Reading back through my past few years of health journaling, I figure it can mostly be summed up thus:

My body? She has a deep, dark sense of irony.

Having said that, I don't do just summation, so we'll get on with the long version.

[Here insert long story similar to almost every other person living with, suffering from, or surviving PCOS, re: horrid periods, idiot doctors, crazy diets, medication nightmares, and general chronic misery.]

My body is a conundrum it's taken years to figure out, and we're still not sure of a lot of it. I mean, I've always been difficult, but I didn't know it had to go down to a cellular level. Christ.

So far what we've figured out is this:

The Pill keeps me sane, happy, and healthy. Except for the three days a month I want to slit my wrists. For a long time we blamed my inner Mr. Hyde on the drugs, since I didn't have it off the drugs. The fact that I wasn't ovulating off the drugs, and thus not having regular cycles, somehow totally escaped us. All hail my current doctor who blithely told me, "Oh, that? That's PMDD. That's easy. We give you Prozac a couple weeks a month." ZOMGWTF?? How did I get to be almost-26 without anyone figuring this out? So, Pill + Prozac = Happy Camper. A whole team of happy campers, actually. A happy camper convention.

Off the Pill I'm a miserable hunchback-type creature that is really only good for complaining about the ever increasing amount of physical pain and hobbling around attempting to look like I'm doing housework, when really I'm just trying to find where I stashed my chocolate supply.

The problem in figuring this out being -- we can't get pregnant on the Pill. (Who knew?) So, in a desire for Shawn to have his own baseball team we decided to go forth in trying to get pregnant August of 2005, and out went the Pill and in came the evil hunchback twin. We'd been together the first four years of marriage sans-birth control, and no short stops to show for it, so our hopes of a sucessful natural pregnancy were low. Our insurance at the time really didn't give a flying leap and told us we'd have to wait a year - off the Pill - to see a specialist anyway. The words for my feelings about this would make your screen explode in horror.

On with the charting (a year worth of lovely mornings being woken up to a thermometer being shoved in my mouth while fingers tickle my cervix!) and dutiful baby-making sex we went:

Cycle #1: 14 days (uh?)
Cycle #2: 13 days (maybe it's the Pill coming out of my system?)
Cycle #3: 22 days (a little better)
Cycle #4: 29 days (PARTY TIME!)
Cycle #5: 32 days (uh-oh)
Cycle #6: 41 days (well, we expected it, didn't we?)

At this point we decided to try a cycle with Soy and NPC. Which, actually worked! For.. one, blessed cycle. That ended in a negative. Just like all the others. The next cycle was 83 days. And halfway through cycle #9, we got insurance approval to see a specialist! And lo and behold, we got in to see our first choice doctor.

Just before seeing the specialist we decided to give the brand name Glucophage a try. We'd tried the generic (Metformin) several times over the years, with no luck. Apparently my body has extravagant tastes. The Glucophage, amazingly, is doing some small good. Still no independent ovulation, but lowered blood pressure, slight weight loss, and other little signs seem to be in favor of it doing something. Oh, and it's not making me sick every moment of the day like the Met. Always a plus.

Also, just before approval, we had our first look at my insides. Where we learned my uterus is a double-wide (on the borders of normal and "Woah, look at the size of that thing!") And my right ovary? On vacation, or camera shy. They just can't find it. Maybe it's where my missing shoe went. All else seems fine.

So where were we?

Oh, cycle #9, 68 days, Prometrium days 47-56 to induce a period and a stubborn, stubborn body taking 13 days to actually have one. Landing our start date for cycle #10... right in the middle of our RE's vacation, and thus, unable to start our intended Clomid cycle.

[Insert head pounding into the monitor here.]

Which is more or less where we are now. Almost a year from where we started... this time around. I'm on cycle day #22, no signs of ovulation, so I'm guessing we'll do another round of Prometrium after I see the doctor next week in hopes of being able to start cycle #11 as a Clomid cycle around the 25th of August (if my body is as stubborn about the Prometrium as before).

Clomid has about a 40% chance of working, provided PCOS is our only factor. We're hoping to be on the good side of the 40. We would do just about anything to be on the good side of the 40. We do not want 42 to be the answer.

38 would be okay. I could live with 38.

I have a problem with PCOS books, advice, whatnot not applying to me. I've wondered about this for some time. My doctor's said I have an "extreme" case, a "severe" case, that maybe we shouldn't try for more than one child, or even that we should give up now and try for adoption as much "work" as it is. My doctor's not one to pull punches, which alternately aggravates me and leaves me thoroughly indebted. In the end, I mostly just ignore the parts I think are dumb. Like her aversion to Clomid.

I think in the end, the reason why it's so "extreme" for me is a combination of the autoimmune factor, PMDD, and my hypersensitivity/hyperlexia.

In short - I've got contributing issues from more than one area of science doctors don't really understand. As if they understand PCOS to begin with. Come on, I had to research lupus to find out about the autoimmune/endocrine connection. Gah.

So a lot of times it's hard for me to find solace, answers, or community in PCOS books, boards, groups, what have you. Most of them don't go through what I go through, and there are times, it's true, that I feel freakish in a not-so-good way. I mean, really, this disease, when I'm not on the Pill, disables me. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. That's exceedingly rare. My doctors seem to understand this disability, and accept it, without doubt, which has endeared me greatly, even with the bizarre comments. Never once was there the hint of suspicion that my suicidal feelings were an exaggeration and not part of my Great Endocrine Disorder Disaster. That the exhaustion was laziness, or the pain psychosomatic. Maybe my family doctor is such because she's seen how well I do on the Pill, and my RE because she's seen other patients like me. I don't know.

Either way, they don't have the answers for how to fix it, either. Well, other than the depression. Emotionally I'm alright other than the sheer exhaustion and constant physical pain. You know. The small stuff.

So I keep searching for answers on my own and end up feeling like I'm generally given the silent treatment by things that should speak to me.

The isolation, sometimes, is a bit much to bear.

At the time that we finally got the results of our first ultrasound, weeks after doing it, I was going through a few tiny (read: astronomically large) life explosions. The doctor more or less said, "nothing here to keep you from getting pregnant," and I took her at her word and went back to moving through my morass of craziness.

Well, when we were preping for our first visit to the fertility clinic, I dug up the results and actually, you know, looked at them. Mixed in with all the totally not worrying stuff and expansive capacity of my uterus, was a neat little line: "Right ovary not identified." And down at the bottom in the radiologist's notes: "Right ovary not demonstrated."

To clarify: They couldn't find the damn thing.

My right ovary is missing!!

I'm assuming at some point in fertility treatment this will be cleared up one way or another. But for now, I'm, of course, going nuts about it. The only cause I could find for a missing ovary is torsion. And the description seemed eerily accurate: I'm the right age, right symptoms, right conditions to breed one of these things, except that I was under the impression that it was a sudden-ish thing like appendicitis, where there's this sudden awful pain and you run to the ER. I've had pain in my right side my entire so-called reproductive life, so unless it's twisting veeeeeeeeery slowly, I don't think that's it.

Either way, if you step down and feel something squishy - be careful! It might be my ovary. If you find it, let me know. I need to question it about where my shoe went.

Every time I have an abnormal test result, the doctor invariably blames it on the lab. I couldn't possibly have a health problem. No! It's just the lab.

Even if my test results are consistent.

March 9, 2006 - glucose 53 - "this is likely a lab error"
July 24, 2006 - glucose 52 - "likely a lab error"

I suppose the fact that it's been low my entire life is likely a lab error as well.

I wonder if I can start employing this in my daily life. "The dishes are dirty? It's likely a lab error."

We've not even started our first cycle and we've already got about $400 in bills from the RE's office stuffed neatly into a Bath & Body Works bag. It's the B&BW bag of financial ruin. But it smells nice, so all's forgiven.

$300+ for genetic screening, $60 because our insurance didn't cover the rubella screening. Wednesday it'll be $30 for the visit, $30 for Prometrium, and then $150 to send off the prescriptions to ivfmeds. Then another misc little bit to buy the syringes, sharps container, etc since those can't be sent from overseas (where ivfmeds is). Then $122 for the ultrasound. Lather, rinse, repeat, and pray insurance pays for the HSG if the initial Clomid cycles are a bust.

I know the girls going through IVF, or even IUI with injectibles are laughing at me right now. It's okay. I would, too. If I get there, I'll look back and totally have a hysterical laugh at myself. "I complained about $400?? HAHAHAHA."

But our backup infertility savings having been eaten twice now, this is all a bit stressful. It's nothing we can't cover (by going into debt up to our ears). And still, I'm anxious squared.

I think the real fear is: what if none of this works? We don't have the finances for IVF or adoption, and I'm not going to come out of ART too poor to actually care for my child/ren. I know. Horse, cart, chickens, omelettes, blah blah blah. Why am I even thinking about something that hasn't happened yet? And yet, there's the question looming: "What do we do, then?"

I guess we wait. I make the decision to keep trying naturally or go back on the pill (OMG how am I ever going to do that without each cycle going - "would this have been the one?") and we shovel as much money as possible into savings. I can wait. It's okay. I'll only be checking the clock (or bank account, as the case may be) every five minutes going, "are we there yet?"

I'm convinced that charting helps you get children primarily by turning you into one. I'm sitting here, 2 hours and 9 minutes from when I'm supposed to chart, whining to myself: "But I don't wanna go to bed!"