by Band Back Together | Nov 24, 2015 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Compassion, Coping With Cancer, Faith, Fear, Happiness, Hope, Love |
a woman i used to work with emailed me this week. i read it yesterday and it absolutely made my day, which – i might add – was spectacularly craptastic until I got the email.
“i started working at magic kingdom back in 1997 and only partially knew who you were. you were always cool to me at town square and spectromagic and stuff, but we were only acquaintances. i happened upon your page through mikki and started reading your blog, “bits of myself,” and i cannot help being taken by how fucking amazing you are. sorry for the language from someone you do not know, but i can’t think of any other words. i don’t even remember where i started the “bits,” but i backed up to where you found out you had cancer. by the time i got to your final breastfeeding with nugget, there were uncontrollable tears streaming down my face at how you kept apologizing to her, for something that you did not ask for.i don’t know how much all of this means coming from someone you don’t know, but i just had to get this out. i was driving day parade floats when you were at magic kingdom with your baby girl, and i saw you two days in a row. knowing how painful it must be, there you stood in the sun, in a tank top, bald… smiling and waving.
i hope i didn’t weird you out with all this, but know that you have touched one more individual’s life. you are the strongest woman that i don’t know.”
i just needed to thank you for that and let you know that your kind words have touched my heart.
thank you for reading my blog.
and thank you to all of you who continue to do so.
i hope you’ll all stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this chapter of my life.
by Band Back Together | Nov 22, 2015 | How To Help A Friend With Infertility, Infertility, Neurological, Nerve, and Spine Disorders |
I’m an ordinary person with (semi) ordinary desires. I was a skinny bitch before I got married, but six years later, I can’t even fit one leg into my old jeans. The youngest child of Bible-thumping Southern Baptists, I was an honors student, youth group member, and basically a good kid.
Until the boy next door.
Age 15, was determined to prove I was not the naive loser across the street, so I rebelled. I hated my life during high school. I hated the rules my family had – no one else’s family seemed so strict. I hated that I was different. I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder at eleven, I spent most of my teen years trying to be normal. I wanted to be like the other kids, not the freak who’d gained weight and slept too much thanks to her medicine. I managed to graduate from high school with honors, was accepted to an in-state, public university, and I was determined to help other freaks like myself.
Six months into college, I met my future husband. My husband wanted to start trying for kids immediately. I was an independent, stubborn college graduate who wanted a career before starting a family. But I’m only <insert age here>, and I’m just not ready for kids. I could have said that line in my sleep, I repeated it so often.
Finally (says my husband in the background – FINALLY!), I caved. Having been on various maintenance medications since adolescence, childbearing was not an overnight decision for me. Doctors had to be consulted, medications slowly eliminated from my bloodstream, alternative therapies considered.
After two months of planning, I threw away my birth control. My own little piece of feminine power was gone. After having had several pregnancy scares and supporting several friends through their unplanned pregnancies, I never dreamed it would be so hard.
31 cycles later, I’m still trying. Over two and a half years of sex on a schedule, peeing on sticks, and praying month after month after month. 26 months in, my husband finally agreed to be tested. The verdict? His swimmers are intact, mobile, and raring to go. Male ego still intact, he went with me for my tests. Blood tests, hormone levels, ovulation tests, all came back normal.
Until the HSG. One fallopian tube appears completely blocked. I have no idea why because my insurance won’t cover infertility testing and we can’t afford a specialist and exploratory testing. I have a few friends who know of and support our efforts, but no one really understands. How can they? Until you have faked a smile through baby showers and children’s birthday parties and yet another holiday during which Grandma asks when you will finally start a family, how would you know the constant emotional ache of an empty womb?
I’m scheduled for a consultation to see if an ovulation induction drug may help, but that’ll be out-of-pocket. I have no one who really understands what this feels like – the constant frustration and disappointment and guilt that I’m keeping my incredible, loving husband from being a father. In all fairness, my closest friends are wonderful and supportive, but I don’t want to be all whiney and “woe is me and my pitiful plight,” so I don’t really talk about it.
I feel the kick in the gut when yet another “guess who’s expecting!!!!!!!” post pops up on Facebook. I smile on the outside and congratulate the happy couple.
I ask myself why I didn’t start trying to have children earlier. I’m 28; he’s almost 31. If it was going to be this hard, I should’ve known somehow so I’d have more time to fight it. I should have known. Hell, I was on so many medications as a child, I’m surprised I haven’t sprouted gills. I didn’t get my period for two years as a side effect of one particularly difficult prescription.
I should have known.
The worst part is the fear that I somehow deserve this. I know intellectually I don’t, but what if this is God’s way of telling me that my genes don’t need to be passed on? Why should I force an innocent child to go through the hell I did as a kid? How fair is it to have kids, knowing there’s a 50% chance my child will be another “survivor” of my condition? What if this is punishment for being a rebellious teenager? I wasn’t a responsible kid; hell, most days I didn’t care if I got caught. What if I DO deserve infertility? What if I did this to myself? These words look so strange on the screen, but what if it’s true?
Yes, I’m asking the question that no couple struggling with infertility wants to ask and what no doctor says: what if this is my fault? How can I look my husband in the eye and tell him he picked a reproductive dud? How do I tell my parents who want a grandchild so badly?
And how do I go through the endless days in this haze of despair without someone who understands?
I didn’t know whether to post this here on Band Back Together. I know The Band is here for anything, but my life and my problems seem so…ordinary. I tell myself, you don’t have it so bad, you know. I don’t like to complain, and I don’t like to draw attention to my imperfections (hell, they do a good enough job on their own… no help needed, thank you very much).
But..I changed my life’s plans to have a family.
What if I gave up my dreams for nothing?
by Band Back Together | Nov 20, 2015 | Abuse, Adoption, Baby Loss, Bipolar Disorder, Divorce, Suicide |
Target.
1:30 on a Tuesday.
Buying my husband socks.
This is what I was doing when my mom called me to tell me that my older brother had taken his life.
I broke down crying in the middle of the underwear section as onlookers watched. We bought our items and drove to my sister’s workplace to tell her what had happened.
My brother was bipolar. He was in the middle of a divorce. His six month old son had died a year ago. Our father had been abusive. He didn’t like his job. He was adopted. He had been in jail several times. He had attempted to take his life several times before. All of these are risk factors, we just never thought he’d actually do it.
That day was the most painful day in my entire life. Even now as I write this, I’m welling up with tears. He was only 21 years old. He was the most brilliant person I know. He was always inventing things and had a unique way of looking at things. He could be a jerk sometimes. I mean, he was my older brother. We yelled at each other. I feel terrible saying this, but I hate it when people sugar-coat the lives of the deceased.
I had gotten married ten days before his death. He didn’t make it to my wedding because he had to appear in court. We had just gotten back from our honeymoon and were going to go spend our gift cards, thus the sock buying. I hadn’t spent much time with my brother leading up to the wedding even though he was living in the same house as me because I was so busy and I regret that. But I can’t go back and change what has been done.
by Band Back Together | Nov 19, 2015 | Anxiety, Infertility, Unemployment |
I want a baby.
I want one so bad that I can feel the aches and pains as if I’d been punched in the gut.
I turned 30 this year. I know intellectually that 30 does NOT mean all is lost. Emotionally? It feels like the beginning of the end.
I FINALLY got my husband on board with infertility testing. Seriously? Took freaking forever. He wants a baby just as badly as I do, but apparently he thinks they come from the brier patch or some shit. He did his testing, and he got the high five from my doc when everything on his end turned out fine (seriously, a high five. You can’t make this shit up).
Then I got laid off.
Sonofabitch, I seriously got laid off and half of our monthly income is gone. Unemployment in my state is a joke, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?
But “nothing” is what it means for any future infertility testing, or treatment, or any of my hopes and dreams. Even once I find a job, the momentum is gone, and my husband isn’t on board anymore because there’s so many other things he wants to do with that income (i.e. shiny toys). Fuck this shit.
Yes, I’m pissed. I’m pissed because I gave up my dreams for a family and to be married to this man, who admittedly, is pretty darn perfect in every other way.
He’s supportive and loving and attentive, but he doesn’t have the ambition or attention span or whatever to actually TRY for a baby in the medical sense. So, I basically gave up my lifelong ambitions and dreams for something that may never happen.
Fuck you Universe.
How can this be happening?
I’d like to say that I know everything will work out fine in the end, but my overreaching anxiety keeps me from being that optimistic. Instead, I cry when he goes to work.
I cry and I hope that this month will be the magical band aid. “Maybe this month will be the month that defies all odds, right?” Yea, it hasn’t happened yet. 55 months since we started trying. 4 years, 7 months and we still don’t have a baby, and there’s no indication it will happen anytime soon.
A blocked Fallopian tube, fibroid tumor, hemorrhagic cyst, and God knows what else because I can’t afford further testing. Basically, I’m fucked.
My reproductive system has said “Fuck You” in a magnitude of epic proportions.
But all I want is a baby. I used to daydream about how I’d tell my family and what I’d name my child. I’d imagine life with several children and how sweetly chaotic it would be. I’d think about the best places to live in our area with access to the best schools, and how many children we’d have.
Now all I want is one.
Just one healthy baby.
Is that really so much to ask?
by Band Back Together | Nov 18, 2015 | Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Divorce, Rape/Sexual Assault
When my mother was four years old, she lived in Cambodia. Her mother passed away due to the war with Khmer Rouge and the killing of poor, innocent people. My grandfather was a soldier from Vietnam who didn’t speak a word of Cambodian, yet fathered 14 kids.
Most of my mother’s brothers and sisters died during the war, but there were a few of them left. My mother, two uncles, two aunts, and my grandfather were all that remained in the family.
As time went by, my mother grew older and when she was 13 years old, she was sleeping in her room and her father came in. She didn’t think anything about it until he started pushing her down and forcing himself on her.
She screamed but no one in her family heard her cries. The next morning, she told her brothers and sisters what had happened to her, but they didn’t believe her. They asked her why would a man rape his own daughter? From that night on and for the next two years, she was raped regularly until she escaped to America to live with her brother.
Her brother was the black sheep of the family and he hated my mother.
His wife would only feed her four chicken wings and a bowl of rice a day. She had to work and give her brother the money or she would’ve been beaten. Her sister-in-law hated her so much that she made my mother wear men’s clothes to school. After so long, she forced my mother to quit school and to get a full-time job to pay more bills in the house.
After time went by, my mother met my father (who was my uncle’s best friend) and she believed that he would save her from the life she was living. She decided to marry him. Things weren’t right, but she had to get away from her brother and her evil sister-in-law.
Little did she know my father was worse then what she could have imagined.
Always yelling at her, beating her, and forcing her to have sex with him.
He made my mother give him a bath every day right before his girlfriend would come over to have sex with him in my parents room while my mother sat outside in the living room crying her eyes out.
He told her she was lucky that she was with him, that no one wants her and she was nothing.
My mother gave birth to my brother and then two years later, to me. My father loved my brother but always looked at me like I wasn’t his, and always accused my mother of cheating.
He used to call her all sort of names.
Then she had enough… she divorced him and moved out. Every time my father came over, she had a butcher knife ready for him. She was not taking it any more, and she stood her ground.
My parents went to court and the judge decided that my father should keep my brother and my mother should keep me. My father told the judge that I wasn’t his and my mother had cheated. The judge believed him and he granted his wish.
I have never seen my brother, but I saw my father when I was 16 years old. The first thing he said to me was, “You are my child, you look just like me.” Then told me that I “will not receive any money from him when he dies.”
These are the only words I really remember from my father.
