Family Matters

I come from a very large and complex family. Both of my parents are twice divorced, each with children from their marriages. I am the only child of their marriage to each other. Basically, it is a bunch of step-siblings and half-siblings and confusion. While, in total, I have 6 siblings, most days I am an only child. For one reason or another I do not have much contact with my siblings. Also, for reasons that are very real to me I have not spoken to or seen my dad in nearly 4 years.

A few months ago I got a message from my Aunt (on my Dad’s side) to call her. It isn’t often that a family member from that side reaches out to talk to me. I picked up the phone and we chatted. The real reason for the call was to tell me that one of my uncles has lung cancer. Funny thing about cancer… every single time it gives you the ol’ bitch slap of a reality check. My aunt and I got to talking about my dad and basically she told me I needed to be the bigger person and pick up the phone. Trouble was, I didn’t know where my dad was or what his phone number was.

A few weeks later my phone rang. It was my dad. It has been at least 5 or 6 years since my father had picked up the phone to call me. No Happy Birthday. No Merry Christmas. It was truly shocking. What’s more, he apologized.

Since then, my dad has called 2 more times. Once to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner and another to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving. With that phone call he said he would like it if our family got together for dinner or such. I would like that too.

I made it happen.

In a round about way (using the hated social media and a telephone) I arranged for my dad, step-mom, sister, littlest brother, little brother and his girlfriend to come to our house for dinner last night. It was the first time all of these people have been in the same house, at the same table, at the same time. It was just us. There was no crazy aunt (different aunt) heckling us. No one was drunk. We sat at a table and ate off of real plates. After dinner, we played a game… like family. We laughed. We smiled. We had a great time.

It was as if we were a real family.

It restored my hope that I could have a relationship with people I had nearly given up on. My dad has been sober for over a year. This is huge. I learned he and my sister have a great relationship. I learned my step-mom works very hard to provide for her family (she always has). I learned my littlest brother isn’t as much of a screw up as I thought. I learned that my little brother has turned into a fine young man and his girlfriend is a true delight.

At the end of the night my son was begging his uncles not to go. He thought these two new guys were the bees knees. That makes me happy.

It was a giant leap for us. I only hope we can continue leaping forward.

This is one of those posts that I’ve avoided writing.  There are certain subjects that I’ve considered off limits.  They include my sex life, my job (although I blur that line a bit) and most of my childhood.  Ironic that I write about my child’s childhood huh?  Anyway, I also tend to avoid writing anything that may be considered TMI.  However, this particular subject deals with fertility, parenthood and just plain being me.  I have written so many posts over the years about my fertility journey it is difficult to link them all.  I’ve also written about having a second child.  Again, too many to link.  I doubt there are many new readers here anyway.

For the past 8 1/2 years my husband and I have not done any extraordinary measures to not become pregnant.  8 1/2 years without birth control and not a single pregnancy is impressive if you ask me. The first month many many years ago I thought, “this is it!  Here we go.”  I had optimism and hope.  After the first year that hope started to wane.  It gave rise to doubt, then fear, then depression.

Maybe this time.

Each month I said it… Maybe this time.

We started an international adoption.  We finished the adoption.  We have a beautiful little boy.  The whole 2 years, maybe this time.

A year after our son came home we actively started trying to get pregnant again.  I took my temperature, I visited my accupuncturist on a weekly basis, I used a digital fertility monitor.  Surely this time. It was purely get down to business and make this happen.

There was no baby.  There was hurt, sadness and pain.  Physical pain.  I’ve lived with a level of physical pain most of my life.  It’s a pain that most women can’t even imagine.  It is who I am and a part of who I had to be.  Even though I knew what the pain was from I still thought, maybe this time.

I was holding onto this hairline rope and each month I slipped further and further down.  Every month, maybe this time.  8 1/2 years, maybe this time.

In October I reached the last few inches of the rope.  The pain was more than I could bare.  There were other factors.  The bleeding.  The bleeding that nothing could slow down.  The two of them were in the way of me living life.  It was who I was.  I had resigned myself to the fact that I would just have to suffer.

Years and years ago I drove by a church reader board.  It said, “If you’re already in a hole stop digging.”  It changed my life that day.  I dig a hole and the hairline rope was dropping me into the hole.  In December I was at the very end of the rope.  I had a choice.  I could let go and fall into the hole or I could grab hold and pull myself out.  I made a phone call and scheduled an appointment with my OB/Gyn (known as Dr. Awesome).

I had to wait 2 weeks for the appointment.  I knew what he was going to say.  The 23rd of December I went to the appointment and sure enough, he said he wanted me to schedule another ultrasound.  My uterus felt enlarged and the pain and bleeding I was experiencing was certainly not normal.  I went for the ultrasound on December 28th.  I’m grateful for the chatty ultrasound tech.  She told me (and showed me) that I had a 1″ fibroid.  This time it was submucosal (the last ones were intramural).  This was what was most certainly causing the excessive bleeding.  I had a week and a half to discuss all of this with Derek.  We talked and talked.  I knew what my options would come down to.  Have the fibroid removed and try, yet again, to get pregnant right away or end my fertility for good.

Last Friday we met with Dr. Awesome again.  Yes, there is a 1″ fibroid that is most certainly preventing me from remaining pregnant.  In addition I have a hemmoragic cyst in my left ovary.  Both of them are contributing to the excessive pain and bleeding.  I had 3 options.  1) have the fibroid removed.  It would maybe lessen the bleeding and be the only option to preserve my “fertility.” 2) Endometrial ablation. It would remove the fibroid, probably cut down on the bleeding, maybe some pain,  but totally end my fertility.  3) a hysterectomy.  It would remove the fibroid, end the bleeding and because of my previous surgery would have to be done abdominally and he could also fix scar tissue and clean up the endometriosis.  It would also end my fertility.  He told us to think about it.

We left the office and I sat in the car and cried.  There was no easy answer.  If I have just the fibroid removed I still had the cyst and the endometriosis.  Given my track record of being able to get pregnant neither of us were confident that it would work this time.  If I had the ablation the bleeding might get better, but I’d likely have to have it done again and I would probably still have the pain.  The hysterectomy is major abdominal surgery where they remove an organ.  He was unsure if I would be able to keep my ovaries.  We know 1 will have to go.  We aren’t sure about the other.  If there is any endo on the right ovary it will have to go.  That would leave me with hormone replacement.  It wasn’t an easy decision.

We’ve never needed to have a biological child.  In the weeks leading up to the appointment we had been researching adoption again.  We needed to know that there was an international adoption option out there that was attainable.  We think we’ve found one and we’re filing the information away in the “future plans” section of our life.  The final decision came down to quality of life.  For the past year I have not been the best person to be around.  Much of that is dealing with the loss of my mother-in-law.  However, I am only a half functioning human being these days.  I want to fall asleep on the couch around 7:30 each night.  I can barely walk up the hill to the bus stop each day because of the pain.  I take more pain killers than I’ve ever taken before.  I am miserable.  I’m tired of feeling miserable.  I am too young to watch my life go by just because I want to keep an organ that I’m not really using anyway.

I’m opting for they hysterectomy.

It means 6 weeks of no work and recovery.  It means adoption is option #1.  It means I’ll have my life back.  Sure, I’m scared as hell, but I’m doing this for the right reasons.  Because THIS time it will work.

Derek and his father are very private people.  It is a trait in men in that family.  I’ve been married to my husband for nearly 15 years and with him almost 19.  In all of that time I may have only seen him cry once or twice.  He is not one to overly show emotion.  One way he expresses himself is through video.  He’s been doing this for years and is something he’s very passionate about.  Over the past week he’s been working on a tribute to his mother.  When you ask him how he’s doing he’ll tell you he’s fine.  He chooses to focus on the good things from her life rather than what we’ll miss out on not having her here anymore.  I say what we’ll miss because, let’s face it, she did have a well lived life.  Here’s a glimpse into that life.

If ever there was a time that our family needed prayers it is now.  Yesterday afternoon Derek’s mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  We are rather shocked to say the least.

She is having surgery today to have a piece removed and after that we’ll know more.

I don’t have many words to say about all of this at the moment.  That could be a lack of sleep.

If you are praying people we could use some of those right about now.

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*Mom is out of surgery and everything went well.  The doctor took about a superficial 2″ piece of the tumor out, but left in the deeper portions in.  The tumor is likely malignant, but we won’t have the definitive answer until pathology comes back.  She won’t start treatment until that comes back and until she has a chance to heal for a week or two.

We are still waiting to go in to see her.  I’m tired of waiting.

Do you know what day it is? ?Why it’s corned beef day! ?Ahh you thought it was St. Patrick’s Day didn’t you? ?In keeping with our theme of totally bizarre holidays I thought I’d rename it corned beef day.

I’ve written about St. Pat’s before (here, here and there’s a recipe here) so there isn’t anything earth shattering. ?We are having friends over per usual and adding an informal whiskey tasting this time around. ?This way I don’t have to do wine club and St. Pat’s in the same month. ?I am sure a good time will be had by all.

Happy St. Pat’s to you all.

Our world has been overwhelmed with chocolate and animals, but that isn’t all that’s has been going on. ?Besides Thanksgiving.

Look how beautiful that turkey is

The Trusty Mother-in-Law celebrated her birthday. ?I would tell you how old she is, but I’m not mean. ?It doesn’t matter because she’s beautiful. ?See…

This is one of the only photos we have of her with her eyes open. ?And they are even slightly closed. ?You could take a totally candid photo of this woman and she would have her eyes closed. ?I “favorite” family past-time at restaurants is to take photos of each other. ?This just so happened to be the trusty MIL’s birthday lunch. ?We often need to entertain the small child so we whip out the camera (which I always have with me) and take photos. ?It is a great way to capture fun family events.

The same day as the trusty MIL’s birthday, my own mom retired from working in her horrifically craptastic job. ?She’s worked at a grocery store since time and it isn’t even that nice of a grocery store. ?It is full of meth heads, thieves and gypsies. ?It’s a rather skeevy place. ?We brought mom some roses for her last day and to officially say our good byes to the hell hole. ?Because she pretty much had free reign to do whatever she wanted she let the boy check out someone’s order. ?Which I’m sure the customer just loved the day before Thanksgiving.

Congrats Moms!

I had a meeting at church yesterday afternoon so the trusty husband and the boy went home while I caught a ride with a friend. ?I walked in the door and the trusty husband said, “so I had an interesting phone call.” ?My response was, “should I get a drink first?” ?To that he said, “um, maybe… no… maybe.”

While I was at my meeting the trusty MIL called to ask if we were serious about actually getting a dog. ?We’ve been talking about getting a dog for well over a year now. ?We’ve searched almost daily on the Humane Society website for a dog that would be a good fit for our family. ?We found a Jack Russel mix that we thought was going to be a good one, but it was claimed by two people and there was a court case pending about it. ?We didn’t want to be involved in that. ?Then we did some researching and thought we had decided on rescuing a pit bull. ?We were working with a local pit bull rescue and were matched with a 7 year old female who was just a love. ?We did some thinking about it and realized that we were 3 months away from our last post placement report and didn’t know how biased our dumbass social worker was about dog breeds. ?While the Russians could not repossess our child, they could make it difficult for future families. ?Pit bulls have a bad enough rap, I didn’t want a family missing out on having a child just because our social worker was stupid. ?We also got to thinking about the dog’s age and how the boy would react to potentially only having this dog in his life for a short period of time. ?Back to the drawing board. ?A few months ago we found a boxer mix puppy on the Humane Society site that I thought would be perfect. ?The trusty husband had his heart set on a Boxer (me on a Pit Bull). ?I went to check out the puppy and some slack jawed yokels took her right out from under our noses.

We put dog finding on the back burner.

One of the trusty sister-in-laws works with a lady who breeds show boxers. ?Sis talked to the lady and they had a litter of puppies being born at the end of November. ?This particular breeder has some sort of agreement system if you adopt a show dog. ?I was going to contact her last week, but got distracted by something shiny and forgot. ?We also didn’t want to spend $800 on a championship line show dog.

Last week the trusty MIL mentioned that she saw boxer puppies in their paper. ?Really, was our response. ?Thus prompting the call on Sunday.

The trusty in-laws drove to the owners house because she had 2 little girls left. ?If we were serious they would get one for us. ?As we were approaching the Christmas Tree Farm (did I mention yesterday was Christmas tree day?) the phone rang. ?”When you are done getting your tree you need to come pick up your new child,” the trusty FIL said. ?Um, ok.

Last night this little girl joined our family.

She is a brindle Boxer Mastiff mix. ?She is 8 weeks old and has no name yet. ?When I’m not totally sleep deprived (not because of the dog, but rather the wind) I will tell you a little more about her and our first day together.

In the mean time… anyone have any suggestions on a name? ?We are having a rough go of it. ?The boy suggested Gemma (with a hard G) and the trusty husband said Bella. ?I don’t like either of those.