Running out of lemon recipes

It's about to get depressing and whiny up in here.  You've been warned.

First off, don't worry, everything's still a go with my Czech donor cycle.  I need to stop birth control next week and have a period, then we're off to the races.  But there's been a lot more aggravation in the meantime.  My RE, who initially seemed to offer her full support to us in cycling abroad, has since gotten very particular about exactly what she will do to "help". 

She had warned us from the start that she wouldn't prescribe any medications that she wasn't familiar with or didn't use in her own protocols.  A bit restrictive in my view, but at least she had told us up front.  That meant that she would prescribe estrogen, but not prednisone (used by some clinics as an immune suppressant in a transfer cycle to prevent the body from attacking the embryo).  What totally blew my mind was that she then also refused to write me a requisition for a day 10 ultrasound to check my lining thickness.  I got a bunch of bullshit excuses as to why, ranging from "I'm not the one treating you so it's a liability issue" to my personal favourite, the "doctors are magic" excuse.  This one involved telling me (without any basis in fact) that my Czech clinic wouldn't want the raw ultrasound tech report; they would want one that had been reviewed and cleared by a doctor and that wasn't going to happen since my clinic wasn't technically treating me.  Of course I confirmed with the Czech clinic that the basic u/s tech report was just fine, at which point I discovered the real reason for my RE's hesitation.  My Czech clinic didn't have a formal "satellite monitoring agreement" with my Toronto clinic, meaning that my local clinic wasn't getting paid.  I told my RE that I was more than willing to pay for the u/s out of pocket (which I had been saying up front for ages) but was told it wasn't that simple.  Silly me for thinking that I had become more than just a bank machine to my clinic; that I might have become a person they genuinely wanted to see succeed in treatment.  So much for my RE's idea of "help".

After more than a few days of stressing and running around and stressing again, I ultimately ended up getting what I needed from my GP.  Who seemed stunned, that after all the money we've spent at the fertility clinic, they wouldn't give me a simple u/s requisition.

I had about two days of being able to breathe again, when the sewer backed up in our basement on Sunday.

If only I actually believed this, it might help.

I'll spare you the gory details.  Long (very long) story short, there is some kind of blockage in the main city sewer line right where our line joins it.  For three days now we've had various city people ignoring our calls, showing up hours later than they're supposed to (if at all), trying the same stuff over and over again, and generally giving us no idea of when things will be fixed.  Until then, because no water can drain from our house, we can't use the shower or flush the toilet.  Water can come in no problem, but it can't go out.  And there's no end in sight.  The best info we've gotten has been from grilling the various contractors the city's been sending out, and rumour has it they'll be digging up the street in front of our house in the coming days, but that's all the detail we have.

Honestly you guys, I'm not dealing with this very well.  I feel like I used to be ok in a crisis.  When M had his big accident, I didn't even cry.  I took charge, did the shit that needed to be done, and kept it together for him.  We had a different sewer flooding incident a couple of years ago as a result of a huge thunderstorm, and I just picked up the phone and called the insurance company.  I used to be tough.  I used to be able to cope.  This time?  I sat on the couch and cried, and have continued crying pretty regularly for the past several days.  I just feel like I can't deal with shit anymore. My mental sewer is backed up too, it seems.  Any extra crap, no matter how minor, and the system overloads.  Is this how a nervous breakdown happens?  All the little stuff (and, let's face it, some big stuff) just piles up until eventually you just want to walk out the door and get in your car and get on a plane and never come back to your life?

I know right now I'm supposed to be thinking positive thoughts about this upcoming DE cycle.  That stress isn't good.  And I swear, if I could in any way minimize the amount of external stressors I seem to be dealing with, I would.  But it feels like life just keeps hurling fucking lemons at me.  And I'm running out of things to do with them.  I'm not one of those people who believes that "everything happens for a reason".  I wish I could be, but I'm not.  Sometimes crap just happens, and it's all chaos and random bad luck.   But when you've had as long a stretch of it as we have, you start to wonder if it's ever going to change.  If it's even possible for things to go right.  

Which is no way to approach a DE cycle, I know.  So if anyone has some magical optimism pills, hit me up.