It's My First Time, So Be Gentle...

Ok...here goes nothing boys & girls.  Time to start spilling my guts on what's happening in the world of Ryan & Kira Thomas.  If you're reading this, you probably know us, so I'll spare you the biography of "our story".  As mention in my introduction profile, Ryan & I discussed this, and ultimately the decision was provided to me in verse:  "For the LORD God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right" Psalm 84:11.  The moment I read this in my daily verse I knew, I needed to share my journey with others.  If we don't share it, we can't learn from it, and we can't expect support.

For the past three years (almost 3), I have been pretty hush-hush about our struggle for conception.  We have always known we wanted a family, but I have known for several years that struggle was going to come.  I never thought it would be that hard to go through until I came to it.  I thought, it's nobody's damn business if we have children, quit asking me when/where/how.  And we all know, as soon as you get a ring on your finger, those are the questions that immediately follow.  I will never get into my complete story on the subject of children, but it is personal.  For the past few years I kept it all to myself, barely even talking to Ryan about my thoughts on our struggles and when I did talk, they were angry bursts of comments about it.  Why is this happening?  And it's difficult to talk about to someone who isn't you or hasn't been through EXACTLY what you're going through.  I don't need/want advice from family or friends that didn't struggle.  I don't need/want advice from family or friends that have even slightly struggled but were ultimately successful.  Reason being, I'm not successful yet.  There is nothing worse than a barren woman hearing from their fertile friend how easy it all was.  Sounds like a pretty harsh command from me, right?  I think so too! 

That was my view until about 1 day ago...
I work with people with addiction.  This has been my life's work for the last 7 years as my career.  Now, infertility (at least mine) has nothing to do with addiction, but there is a couple of concepts from addiction work that I can apply to this setting.  The first step with overcoming addiction is admitting you have a problem:  HELLO, I'M KIRA, AND MY WOMB IS EMPTY.  The second key step in overcoming addiction is to share your problem with family & friends so that they can a) support you and b) hold you accountable.  Obviously you lovely people can't hold me accountable, because as I'll get to soon, it's not self-inflicted.  But you can support me.  I learned that I cannot make it through this journey by myself alone and even the support of my husband isn't enough, even though he's AMAZING.  So for the past 2 months I have been sharing my struggle with infertility "a little more" with my close friends and some co-workers since I see them daily.  I learned that after an important appointment yesterday, that they're support is insurmountable.  I shared with a few that I had this appointment and immediately following I received an endless flow of texts and phone calls from supportive friends wanting to know what happened!  How BLESSED that made me feel!  That these people took 5 minutes from their day to think about me and what I was going through. 

Ryan knows that I used to be an amateur journalist.  Little fun-fact I almost majored in and was actually on the staff at the Indiana Statesman in college until they asked me to do an interview with the basketball coach, I freaked from nervousness and quit!  So let's keep it to the giant book of poetry of written and published, yep I'm totally published, and this blog.

Ok here it goes.........
I, Kira Dawn Thomas, was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, PCOS (pee-kos) in 2007 when I started having a lot of health issues.  You wanna know more about it?  Google it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_ovary_syndrome  it is a LENGTHY explanation because it's a very complex disorder.  I always thought it was rare when I was diagnosed but quickly found out that it accounts for millions of women a year and their "womanly woes".  So I've been treated off & on for it.  It varies in severity from woman to woman.  And of course, being an overachiever, I have an extremely severe case as noted by 2 different endocrinologists and an OBGYN.  Just to keep the cysts slightly at bay I take 2,000mg of oral insulin.  I know that's confusing, but PCOS affects the endocrine system and reproductive system.  I am not diabetic and can relatively eat what I want, however, one with this disease should concentrate on lower amounts of carb intake.  The medicine itself makes me extremely sick due to other health problems that I've been treated for since I was in 6th grade.  Thanks mom & dad for the great digestive tract! So when I'm good at taking my medicine, you'll rarely see me out b/c I'm usually at home sick after every meal, very tired, and usually dehydrated from said sickness.  PCOS is painful, especially when the cysts rupture.  But mostly, it decreases or eliminates a woman from ovulating regularly if at all. Thus the case with me!
I've done insulin and trying to have kids, no meds and trying to have kids...no avail.  My OBGYN had me on 6 different treatment rounds of Clomid, which made me a raging bitch (pardon the lingo) full of mood swings, hot flashes and horrible ovarian pain!  I did ovulate but didn't conceive per my 21 day progesterone blood tests I had done for the first 3 months.  I then gave up.  It wasn't meant to be.  Everyone else was having kids and I wasn't, so screw it. 
This year rolled around and we decided to give it another good college try...so I met with a new OBGYN that specializes in working with women with PCOS she did some ultrasounds and I'm still loaded with cysts (they say the ovary looks like it's wearing a pearl necklace, yum).  She referred me to Dr. Reuter at Midwest Fertility Clinic in Carmel.  She is a Reproductive Endocrinologist, which I had NOT seen before.  I saw a regular fertility specialist in September who essentially told me to give up.  He said he'd try IVF for $40k a pop but would only give me a 30-40% chance.  Thanks but no thanks, doc. 

We met with Dr. Reuter yesterday for the first time and she started off with a bang!  She was so friendly and helpful.  Left me filling full of hope!  So here's my current game plan and I'll wrap up for the night:
Started 2,000mg of Glumetza instead of the regular Metformin.  Supposed to be a little gentler on my tummy.  I will take that nightly, probably the rest of my life.  First day of my cycle I am supposed to call and schedule my hysterosalpingogram (HSG) for a day on 5-10 of the cycle.  I start a new drug called Femara on days 3-7 of the cycle.  On day 14 I will have another ultrasound to check my follicles, residual cysts, and make sure no lesions have formed.  Then if all goes well, hopefully this type of system will eventually work!  I'll explain the HSG and Femara when it gets closer to starting them.  But at least I have a preliminary plan.

I thought if I typed that all out, I wouldn't have to repeat it so much to all my wonderful friends.  But I think this blog will also help explain all of the complex procedures that us infertile myrtles have to through just to have a baby.

I will end on this...those of you who were lucky to get pregnant without fertility treatments, maybe even without planning, NEVER forget how lucky you are.  Because for every one of you, there are 5 more of ME who may not get that chance or who have to go through hell to be blessed with the ONE thing a woman was created to do...be a mother.

Thank you all for your support! 

Much Love,
Kira T