Old or New?

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. " ~ T. S. Eliot

If you've read this blog you know that I had the chance to freeze some of my own eggs. The egg retrieval procedure happened two weeks before my 46th birthday.

At the time - and most likely still - there was no clinic in the United States that I could find who would do the procedure for a woman my age, except one. And when I had my initial phone consultation with the doctor he wanted me to understand clearly that I would be spending around $10,000 and, because of my age, I would be lucky of getting maybe one, or possibly two, viable eggs at the most. I told him I still wanted to have him do the egg retrieval.

But the result, to his amazement, was that I ended up producing six mature eggs, two immature ones, and the germinal vesicle cell. The last, the germinal vesicle cell, was something I had insisted, before going under anesthesia, that he retrieve as well.

All of this had taken place in September of 2009, so now nearly five years ago. I never asked my doctor about the freezing process that would be used. I didn't know then that there was any more than one kind of freezing process being done.

It has only been in the last year or two where I found out the process that is the newest, and best, for a more successful outcome in having the egg be viable when "thawed" is called vitrification.

Prior to this "new" method of vitrification the freezing process for eggs was done under a controlled-rate, slow-cooling method. The method involved slowly cooling down the oocyte until it finally freezes. A major disadvantage of that approach was that it caused ice crystals to form inside the embryo’s cells (blastomeres), damaging them and thus reducing viability because they couldn't survive the freeze-thaw.

Vitrification, on the other hand, is associated with higher survival rates and better development compared to slow-cooling. Vitrification involves freezing the egg about 600 times faster than the slow cooling method. The ultra-rapid process is so fast that it literally allows no time for intracellular ice to form. As a result, vitrification allows for less trauma to the egg, and thus, a higher statical rate that the egg would survive the cryopreservation when being thawed.

So, the bottom line is that the method now used to freeze oocytes - vitrification - is associated with higher survival rates and better development compared to the older method of slow-cooling.

But, like I said, back in 2009, with no clinic in the U.S. willing to take someone as old as me I had to just go with the only one that would. And whatever method of freezing eggs that clinic used in 2009 was what it was... and I didn't even know to ask what that might be.

In the intervening years, especially now, since I know more about how much better a freezing method vitrification is than what had been used before - slow-cooling, I wondered what method my eggs were frozen under. Five years ago is like 50 years in terms of how fast science changes and improves its methods.

Anyway, because my eggs were frozen five years ago I thought that the cryopreservation method used was most likely the slow-cooling one because that's what seemed to be used back then. Lately, I would have thoughts like, I don't even know how viable those eggs were going into the freezing process, much less if the slow-cooling method was used, how would they fair coming out of the freezing process intact.. viable.

Finally, a month or so ago, I came across some form from the clinic and I thought, I'm pretty sure back in 2009 my eggs would have been cryopreserve by the old method, but I should call them and find out for sure. I just felt like if there were any chance that doctor was more on the cutting edge of cryopreserving eggs back then maybe the possibility existed that vitrification was the process he used.

So, a month ago I called the clinic where I had the procedure done. A woman who answered said someone would look into my question regarding what method was used to freeze my eggs, and would call me back, but they never did. I decided to call again and this time I got the doctor's administrator and she took down my number said she would look into it herself and call me back. And a day later, just a few days ago, she did. The process she said, of how my eggs were cryopreserved, was vitrification.

*Deep sigh*

I have no idea how things will turn out with my almost 46 year old eggs, but that the newest method, the method used across the board now - as opposed to then - the method that has a really high success rate of thawing out without damage, is the method that my eggs were frozen under. One more dragon slayed.

Now, my thoughts can be relieved of that question and go on to the next: how long can my eggs actually last as viable being frozen for so many years. As one report notes: there isn't enough data yet to know how long eggs can be cryopreserved - but clinicians haven't noticed any problems with oocytes stored for as long as 48 months. As long as 48 months... what about five years?!!!

I guess that dragon will have to be slayed whenever the time comes...

Odd

"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born." ~ Dale E. Turner

I think I've written in this blog how my doctor has said that older woman have a tendency to ovulate twice in a cycle. Which she says is why older woman often have twins. Now most of what you might read regarding that would say that isn't the way things work. It can't be done. But I've always trusted my doctor. She had her last child at 45 (almost 46) and she said that she miscarried like seven or eight time before she was able to figure out what hormonal regimen she needed to be on before her pregnancy stuck.

Anyway, something very interesting happened this past cycle of mine. 

I wore my OV watch - and kept wearing it - even though the watch did not detect that I had ovulated around day 13-15. I kept wearing it, and finally, on cycle day 24 it read Fertile Day 1 (I mistakenly messaged my doctor in the screen shot below that it was cycle day 23 that read Fertile Day 1), which was followed by Fertile Day's 2-4 - June 6-8 - and then on my cycle day 28 it read Ovulation Day 1, but I started bleeding like a period on that day - cycle day 28. 

Because I started bleeding like a period when the watch was telling me I was ovulating - and because it was Day 28 which would have been a normal day to start my period - but, again, because the watch never gave indication to me I was ovulating 14 or so days prior - I messaged my doctor (I screenshot that message below). 

At first my doctor messaged me back to tell me to see if it was a "real" period. Well, I didn't know at the time if it was a "real" period or not. But as it turned out it was; the bleeding was my typical period bleeding length of time and amount. But I was like, why wouldn't the watch have detected the earlier ovulation? It had to have occurred, otherwise I wouldn't have started my period on cycle day 28!

And, because you have to start wearing the OV watch within the first three days of when your menstrual cycle starts, I had to make the decision on day 3 of the bleeding that yes, it was a real period and start wearing the watch. And as an aside, I was confused about what to do because you have to use a new OV watch sensor each cycle and they aren't cheap, I didn't want to be throwing away good money if it wasn't a "real" period! 

But it's good that I decided that even though I was ovulating, I was also having my period, because as it turned out pretty much like clock-work this cycle I ovulated on day 15 according to the OV watch. 

I'm posting some photos to show exactly what the watch was telling me during my last cycle and the correspondence with my doctor, plus what the OV watch is telling me with my present cycle.*

So, yeah, I think what happened just makes me know - without just my doctor telling me - that, yes, you can ovulate two times within a cycle, regardless of what the "experts" say. At least it seems like that's exactly what happened with me.

*The OV Watch gives you your most fertile days starting with Fertile Days 1-4 leading up to ovulation, then it tells you Ovulation Day 1 and the next day Ovulation Day 2, after that it will tell you, Less Fertile Day 1 followed the day after - and this is the last reading of the cycle that it gives you - Less Fertile Day 2. 

Magical

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" ~ Unknown

Sometimes, you can't help but wonder about women fifty and older out there that have gotten pregnant naturally... and if they are, who are they, and what's their story? And then, you just google the right words and, you find that they're real, and they are out "there." the "baby" of the bunch, 52 years young, 53, pregnant and wanting more, another 53 yr old doing it the "old fashioned" way...

Magic is out there... believe that it's out there for you... I already know that it's out there for me...

Lost... Mind...

"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains."
~ Anne Frank

Once again I've been having, more times than not, my severest form of nausea. Last Wednesday and then again, Thursday, I just lost it.

I remember on Wednesday, it was late afternoon and I was in the kitchen probably trying to figure out if I could eat something since I had felt so sick all day long. And then my suffering was just too much for me to deal with and I started crying and screaming hysterically. I finally just laid down on the kitchen floor and wouldn't move. 

As I laid on the floor I remember that I tried to get my mind into a deep mental state. I wanted to go to a place where I didn't feel sick anymore. I kept my mind focusing on going deeper and deeper into a darkness, but I wasn't having success. I kept hearing things around me that brought me back to where I was. 

When one of my sisters (I have three) - the one who now lives an hour away - came by and I was so unresponsive to her she wanted to call 911, but my mom told her that it wouldn't do any good. I wanted to scream at her how stupid she was, how did she think after four years of just about every test imaginable did she think taking me to a generic hospital would help me in any way, but I kept silent. I just wanted her to go and leave me lying on the kitchen floor. It felt good to be lying there. I didn't want to be moved. I didn't want to go lie on my bed. My nausea seemed less pervasive as I laid there on my side. 

But before my sister left to go to her yoga class she told my mom if I didn't get up she was going to call 911. My mom begged me to get up from the floor because she couldn't lift me, and it was only because I didn't want to cause any more stress for my mom that I got up and went in her room to lay on her bed. But it just didn't feel the same; I could feel my nausea more on the comfort of that soft bed than I had on the hard floor. So, I slid down off the bed and lay on my mother's hardwood floor. 

My sister was concerned (but not concerned enough to miss out on her yoga class), but left me there. However, I still felt the nausea so terribly that I got up and went back to lay down where I had been when this all started: on the kitchen floor. 

I couldn't get back to that place I had been before my sister disrupted me; that place where I was feeling less and less of my nausea. As much as I tried to meditate again, I couldn't keep my feeling of utter sickness at bay. Then I started to feel the pain of lying on the hard floor. I was on my left side and I could feel pain at the bone in my left shoulder. I could feel pain where my hip and knees were. And I welcomed the pain. I concentrated on the pain, because anything, at that point, was better for me to feel than the nausea. 

I continued to lie there for so long that my arm and legs started to feel numb and I was glad for that, too. Anything that helped my mind be taken away from my sickness felt like a blessing. Finally, after over an hour, I knew that my sister would be coming back from her yoga class and, for the sake of my mom, I didn't want her to still find me lying there. I got up and went to lie on the couch downstairs. I was in what I call, "survival mode" and that day I had survived.

The next morning I still didn't feel well, but I just kept trying to function at the level I need to in order to make it through the day. I guess it was around 7:30 PM or so when I thought that I should try to eat something. And usually my go to item is a fruit smoothie; probably the healthiest thing I eat - it has a cup of blueberries and cherries each, soy milk, a nice, big dollop of Greek yogurt, a cup (or more) of regular vanilla yogurt, a tablespoon of dark chocolate cocoa and then blended thoroughly - and I put the berries and the soy milk in the blender and at that point that nausea that I had been staving off for so long just couldn't be blocked out any longer.

I went kind of crazy.

I started screaming at the top of my lungs. I don't know if words came out or not, I just know that I screamed. I threw over kitchen chairs and was glad that they hit the floor hard. I knew I wanted to throw and break things... glass things. But even in my state of rage I was rational enough to know that I didn't want to break those glass things in the house.

So, I ran to the cupboard where we keep glass jars, mason jars, and I grabbed one and then ran to the kitchen's sliding glass door which leads out onto a balcony, went out on it and  threw the glass jar as hard as I could at an old oak tree about thirty feet away. I missed. I ran back in the house and went to the cupboard again, this time grabbing as many jars as I could. I ran back out to the balcony, set the jars on a bench, and one by one picked them up throwing them at the tree. On my second throw I hit the jar against the tree and it was like the glass blew up. I liked the sound of shattering glass and I liked that fragments of it flew all over our grassy backyard. I had four more jars and each one I threw at the tree as hard as I could, but I missed with everyone of those. I ran back inside, and mind you, all the while I was screaming, and went to the cupboard only to find one more jar left. I grabbed it and went to stand on the balcony and face that oak tree one last time, but the jar flew just a foot or so to the left.

Our backyard was now littered with glass jars, and I even saw one which I had thrown so hard at the tree but missed, way down the hill in our neighbors yard. I think at the point, the only thing I cared about was that I had missed hitting the tree and didn't get to hear more of the shattering shards of glass. I wanted to break things.

By the time I had gone out on the balcony the second time my mom had come out of her room and was picking up the wooden kitchen chairs I had thrown down. And when she did that, picked them up, I threw them down again. "What are you doing?" she wanted to know. "I can't take it anymore. I can't take feeling so sick." "Stop it!" she said. "Would you rather me get in the car and go drive it into a wall?" I asked, as I grabbed the keys. I knew that getting in a car was not what I should do so I did the only other thing I could do with my anger. I threw more things.

I ran into our living room and threw over the big settee, the beautiful fabric chair, the iron fireplace poker and tools, and then I threw my phone against the blue-tiled floor. When my phone hit I saw pieces of it fly in different directions, but I didn't care. I was just glad I had one more thing I could break.

I couldn't quit screaming. My mom followed me frantically as I tried to wrought some form of destruction and I yelled at her to call my sister - the one that lives down the street. She didn't want to do it. "Call her!" I screamed, "I need help!" She still didn't want to do it. I think she didn't want my sister to see how crazy I had gone, but all that was going through my mind was, I needed someone to stop me, to calm me down, to hear my cry for help.

I ran back into the kitchen and screamed at my mom that if she wouldn't call my sister I would. Just give me her number I imploringly begged. "People always wonder at the funeral what they could have done to help. They never understand the why. Do you want that?" Finally she called her. I heard her say, "C. come over here. L. is going crazy." and she hung up.

I went back into the darkened living room, with its furniture tipped over or laying on its side, and I sat on the couch, now just crying. I was crying, but I was also calming down with the thought of my sister coming to help me.

It took her little more than five minutes to get to our house. When she came in the room she told my mom that maybe I needed to go to the hospital because my other sister had told her of my actions the night before. Both my mom and I said almost simultaneously, "A hospital can't do anything!" She thought they might be able to. I told her I had the best doctor in the area trying to find out what was wrong and help me get better and no hospital near us would be even close to as good as she was. I said, "The only way a hospital could help me is if they gave me a morphine drip and knocked me out so I wouldn't have to feel my nausea any longer." I wailed at her, "I can't take feeling so sick anymore! I just can't take it." I told her that it felt like I was dying. "It feels," I continued, "like what I imagine death feels like." She asked me if my doctor, Dr. M. knew all of this; had I told her all of it? Yes, I said, she knew.

I told her what she could do to help me in the moment. And what that was, would be to go to the website of a center that deals with Chiari malformation patients and find the patient application and help me fill it out. And that's what we did. She asked me all of the, on a scale of 1-10, questions, I answered her, she filled in the blanks and when we finished she went and got an envelope, put a stamp on it and wrote the address to send the form in. I told her it couldn't be sent until I got a copy of the MRI to go with it and she asked what that required and told me she would help to get it done.*

I had quit crying not long after my sister had arrived and I just sat there quietly on the couch, but just as sick as I ever was. I think I had exhausted my anger.

She wanted me to call my counselor, but it was 9:00 pm at night and I told her she wouldn't answer, it would just be calling her answering machine. But my sister got me to call her anyway and she answered. I really couldn't get words out and so I just handed the phone to my sister to let her explain what was happening. They talked for some time and finally I heard her scheduling an appointment for me. She then handed the phone back to me.

When my counselor talked to me she said, I wasn't having a breakdown, I was having anger. I told her that it was hard enough on me, but I hated the stress it put on my mother. And to that, she jokingly said, "It's not like you were running around chasing after your mother with a knife!" No, I thought, at least I wasn't doing that.

During the next few days I was better - and my better isn't really "better" it's just not my death feeling - and even feeling nausea, but without feeling like I'm dying from it, is a functional place for me to live. It's the place where my Zofran (anti-nausea medicine they use for chemo patients) works and I get some kind of relief.

Last night I was fortunate to have enough relief to celebrate my mom's 84th birthday. Sometimes I feel like the stress I have - the stress that I put her under - will be the cause of her death, but other people tell me it is more likely the cause for her to live.

Really, all I know how to do right now is try to survive, and sometimes I do it better than at other times.

*Although an MRI of my brain has shown that I have a condition (genetic) called a Chiari malformation, there are different levels of it... Chiari 0 - 4. I am a Chairi 0. A neurosurgeon where I am would say, has said, that me being a Chiari 0 is nothing, not causing my symptoms, but there is a center that I have read about that explains today's technology as not being good enough - because we are talking in millimeters - to say whether or not a Chiari 0 could be the problem or not. Their website explains that patients go for years with symptoms such as mine because they have a Chiari malformation, but that it isn't a 1 or above. They talk about last resort stuff - as in brain surgery - when your quality of life suffers. Well, my quality of life has been suffering for over four years now and so I am willing to find out from this center what they think and if they can help. Just a few millimeters of relief may be all that is keeping me from living normally. I don't know... but things have been set in motion to see.

Game Time

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely." ~ Henry Ford

In my previous post I alluded to the fact that I had needed a sign "badly." I did need a sign, but unlike most times when I do, I didn't ask for one. I guess God, or my angels, just knew I did need one.

The reason I needed a sign is because I've been having a really difficult time in my faith lately, or rather, lack thereof. And most of my angst and lack of faith was because I never seem to be able to make a relationship work. It's like I pick guys that say all the right things and then they do all the wrong things, i.e., they make me feel such hope and happiness and then leave... gone... with no clear understanding as to why. And I'm left with, WTF? I'm left with feelings of sadness and hurt... and longing for what I can't have...

I made an appointment to go back to my counselor - I hadn't seen her since October when I left to travel - because I felt like a sinking ship.

The first thing I said to, Mia, my counselor, when I saw her was, "I don't think I know how to be happy." That's pretty much the whole nine yards... I don't think I know how to be happy. It's like happiness just seems to allude me. I mean, of course, I have moments of happiness, but I don't know how to live "in" happiness. I want my dreams to come true. Period. I think I'm deserving of my dreams coming true. Period. 

And because they haven't come true, and keep not coming true, I start living in a place of fear and worry and doubt, but dreams or no dreams, I don't want to live a life like that. Period. 

Faith is the place where I want to live. Hope is the place where I want to live. Belief is the place I want to live. And I'm pretty sure that place is: happiness. 

So, I asked Mia what was blocking me from attaining living in that place called, happiness. She told me a couple of things.

First, she thinks that I am too rigid in what type of guy I want... like, he has to be this and this and this. I disagreed with her. I do believe I am open to whatever kind of guy the Universe wants to bring me, with the only caveat being, that he loves me as much as I love him. But she thinks I base my judgement too much on looks. I told her that I had to be attracted to the guy. She thinks attraction can come later. She thinks I can like a guy I'm not attracted to, but think is kind, and humorous, and intelligent, and then gradually become attracted to him. And she doesn't think I'm doing that. But I disagreed with her. I think I am open to that. It's happened with me before, but the guy was married so an intimate relationship wasn't possible. 

The second thing she talked about with me was, that the Universe wants me to have everything I desire, but that, yes, something was blocking me from being able to receive it. She suggested that I ask the Universe to give me a clear and understandable sign of where my blockage was coming from. As much as I believe in signs, I have to admit that I have doubt about how I could see, hear, read, or, any other way, of a getting a sign that triggered the understanding of where my being blocked from happiness is coming from. But, I guess I'm going to have to be open to that; open to asking and getting an answer to that seemingly very difficult question. 

Anyway, I have once again started to read things that are spiritual... a daily missalette - a book that contains the Catholic mass during each day of the year... morning and evening... is one of them. I think taking time to spend with God is the only way I can get back to my place of faith; it's the only way I know to keep myself lifted up by the light, rather than drown in the dark. 

Life seems like such a hard game to play, but at some point, if not master it, I want to become very good at playing it... and I suppose the hard parts of Life are where you learn to become a better player... getting through the hard parts seem to give you a greater knowledge of how to win... I'm ready to win big at the game of Life... 

Dreaming

"Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go." ~ Louise Driscoll

I went to my Chinese acupuncturist yesterday and when I got into the treatment room and lay down on a table similar to a massage one, she said, "I had a dream about you."

I hardly had time to register how interesting it was that this Chinese woman should have a dream about me, when she continued, "In my dream you had a baby." She went on to tell me  "Everyone seemed so surprised that you had a baby." She explained their surprise coming from the idea that I was older so how could I have had this baby. She then said, "But everyone was happy about you having the baby," and she continued, "and in my mind, I just thought, I had helped you have this baby." She finished by saying, "I didn't say, to all of the surprised people, that I had helped you in having this baby, but I knew that what I had done, did. It was a very happy time."

I just thought, wow, I had needed a sign very badly, and this Chinese doctor telling me of her vivid dream about me having a baby, seemed like as good a sign as any.

I know in our American culture dreams are thought of as just a part of subconscious thinking, not a foretelling of future events, but I wondered if the Chinese viewed dreams differently. So, I asked her, "Do the Chinese believe that dreams have real meaning, like, do they believe dreams can foretell future events?" And she answered, "Yes, many times they do."

Love Me Tinder, Love Me Sweet...

"When in doubt, risk it." ~ Holbrook Jackson

So, I got the Tinder app (free to download) about two months ago. Tinder is... crazy!

I'm sure in bigger cities it isn't as crazy as it is in smaller, more niche towns, like the one I live in. But as crazy as I think it is, it's also kind of addictive! Which means I pretty much love it!

If you're not familiar with Tinder here's a pretty thorough article on exactly how it works. When I first got on Tinder I just decided to leave the age range open from 18 - 50+, and I let the distance surrounding me be as far as I could... I mean, my feeling is, who knows where romance lies!

But nothing could have prepared me for how shocking Tinder was going to be! I think I've said in blog posts before that I'm fairly naive, and I've always been kinda "youngish" for my age. As an example, my sister, who was a freshman in high school, had to explain to me - a freshman in COLLEGE!!! - what a certain two-digit number meant in sex! I was always so clueless... at least when it came to the sexual realm, and although I'm a little less so now, I'm still not completely clued in. A lot of that, by now, at least, has to do with just not ever being in a long-term relationship, i.e., barely ever having a boyfriend!

But what shocked me on Tinder is what happened when I started "playing" it. As I said, I didn't "discriminate" on the basis of age, only on whether or not they were a.) cute and b.) seemingly interesting. So, I would just "like" any guy that met both my "a" and "b" criteria - and those guys were few and far between - I might "swipe left" - meaning you aren't interested in the guy and Tinder gets rid of him and pulls up the next guy - fifty times before I found what I was looking for. But most of the time the guys that met my "criteria" were 19-23!!! But, like I said, because I wasn't discriminating on age I'd "swipe right" on them - meaning you "liked" them - and I was sure that Tinder would just move me along to the next guy, but, nooooooo, almost every guy would come up and Tinder would say, "You're a Macth!"

What? I thought, the guy's 19! But not only would I "match" with these cute, young, seemingly interesting, guys, but they would write to me which was even more shocking, as in they wanted to text back and forth with me - which I did! And low, and behold, I found out within a few days of being on Tinder, young guys - and I mean A LOT of young guys! - have older woman fantasies!!! Hahaha! I swear, I was like, I can't believe this... but it's true! And now when I "like" a young, cute, seemingly interesting, guy I'm more surprised if he doesn't "match" with me! That's how crazy Tinder is!

Nevertheless, talk about an ego-booster, Tinder, at least for me, is it! And, who knows, maybe I'll find a young, awesome Tinder guy who wants to make a baby with me! As I've learned on Tinder... you never know what will surprise you!