preliminary assessment, but the right one too? That was surprising to me. The two tubes are blocked at different ends.

I've kind of felt like my endo symptoms have been increasing for the past couple of years, but I've always just thought that maybe it was in my head. Guess now we know it wasn't.

So what does this mean for us?
It means that the last 3 IUIs never could have worked.
It means that IUI will NOT work for us.
It means that we have limited treatment options including: IVF to get pregnant, or fallopian tube surgery with endo/adhesion excision to reopen the canals and possibly conceive through IUI.

I haven't really cried much throughout all of this, but yesterday I cried. Yesterday was the day that kind of blind-sided me with information that I didn't want to hear, and overwhelming emotion. We made a peace with the fact that conception would be difficult for us when Hubby had his prostate surgeries in 2008. We made a peace with the fact that this would be a process for us. We had no way of knowing that we'd be hit from both sides with issues!

But---my husband has been so great during all of this. AMAZING really. It's truly a testament of his love for me and our desire to add to our family. When I fall apart, he reminds me that we are one step closer to achieving our goal. When I feel hopeless about this, he reminds me that we still have options, and that although it's not how I envisioned, it remains possible. When I feel consumed by this quest, he reminds me that we still have this amazing life to live, and so much to be appreciative of. I fail daily at being the perfect wife, and I'm not saying that he's perfect all of the time---but he seems to be perfect at navigating us through this journey, and keeping me steadily moving forward.

So, in a nut shell: yesterday was Turdy {as in, shit-filled}.
I had a root canal, dropped 200 bucks on a germy turtle, and found out that I can't "just get pregnant."

On the bright side: all of the things above about Hubby and our options are good things, and Gage has his first t-ball game tonight (all the others have been rained out), and I'm going to see Mamasita this weekend for Easter. Moms make everything better. Even if they can't change any of it, they make you feel better (or at least, my mom usually does, and I hope that I make Gage feel better when things are rough), it's Easter this weekend, and we are going to have a lot of fun.