Medical mystery

So...there's good news and bad news.  The good news is that Buddy did NOT have to have surgery today, and he's home tonight pretty much back to normal.  The bad news is that the vet doesn't really know what's going on with the growth under his tongue.

As I mentioned in my last post, the emergency weekend vet had initially told us that Buddy had a cyst on his salivary gland (known as a ranula) and that the only effective treatment was removal of the whole gland.  In the space of a few days on IV fluids, painkillers and antibiotics, however, the picture had changed.  When I called around noon today for an update on Buddy's surgery (which I thought would have happened by that point) the regular clinic vet actually told me that he didn't think surgery would be necessary at all.  Cue a ton of confusion and frustration about receiving inconsistent information from different vets.

Bottom line is that as of this morning, the "cyst" in Buddy's mouth wasn't as large in size as it had been on the weekend.  The vet sedated him lightly so he could go in and poke at it, and found it to be firm, not liquid-filled, like you'd expect of a cyst.  After a ton of research and sending out photos of the growth to three other veterinary surgeons, he still had no answer.  As a result, he wasn't willing to operate if he didn't know what he was dealing with.  On top of all of this, Buddy had bounced back like a champ and was now full of energy and back to eating solid food.  So the vet's suggestion was that we should just take him home and watch him.

My biggest concern (since I'm a total worry-wart) was that this "growth" could be some kind of tumour or cancer.  The vet thinks not, as he felt that the mass was "too well defined around the edges" to be cancerous.  He speculated that it could be an old injury (from chomping on a stick or something) that led to the growth of scar tissue, or it could just be something else innocuous.  He suspected that Buddy has probably had this growth for a long time, and thinks that what happened late last week is that Buddy somehow managed to bite the edge of the growth and take a chunk out of it (you can kind of see where the edge is a little red) which led to pain and salivating and not eating.  He compared it to when you bite your tongue or the inside of your cheek, and then keep biting the same spot for days afterwards because it's swollen and inflamed.

At any rate, after having resigned ourselves to spending a couple thou on dog surgery, we had mixed feelings.  Obviously if it's not necessary to operate then we don't want that, but the fact remains that this issue is unresolved and could potentially recur at any time.  That, plus we don't even really know what "this issue" is!  We're also about to head off on vacation in about a week and are leaving Buddy with M's folks, so we're really hoping that they aren't stuck dealing with any problems while we're gone.  But on the upside, our pooch was so excited he practically ran home.  He ate all his dinner and is now contentedly napping on the couch.  After a weekend of unwanted excitement, I'll take it for now.

When nothing goes right

It hasn't been a good day around these parts.

I got up this morning, nervous but excited about the Spartan Race.  The race was about a 2 hour drive away, so I figured on a quick walk for Buddy, breakfast for us, and then all of us hopping in the car to head to the big big race adventure.  Instead, we ended up taking Buddy to the vet, where he currently remains.

Earlier this week he had small bout of diarrhea, which is something we've come to expect from him now and again for no apparent reason.  It had cleared up by Wednesday, but I started to notice him eating less and less.  Again, not a huge surprise.  Although beagles are normally supposed to be voracious eaters, Buddy actually ignores his food all day while we're at work.  We've taken to leaving out some dry kibble during the day and feeding him a large meal of kibble mixed with wet food when we get home.  He usually eats it all up, but by Friday he was barely touching anything.  He was still eating treats, but I was starting to get worried.  Coupled with the fact that he seemed more lethargic (which I assumed was due to lack of food), I was really hoping that his stomach issue would clear up soon.

This morning, however, he was even more lethargic, and I was pretty positive that he felt warm and was running a fever.  Then I noticed this weird, mucous-y looking saliva that seemed to be coming out of one side of his mouth.  That did it for me.  We headed to the vet.  I resigned myself to bailing on yet another Spartan Race.

The vet quickly diagnosed Buddy as being dehydrated, and said that he wanted to keep him onsite for 24 hours as they rehydrated him through an IV and ran some tests.  We agreed, but ended up feeling miserable haggling with the vet over all the tests they wanted to run which would have cost us close to $2000.  Eventually we settled on what we wanted done and we left poor Buddy in the vet's care.

M encouraged me to go ahead and do the race anyway, since there was nothing I could do from home and I'd probably only sit there worrying.  I knew he was right, so I decided to go.  But it was with none of the excitement that I'd previously felt.  I made the drive alone, sad and worried.  I also ended up forgetting my flip flops (to replace my muddy sneakers after the race) as well as a plastic bag to put my muddy clothes in.  Eventually, M called and said that the vet had figured out that Buddy had a large cyst on a salivary gland under his tongue, which explained the fever and why he wasn't eating.  Cue relief...for about five seconds.  The recommended treatment is surgery to remove the entire gland.  Apparently aspirating the cyst isn't an option, as it's caused by the gland itself having ruptured.  So Buddy is booked in for surgery hopefully on Monday, and we still haven't received an estimate on how much that will cost.  Have I mentioned how much I absolutely hate having to do a financial analysis when it comes to medical treatment for a pet?  It's a horrendous feeling.  Obviously we want to do what we can for Buddy, who has very quickly become a part of our family.  But where do we draw the line?  We'd like to be able to pay for another IVF too.  Having to make these sorts of calculations kills me.

Anyway, I ran the race.  It went fine.  I did most of the obstacles, but couldn't manage a few due to lack of upper body strength.  When I'm feeling more upbeat I'll do a post about it, but for now I just feel beaten down.  I hate the idea that Buddy is drugged up on painkillers and lying all alone in a cage at the vet's.  I hate that he has to do that for at least another day until he can get the surgery done.  And I hate that I feel so out of control and overwhelmed about all of it.  I've been crying off and on since I got home, and keep thinking that clearly, the universe has it out for us.  We got a dog because we can't have kids, but it seems like we're not even allowed to enjoy that.  Why does everything have to be so hard?  Why can't something just go fucking right for a change?

Yeah, I know.  Count your blessings.  We could be living in Calgary and have our house under water right now.  One of our parents could be having surgery, not just our dog.  But shit.  This was supposed to be a nice weekend.  And now it's not.  And I'm allowed to be upset about that.

Spartan spirit

Not that kind.  This kind:

When I made my New Year's resolutions back in January, one of the goals I set myself was to run a Spartan Race.  For those of you unfamiliar, it's an obstacle race that combines various distances of trail running with crazy obstacles like climbing walls, crawling through mud under barbed wire and jumping over flames.  I had actually signed up for one last year on the recommendation of a friend, but for the first time ever in my life I'm ashamed to say that I backed out on a race.  With all that had been going on with our infertility and my DOR diagnosis, I just hadn't had the energy to work out and was in no way prepared for the punishment that the race was sure to unleash on my body.

This year is different.  This year I've stuck to my workout plan like a demon and am actually feeling like I'm in pretty good shape.  I've dropped a few pounds since January, but more importantly I've gotten a lot of cardio endurance back and have been working on adding some strength training as well.  I am fully intending on running this thing.  And I'm doing the Spartan Sprint, which is the easiest one at a distance of only 5k with 15-ish obstacles.  But I have to say...I'm still scared shitless.

The race is coming up this Saturday.  I tried to convince M to sign up with me, but he's been recovering from a leg injury and doing some physiotherapy and just isn't feeling up to it yet.  He's promised to make the 1.5 hour drive to Barrie with me to cheer me on, but it won't be the same as having him with me in the race where we can encourage each other if the obstacles start to freak us out.  I know race environments are usually really fun and strangers cheer one another on, but it just won't be the same doing it by myself.

That said...this thing is gonna happen.  I am gonna go there, get muddy and sweaty, and I'm coming home with my participant medal.  Or a disfiguring injury.  Or both.  If anyone has run one of these things and lived to tell the tale, I'm all ears.

Quiet, then PANIC!

It's a whole lotta quiet around here.  Earlier this afternoon I dropped M off at the airport.  He's off to a four-day bachelor party extravaganza in Las Vegas with a crew of about 15 guys from his office.  The bachelor is actually the last person in the entire world that I'd ever pictured getting married, and most of the other attendees are already married with several kids, so it promises to be a big bag of debauchery as these guys celebrate being wife- and kid-free for the first time in ages.  

I'm actually kind of worried for M.  Three beers and he's usually done, whereas some of these other guys seem to have livers of steel.  At least he's rooming with another (relatively) responsible guy and I'm hoping they'll look out for each other.  Or they could both return looking like this:

 
Do you think my wife will notice?

The Wolf Pack jokes started earlier this week.  God help them.  God help them all.

So it's just me and dog and bird holdin' down the fort.  We're not off to a great start.  About two hours after M's departure I picked up my laptop only to realize that our internet connection was down.  No problem, think I.  I'll just pop downstairs, reboot the modem, and we'll be good to go.  The thing I forgot is that my husband, bless his technology-loving soul, has so over-complicated the telecommunications system in our house that I don't understand it anymore.

I'm embarrassed to admit this.  It reminds me of when we got our first VCR as kids, and would ask my mom to tape things for us.  No matter how many times we explained it to her, she just couldn't figure out how to put a tape in the machine, set it to the right channel, and press record.  Heaven forbid you ask her to set the timer on the damn thing!  And now I feel as though I've become her.

It's not my fault, though.  It's not for lack of trying.  Here's the problem.  M loves technology but he hates the fact that Bell and Rogers have a duopoly over the Canadian telecoms market which essentially allows them to price gouge customers and force smaller providers out of business.  As a result, once we moved in together he became hell-bent on finding a way for us to get rid of my existing telephone-cable-internet combo package and become independent of either of the big two providers.  First he switched us to a small, independent internet provider that offers virtually unlimited usage, meaning that we avoid the ridiculous overage charges levied by Rogers or Bell.  Then he signed us up for Netflix and installed a bunch of other computer programs that pull TV content off the web and consolidate them in one place.  Finally, in his coup-de-grace, he installed a huge antenna in our attic so that we are now getting over-the-air HD channels for free (bonus: totally legal).  With that, we cancelled our cable subscription.

All of this is a long-winded way of explaining that my darling husband has wonderful goals in mind.  But with each of these new pieces of technology came a new remote control, and a new way of setting up the home theatre input, and a new way for everything to go wrong if any one part of it didn't like talking to the other parts.  And a whole host of ways to confuse me!  It's gotten to the point that, try as I might, quite often I just don't know how to get the TV to do what I need it to do and I sit there, pouty, until M does it for me.  All while explaining how simple it is to do.  But it is NOT SIMPLE.  Here is an example of a lesson I would get:

Me:  I want to watch the So You Think You Can Dance that we taped last week.  How do I do that?

M:  Easy.  Just turn on the TV...*points remote at TV.  Nothing happens*

Me:  Isn't that supposed to turn on the TV?

M:  Yeah.  Just a sec.  *hits more buttons.  TV turns on*  OK, so now you just go to...

Me:  Wait.  How did you get the TV to turn on?

M:  Oh, I just hit the "help" button.  It's right here.  *points helpfully*

Me:  Okaaaay...

M:  So now you just navigate here, and open this window.  *opens window.  SYTYCD is nowhere to be seen in the list of taped shows*  Hmm.  Just a sec.  *more navigation, more clicking*  Yeah, so here it is...

Me:  Wait!!  How did you find that?  What file are you in now??

M:  Oh, it just went into the other folder for some reason.  Anyway, you just click on it...

Me:  NO!  How am I supposed to know to look for it there??  Why doesn't it go where it's supposed to???

M:  Well, I don't have all the bugs worked out yet...

Me:  *sigh*  Just turn on the show. 

I've tried a thousand times to understand this system, and I'm not a stupid or technically un-savvy person.  But sometimes I think you have to be Stephen fucking Hawking to understand what M has done with our home theatre system.

That setup is worse than string theory.  I haven't a fucking clue.

Anyway, once I realized the internet was down and I had no idea how to make it work again, I also realized that due to our new setup absolutely EVERYTHING (except our 7 or so HD antenna channels) runs through the internet.  I had visions of myself being not only disconnected internet-wise (and hence without you, my bloggy sisters!), but unable to watch any TV for four whole days.  It's sad to admit the state of panic that threw me into.  What would I do??  Was I going to have to read an actual BOOK, like a Neanderthal??

And then it started working again.  Just like that.  I didn't even do anything.  Lucky for you, or else I wouldn't have been able to blog about it.  No way I'm typing all this up on a smartphone.  Which, incidentally, I still have through a contract with Rogers.  Sorry, but M will have to pry my iPhone out of my cold, dead hands. 

*****

I haven't mentioned it being Father's Day.  I don't need to.  You just need to go and read this post at Mine to Command.  She said it all better than I ever could.  Love ya, Jane.

Slow news week

I just realized I haven't posted in over a week.  Not much doing around these parts, I guess.  At least not fertility related.  I got my period in relatively short order after stopping my meds last Monday after the endo biopsy, so now we're just waiting another month or two for the DHEA to take full effect before IVF #3.  I suppose I could always be shocked by a natural BFP sometime before August, but I'm not counting on it.

Oh, and there seemed to be a bit of confusion in the comments last week as to the reason for my endless series of endo biopsies.  To clarify, no one actually thinks there's anything wrong with my lining.  This particular test was ordered just to rule it out after our decent-looking blast failed to implant last cycle.  All of the biopsies before that weren't diagnostic; they were done due to this theory that uterine trauma in the month ahead of an IVF cycle results in your lining growing back thicker and stickier.  My clinic is really big on this idea, so as long as I keep doing IVFs I'll keep having endo biopsies.  Luckily they're not a big deal for me so I think I might try to set a new world record.  Is there even a category for that in the Guinness Book of Records?  And what do you win if you set one?

In the meantime, we've been throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into being dog parents and getting out and enjoying the start of summer.  M and I have realized that not only was getting Buddy a great thing for our general happiness level, but it's also been really good for our activity level.  I don't mean exercise-wise, which I do pretty much every day, but rather just getting out and doing stuff.  You know those people who are always out and about, going to cool events in their city and exploring new areas?  That's the exact opposite of us.  You're much more likely to find us parked on the couch or our back deck on the weekend, reading or generally being lazy.  But we've been trying to break out of that rut, and Buddy has helped a lot with that.

This past weekend we ended up hearing about an outdoor classical music concert that was both free and geared toward dogs and their owners.  We ended up checking it out, and it basically turned out to be a big corporate event for pet food company IAMS.  They were giving out tons of stuff including treats, beach blankets, doggie bandanas, and even entire bags of dog food.  Unfortunately for the IAMS people their event both a) took place on a cloudy and somewhat chilly day and b) coincided with another huge dog event in Toronto called Woofstock, so the turnout seemed lower than expected.  A lot lower.  As in, it seemed like there were more event staff than patrons, and the "VIP" areas close to the stage for important IAMS people were laughably fuller than the actual main audience area.  BUT the orchestra was great (they played a whole Star Wars medley!) and Buddy got to sniff a lot of dog butts, so everyone in this household had a good time.

Irresistable

This is literally how I initiated sex with my husband last night. 

Guess who's not wearing any vaginal suppositories?

Yeah, he totally hit that.

The return of the Pregnant RE

Today I had my endo biopsy for the Yale Endometrial Function Test (EFT).  In case anyone is counting, this is my fourth endo biopsy.  One for my cancelled IVF, one for my second IVF that was turned into an FET, one for the FET itself, and now one for the Yale test.  After my next one (sure to happen when we do another IVF), I'm going to inaugurate an endo biopsy version of the Five Timers Club.  We'll have smoking jackets and everything.

Today also marked the return of my original RE from maternity leave.  I haven't really mentioned this before, but since I've had my blog I've actually been under the care of a different RE at my clinic.  My original one had a baby and went off on mat leave just before our second IVF in December.  What was funny about it was that she didn't actually tell us she was pregnant.  We just showed up for a consult one day before our first IVF in September (a few months after our initial workups and testing) and all of a sudden she had a belly.  M actually noticed it first, and asked me if I thought she was pregnant.  Figures, I thought.  Might as well rub some salt in this wound. 

She didn't actually tell me she was pregnant until she was doing my IUI after my first IVF cycle was converted.  It was kind of touching, in a way.  She said that she hadn't mentioned it before since she figured I'd be pregnant before it became an issue.  But in the event that my IVF-turned-IUI didn't work (spoiler: it didn't!!), she would be off for a few months.  She would write up my new protocol and have it ready for me if we needed another IVF (spoiler: we did but that didn't work either!!).  Then she told me to send her a picture when we had our baby.  I guess it gave me quite a bit of hope, that she seemed so optimistic that I wouldn't be a patient anymore when she got back (spoiler: I am).

I haven't had any problems with our substitute RE (minus the clusterfuck of my FET protocol), but it was interesting to gauge the Formerly Pregnant RE's reaction today when I filled her in on our second cycle and its outcome.  I got the feeling that she thinks the Yale biopsy is a waste of time.  She didn't say as much, but while she agreed it would be nice to have an answer she said that in her view (and based on our 50% fertilization rate) it's probably more of an egg/sperm issue.  Regardless, it would be good to get any lining issues ruled out.  I honestly don't expect to be surprised and I figure my biopsy results will be fine, but I wonder if she would even have recommended the test if she'd been my RE at the time.

Anyway, no matter what the results are I have to say that I'm incredibly happy for one reason:  I no longer have to shove seven pills a day into my vagina!  This afternoon marked the first time in about a month that I didn't have to wear a panty liner to stop bluish-white pasty ooze from ruining my panties.  Oh, and full-bottomed panties?  Buh-bye!  I don't know about you girls, but I've never been brave enough to try those teeny tiny thong liners when there's medication seeping from my hoo-ha.  Hence I break out the granny panties whenever suppositories and pads/liners are involved.  As of tomorrow, I can bid farewell to VPL (visible panty line) and embrace the thongs again!  Or I could go commando!  The world of possibilities is endless!  Panty freedom forever!!

Better not do any lunges!