Twisted Firestarter

It has been 3 weeks since the ectopic was discovered and the meth shot to treat it. This week I am having tear-free days, instead of tear-free hours. I am starting to feel a wee bit like myself again. I am still bleeding but no pain at all.

Last week, the rage was overwhelming me. I felt that all someone had to do was light the blue touch paper. In Stephen King's book Firestarter, the main character Charlie McGee has pyrokinetic powers and has to discharge the power into water to defuse it. She starts off with a bucket and as her power grows, she needs a lake to cool it off. That was me, last week. I could have sent a lake boiling and roiling with the white-hot rage I felt towards the world. I wanted the world to burn.

I felt cheated and robbed and exhausted at the thought of doing all this again and starting from scratch with treatment. I was also still feeling mild PG symptoms and I have to say that that is the most desperate thing. To feel those symptoms and yet know that the embryo is dying or already dead. No wonder I could not stop sobbing.

Luckily I rarely felt the need to leave the house so no innocent sheep were harmed. I might have aimed a death glare out of the window at a rabbit chomping on my alchemilla mollis but there is lots to go round so I decided to live and let live.

Sunday brought a turning point in that I did something normal. I cooked.

My new hob and oven had been installed at that point for over a month and I had never touched them. Mr P had been heating up stuff for all this time and if it was not something that could be heated in the oven or zapped in the microwave, then it just was not happening.

Now that is not to say that I am cooking everything from scratch every day now. I am not quite there yet but it was a step, a small one. I know I will get back to normal some time. I know it takes time but that is all I have got.

Noooooooooo!

How could this happen? I know he was getting on a bit but I can't believe it!!

Living in My Own Private Idaho

Apart from the time of the emergency admission to hospital for the abdominal pains from hell 2 days after the meth shot, I have not had any bleeding since then. Yesterday I had that PMS-headache that will not go away and the shooting pains I get towards my bottom that are also a PMS sign. Today cramping and spotting have given way to full-on blood. Is this finally the end?

All this week, tears have flown regardless of what I watch, talk about or read. I am incapable of returning to work and operating like a normal human being. In fact, today I spoke to my GP and she has signed me off work for a further 4 weeks, with the offer of anti-depressants in the future. I must have really looked a sight (I had to take the sunglasses off indoors).

After watching Brokeback Mountain the other day, I have to say that it is still haunting me. Such sadness and such enduring love. And the scenery in Canada. And the sheep.

Then I made the mistake of watching Mona Lisa Smile. What tripe. Apart from the second Gyllenhaal to make me have a crush on them this week.

Today I have Being Julia. Who knows what that is going to be like. It does not really matter as I will sob my way through it regardless.

I will leave you with a photo from the bottom of my garden on Midsummers Day. I managed to dodge the rain and the wind long enough to capture the shot. Needless to say, the start of summer here in Scotland inevitably means howling gales of 70mph wind and rain torrential enough to flatten my perennials. Normally I would be upset at this but there are just too many other things to cry about in my universe at the moment.

If I Wear Sunglasses, I Can Pass For Normal

Thank Hank that big, black sunglasses a la Jackie O are back in fashion again. Just the thing to cover up the tell-tale signs of non-stop weeping, black shadows and red veins.

Another week, another beta. Finally heading southwards.

6/6 482

8/6 616

14/6 903

19/6 618

Such puny numbers for all this angst and distress.

The clinic seemed happy enough with that drop. More bloodletting and collapsed veins next week to look forward to. I am not in any pain or having any bleeding at all. The pain I alluded to in my previous post was emotional.

Mr P has gone back to work today so I have got some friends round to play. Well, they are 2 fun-loving cowboys but needs must, eh?

Still

Still alive as I am breathing.

Still crying although not necessarily compatible with breathing.

Still in pain.

Still pregnant as HCG still rising.

Still waiting to wake up from this bad dream.

Still alive.

Tubular (Hells) Bells

**I drafted this on Saturday and within 2 hours of drafting, I was back in the mentioned gynae ward as an emergency admission. Everything is fine but I did not get home til now( Mon. afternoon). More later**



The deed is done.

Man, that methotrexate burnt for hours after it was injected. After it was done and Mr P was hugging me on the bed, it was the only time I cried that long, long day.

I spent 8 hours in the hospital on Thursday in a ward full of women having hysterectomies, myomectomies and all other kinds of gynae procedures. Do you know that apart from when I was born and doing IVF, I have never been in hospital for anything else ever, until now? Seems that kind of luck is gone.

We learned some more on Thursday morning about our ectopic. My HCG had risen about 50% to 616 in 48 hours. There was another smaller sac in the uterus that was not of viable size. My ectopic is ovarian, rather than in the fallopian tube. This puts me in the rare 5% of all ectopics that are not fallopian.

Even more freaky is that my embryo seemed to be participating in the "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here" game. It had travelled in a reverse fashion from the uterus, down through the blocked (?) left tube and out onto the ovary, where it decided that was the best place to implant.

Never mind the cushy 14mm lining in the uterus.

Never mind that we could never get a fertilised egg to go in the direction nature intended ever before.

Never mind that the HSG showed that tube as blocked.

It was probably like "Dude, where's the exit???".

Can I Have an E for Ectopic, Please Bob?

After another day yesterday of bad cramps and brown sludge, I called the clinic this morning and they hauled me right in for bloodwork and a scan.

Funny how they can do HCG bloodwork lickety-split at a time like this, eh?

HCG is 482. They do not know if that is on the way up or down.

There was a lovely little embryo cosily snuggled in by my left tube (the blocked one).

More bloodwork Thursday AM and then methotrexate Thursday PM.

Like Thalia, I am to continue the hormones until then. It seems a lot like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.

5w5d and it is all over. Thank you for all your kind words to my previous post.

PS. Anyone notice the date? Shiver.

Rip, Rig and Panic

Is this the way it ends?

4am this morning, usual pee stop and instead of the usual snowy white paper, it was streaked with brown sludge. All yesterday I was wracked with cramps, worse than period cramps.

Today more sludge every time I wipe, still dark brown. Still the cramps continue. Anything I eat seems to play havoc with my digestion, even just tea and toast.

I am a ball of fear, curled up in the fetal position. I was supposed to go to London for a wee holiday tomorrow but I have cancelled it. I am on bedrest until this resolves one way or another.

Is this the way it ends at 5w4d?

Days of Non-alcoholic Wine and Roses

Why, oh, why did both projects that have been consuming my life (the DE cycle and the kitchen renovation) come to fruition at the very same time???

My house is in chaos. There is stuff from the kitchen everywhere. I had to put my foot down to maintain the sanctuary-like atmosphere of our bedroom against the tide of mismatched crockery, 70s tupperware, umpteen electrical gadgets which were used once and never saw the light of day again (ice crusher, anyone?). The boxes of stuff which I trip over constantly are driving me mad.

Thankfully the end is in sight. The kitchen fitter has almost finished the cabinetry. This weekend the electrician and the plumber will finish off their ends. Tiling should commence next week. Phew! No wonder I put off doing this until now.

Of course, anytime I am doing the dying swan routine cos I am feeling a bit like a lie-down, someone needs a decision made on where the handles are going, where do you want these sockets, what's your opinion on mitres for the worktops....aaaargh! Just leave me be. But of course, someone has to make these decisions and Mr P is not there so that only leaves little old me.

In case you are wondering, is she not back at work yet? No, I am still off but now on annual leave for 3 weeks. I have been saving it up!! I will have forgotten what work is like by the time I get back there.

According to my bridesmaid, the 9th wedding anniversary symbol is pottery, not peestick plastic. I ate a lovely meal off some pottery in celebration on Tuesday night.

I peed on a digital test that day too and got the legend "Pregnant". I am still not quite taking it all in though. It does not seem real.

The symptoms I have are mild and could still be attributed to the hormones I am taking. The vicious cramping this week though was a bit disconcerting. If I had not used all those tests, I am sure I would be none the wiser. I always thought that I would know on some deep cellular level that I was pregnant. Not that I ever really thought it was going to happen. Nope.

PS those digital tests are a swizz. The battery only lasted 24 hours and you are then left with a blank test. How cheap is that???