BERJAYA

Hey guys,

Here it is, the last week of the winter shed. Next week I’ll be joining up for the spring version of this. I’ll adjust the goals here I still plan to work on and add new ones as I feel it. I will spend the week determining my goals I want to accomplish.

If you want to join in on the spring shed, I’ll have the icon and link set up next week when sign up is set.

But since its the last week, I want to look back, not only at what I accomplished this week but what I accomplished overall and if I considered it a success or not.

Living a healthier life in 2013 in preparation for “Future Baby B”.

Last week, I joined the gym. Its a 24 hour gym and so far I love it. i tend to be in a 2 days on, 1 off while my body adjusts to working muscles its not used to working. I weighed myself on Tuesday and found out that since my first weigh in in November, I’ve lost 30 pounds! I feel wonderful and my clothes are loose on me. People are starting to notice the weight loss. This makes it much easier to continue my lifestyle and diet change. I consider this goal both successful and still a work in progress. I don’t want to give up this healthier lifestyle now that I’m getting into a routine with it.

To make progress towards resolving our infertility.

Today was finally the day of my HSG test. While I never want to do that again, I am pleased to say that Dr. D proudly announced with a smile on her face that my tubes and uterus are “clear and perfect”! So she thinks that my biggest hindrance on my end at this point is my thyroid. I’m about 2 weeks out for my 6 week thyroid level check in. My family doctor is still on vacation so I called my fertility clinic and asked if they could mail me a requisition form for my thyroid levels. The secretary is sending that out first thing Monday and she told me that my last progesterone level results are in but she doesn’t have the ok to share it with me. But she will have one of the doctors call me first thing Monday to go over the results with me. So right now, everything is going smoothly in the testing area. I’ll just be happy when my thyroid levels are normal again.

I consider this one a success and a work in progress as well. Things were completed but there is still lots to go in this goal.

To stop making people a priority in my life when I’m not even an option in theirs.

The passion party was great. I was sad that some people said they were coming and then didn’t bother to show or even let me know that they wouldn’t make it, but people will always do this regardless of how much you plan. But for the people that came, we had a great night.

Overall, I consider this resolved. I accomplished everything I set out to do.

To work towards making our house a home.

The house continues to stay functional. But the big news here is that we finally got a dog!

I’d like to introduce you to Mia:

We had this perfect alining of events that led us to finding her. Hubby always wanted a beagle, we needed a dog that was already at least partially house trained and worked well with cats. Chris’s uncle was looking for a dog for himself and seen the ad with this beautiful girl. The owners were moving, she was a year and a half old, house trained and great with cats and free to. A good home. We called that day, went over an hour later and came home with her. She is possibly the friendliest dog I’ve ever met. All she wants to do is cuddle and sleep curled up to us. She won’t lick your face, doesn’t jump all over you, but if you invite her up on your lap she will jump up and sleep there til you want her to get down. We are madly in love with her and in 3 days she’s already a staple in our life. Me and a friend went out and got her a pretty collar, name tag and some jackets. She sleeps with us every night and the cats are slowly coming out of hiding even though they are still hissing at her if she gets too close.

Having Mia has made our house feel more like a home than anything else we’ve done. I consider this goal only mildly successful. I want to revisit this and maybe make some adjustments to this goal.

To expand my reading collection.

I’m gonna claim this one as a failure but possibly adjust this before next week. I want it to incorporate more of my need to alternate between reading and crafting as they are something I do equally.

It’s been a great couple of weeks and this shed had really helped the winter months fly by. Each week I had a goal and it really helped stop the winter blahs from taking over my life.

I hope everyone else is doing well. See you next week for the start of the Spring Shed!!

First of all, thank you for all the heartfelt comments on my last two posts. It has helped ease my mind. ICLW is a wonderful thing and I’m so grateful for everyone who has embraced Mel’s wonderful creation. I went from feeling alone and scared to feeling accepted and like I wasn’t walking this fight alone. Seeing all of the comments left from those stopping by have helped me emotionally and reignited my love of writing in my blog. It’s a breath of fresh air.

Secondly, I finally got the results of my internal ultrasound with “Wandy”on December 20th (the delay on the results is because my doctor was away for a month on vacation and it took a bit for the secretary to get through all the build up of paperwork when they got back, so its cool, I can be patient). All reports came back NORMAL! This may be the only time I can qualify myself as normal but I’ll take it. No signs of cysts or any other abnormalities. It’s been a great relief to get this news because its simply one less hassle to deal with when it comes to us getting pregnant. I still have to do blood work to check my hormone levels and to see if my thyroid medication needs to be adjusted, but I take what good I can get from any situation at this point.

And finally, if things had gone how they should have gone, I would have been in Halifax with my husband today for his urologist appointment. An appointment that has been 2 years in the making. So what went wrong? A lot. Of course in the past I told you all about Chris’s family doctor being completely useless. She waited 2 months to give us the results of his first semen analysis. She previously sent the referral for him to go to the urologist to the wrong doctor…Twice! Then when we got the paperwork from Dr. G (finally the right doctor!!), she waited 2 months to give us the slip with the requirements he wanted before scheduling an appointment. So its no surprise that she screwed up our chances of getting to our first appointment. Right?

After my last post, I felt more confident and relaxed. The next day, I called Dr. G’s office. I got through right away to the secretary. (She was incredibly kind and sweet on the phone.) I told her who I was, that I was calling on behalf of my husband and she had no issue with dealing with me directly. When I gave her our names, she actually was surprised to hear from us. This is what I can remember of the conversation we had:

Me: Hi, I was wondering if you could help us. My husband was referred to Dr. G just before the summer. We eventually received paper work from your office requesting blood work and semen samples. The last of the samples were completed and supposedly sent back to you a little over 2 months ago and we have yet to hear from your office. I’m just wondering if you could let me know if you got the results and if there is any hold up? We’re getting a bit anxious…

Secretary: Hello Kimberly, funny you should call me today. Your husband was actually scheduled for an appointment 2 days from now, but I had to cancel it when I was unable to contact him to confirm the appointment.

Me: WHAT?!?!? Seriously?

Secretary: I’m so sorry that I had to cancel. But yes, we tried calling the number listed on the forms that came from his doctor. I have this number (his old cell #) and this address (our old address).

Me: That’s funny. We no longer live at that address and husband has a new number.

Secretary: Well that explains why I couldn’t contact you.

Me: Did you receive any other paper work since the middle of December from his family doctor?

Secretary: I have the file here and the only paperwork that was faxed to us was the original referral and the paperwork sent from his tests. Nothing else.

Me: Ok, that’s funny, because when Chris got his new phone and we had our new address, he went to his doctor immediately to update his phone number, our new address and my number as backup with his doctor and asked that the information be faxed to your office immediately. They told us that they would fax it that day.

Secretary: I’m so very sorry Kim. Had I been aware of any of this, I would have contacted you personally to make sure you knew about the appointment.

Me: It’s not your fault. His doctors office does this ALL THE TIME. They sent the referral for this to the wrong doctor twice and only finally sent it to your office when my husband flat out demanded it. That’s why its taken 2 years just to get to this point.

Secretary: I’m so sorry that you both have had to go through this. This is a stressful enough time for you as a couple, you don’t need this added stress. I’m gonna try to schedule you in as fast as I can but still give you enough time to make travel arrangements. What time frame works best for you? Because I know you are traveling from Cape Breton…

She continued to apologize through to the end of the call. She genuinely felt bad for having to cancel our appointment. Even though she wasn’t at fault. She offered to put us on the cancellation list but we both realized we have at least a 5 hour drive to the appointment so we need some notice. Plus work, setting up pet sitters for the kitties and all that fun stuff.

But it baffled my mind because this woman was apologizing for the acts, antics and stupidity of Chris’s family doctor. And the family doctor and her receptionist? Yeah, I wanna choke them with my bare hands. Seriously? We intentionally went in and asked them to fax that information to Dr. G’s office right away because we were waiting for a call for an appointment. Only to find out that they didn’t send the info. Lied, saying that they did. And now we are missing the appointment because of it. I want to just call them and yell at them til I lose my voice. Maybe fuck up her office a bit. It’s amazing the difference in protocol and mannerism between the two doctors offices. One can’t be bothered to do their work, the other is apologizing for others fuck ups.

But as frustrated as I am that right now we should be relaxing with family after we finished the appointment, I’m still a very happy girl because we should be in to see the urologist within the next 6 weeks or so. The secretary is waiting for Dr. G’s calendar to open up for the next two months. Once its open for appointments, she will schedule us and call us right away with the date and time of the appointment. That simple call and her help on the phone suddenly made me go from feeling lost in this sea of medical professionals who don’t care about us, to feeling like we matter, like our concerns are real and that they truly want to help us. We’ve had so little of this for the past 3 years, so this is a breath of fresh air to feel confident about the next move in our infertility journey.

I really hope this communication with our new doctors will become a regular standard from now on, instead of an isolated incident. Here’s hoping!