How to meet women?

I went out last night with my husband and some good friends and one of my recently single guy-friends posed this question to me  "How do you find and meet an sophisticated women?"

UUUUUHHHGGHHHHH!

First of all I will take infertility any day with my husband over being without him.  Not that I minded being single - but until I met the hubbie, quality men were so difficult to find.  I have to admit I have pretty high standards for intelligence in a partner, which may knock out about 95% of the population.  In addition to that I din't want anyone who was so smart they couldn't communicate in an intelligent fashion.  (that knocked out another 4%).   This coupled with all sorts of other issues (exclude workaholics, alcoholics and fitness gurus) meant that there were not a lot of people left.  The fact that I met my husband at all was just dumb luck.  I think it is the entire reason fate brought me to the medical school that made me so miserable for so long - but it was worth it.

So, getting back on track . . . .
At first I thought about my analogous where to meet sophisticated men?  I had some ideas but alumni football viewing parties and softball teams but these didn't seem to translate to meeting women.  And then I thought about it further . . .Where do you meet WOMEN, and secondly why don't I have any girlfriends anymore?

I realized GAGGLES of women engage in friendships spawned by their children.   There are mommy clubs, and ways to meet other women in the same age/communities IF you have kids.  And somehow, having kids gives people enough common ground that they open themselves up to complete strangers, and friendships begin.

But where do women without children go?  Where are all the educated women that I could find something in common with?  OH right . . . . they are doing what I am doing . . . working more than full time to build their career.  (Sure some intelligent women may have the financial capacity to stay home and be a housewife - but I wouldn't have much in common with them anyway)

I very much miss having friends outside of work.  My friends at work are great - but the conversation completely revolved around work at all times.  I miss being able to have an intelligent conversation about art or politics or movies or life.  Any good friends that I have had in recent years all moved out of the area for their jobs, and while I keep in touch, I miss having someone to call up and go shopping or out to lunch with.  For several years I have wondered how to make new friends.  It seems like a skill I once had a lot of experience with that is now dead.  I am a very friendly and nice person, but I don't know where to meet sophisticated women.  Not for me, and not to give advice to my guy-friend.

So anyway - I am up for ideas for him and for me!  Until then, thanks to all my infertility friends out there.  I wish we could meet up for lunch :)

Facebook - #1

I'm going to name the reasons why Facebook taunts infertiles and why I should really quit the habit.  When I have enough internal evidence I may just give it all up.

So . . . Reason #1:

Targeted ads:  do you even notice that those side banners change according to your profile?  I first noticed this phenomenon when my status changed to "engaged".  All of a sudden there were all sorts of ads for wedding dresses, flowers and wedding planners.  I though it was curious but made sense that this is the future of online technology.  Taking the public things you say about yourself and targeting ads to you appropriately.  According to a friend who recently became single he is now bombarded with dating services and singles clubs.  I don't disagree with this tactic, I would rather have 3 targeted adds for things I may be interested in buying on a side banner than an ad for an SUV or skiing vacation popping up in front of the text I was just reading.

But then it jumped to another level.  Literally 1 year after I was married they started filtering in infertility ads.   There is not a category on facebook where you list if you are infertile, it just assumes these things about you. Thanks facebook.  As if there wasn't enough desire on my own and enough in-law pressure . . . now you are telling me I should be pregnant by now, and apparently offering me help at a local REI clinic.

I am wondering how they came upon this conclusion.  Is it the normal ad to send on a 1 year anniversary?  Is it related to how many of my "friends" are doing pregnancy and mommy related things? Did it search my search terms that I have used in amazon or google?  Whatever facebook did I find it a little scary that they know so much about me.

So thanks for the tips facebook - but I will take it from here.  Send me the the ads geared towards DINKs and you might be more successful.

Women's Intuition

I am a big believer in intuition --especially of the negative type.  If something doesn't feel right, maybe you should back away and take a different path.  Sometimes your going out on a limb in life, and there is anxiety present - thats natural.  But sometimes I feel a spontaneous onset of a weird feeling.  Like something just is not right.

I first noticed my intuition in middle school.  There was a day where I just in the middle of the day felt like there was something seriously wrong with my grandmother who lived in San Francisco.  Odd to be in the middle of the school day and all of a sudden worrying like crazy because there was this deep sinkhole in my chest.  This was October 17th 1989.   I couldn't put it together but I called her when I got home from school -she was fine.  Then at about 5 pm the loma prieta quake hit - again my grandmother was fine, but I just felt like I knew something was wrong before it all happened.

Don't get me wrong, I in no way am capable of predicting the future, but when I have these foreboding thoughts, they sometimes are connected to bad things.  This was reinforced in college when I would have days where I woke up saddened or down and later in the day I would get a call that my mother was in the hospital again.  Same feelings - always surrounding loved ones, usually ending up with less than ideal things happening to them.

So for me - there is something not quite right about this cycle.  Not a physical thing, or an emotional.  I just have this sinking feeling that its going to fail in a much grander failure pattern than simply not working. Maybe that means a chemical pregnancy, a cancelled cycle or maybe a cyst left behind thereafter.  But I have this feeling that with this cycle I am going to disappoint my husband.

More lately though these feelings have not panned out to be so bad at all.  I worried terribly one day about my sister driving home from my house.  Had this feeling her car was going to break down.  But it didn't have any problems until the next time I saw her when we got a flat on the freeway.  Pulled over 10 minutes with roadside assistance and we were on our way.  Not so bad.  There was a day where I worried a terrible amount about my husband's health - he ended up getting a sore throat for a day.  Really not so bad.

So hopefully the feelings about this cycle will not pan out at all - but I felt I had to get it out into the universe to see if it comes back at me like a boomerang.  Time will tell.

I promise a happier post next time - just feeling melancholy lately, I suppose.

Things that remind me, even when I momentarily forget

Today I feel good.  I mean really good in a normal kind of way.  I am not hemorrhaging, crying, eating to oblivion.  There is no ovarian pain, uterine cramping, bloating or menstrual migraines.  I had no appointments today, no probing, no acupuncture.  I went to work, stopped at the store and came home.  I feel like most people do on a daily basis - and it is AWESOME.

It is so awesome that I could almost forget that I am infertile.  I could almost forget, except that so many things have reminded me in the last few days.

facebook - one day I will take the time and do a full on rant, or maybe multiple rants

baby shower this weekend - haven't decided if I can handle it

run into colleague and see the new bump now visible - hadn't heard about that one so got caught a little off guard

yahoo - top story is "celebrity baby bumps and new moms".  Seriously, people are dying from earthquakes and revolutions and celebrity pregnancies are your banner headline?

email from a med-school classmate asking me for advice on finding an OB because she just found out she was preggers and is "super-duper excited".  (I think I just threw up in my mouth)

gaggle of coworkers talking about their babies - because that is all people with babies are capable of talking about

call from mail-order-pharmacy, my insurance has cancelled my preauthorization again and all paperwork must be re-submitted.

"so-and-so is on maternity leave - we are going to have some difficulty covering your upcoming vacation".

the nightly alarm clock to remind myself to walk to the fridge and shoot up the fsh

"do you have kids?" the ever present question I get over and over again.  This is usually preferable to the more personal "I'm surprised you haven't popped one out yet".  People have no tact.

Work email about upcoming evening meeting.  Dinner originally promised but has now been cancelled because "most people have families that they want to go home and eat with".

Just paid medical bills.  Always a lovely expensive reminder.


So anyway, I'm still here, still infertile and destined to keep thinking about it even when I may otherwise be able to forget.  I have been actively trying to think less about all this (also why posting has been a little more sparse).  I realize that I am not in just a short phase here, I am transitioning this into a lifestyle.  When you have been working hard at something for over a year it becomes a part of your being, part of your definition.

So I am a woman, a wife, a doctor, a scrapbooker, a cook and an infertile.  Someday I will add mother in there, but it doesn't erase the experience.  The infertile will always be there in the background.  This has changed me in an irreversible way, but thats okay - because I feel physically great right now.  No reminder can take that away - although the meds can and will.  :)

discovery! (skip if you are squeemish)

Had my baseline ultrasound for follistim cycle 4 today and I had a revelation:

Before I go further I will say it has NEVER bothered me as a gynecologist to have a patient with menses - after all thats what I do.  But I will say that there is nothing that bothers me more as a patient than bleeding on things.  Seriously - other people's blood, no problem - doesn't even phase me.  But for some reason when it is my blood it is disgusting.

The other thing as  gynecologist is that I have had so much exposure to ultrasound gel over the years that it makes my hands itch like crazy - so to avoid walking around scratching parts of my body that are deemed socially unacceptable, I beg my RE to use surgilube on simon instead.  Problem is - its a bit drippy.

So after my ultrasound (and a half hour of sitting and waiting in the room pants-less without the aid of feminine hygiene products) we will just say that I was more than a bit gross.   I am usually a carrier of antibacterial hand wipes (yes I am OCD about hand cleaning) and I happened to buy the wrong pack last time and bought baby wipes instead.  Not so great for hand cleaning but OOOOHHHH SOOOO GOOD for today.  Lets just say I have never been more thankful for something labeled "baby".

So I hope my discovery has been helpful to someone out there - but sorry if I grossed you all out in the mean time!

pms = pretty miserable spouse

There was a time in my life where I cycled normally.  When I was a teenager I had regular every 28 day periods - sad to think that is was the last time I was ever gynecologically normal.  I know this doesn't seem to happen to many people with PCOS - it doesn't follow the norm.  But I will say that I was fairly thin and working out 2-3 hours a day at the time.  When I was 18 and quit sports in favor of being a nerd - well thats when all the PCOS symptoms decided to come out.

Problem was for a short time (until my mom hit chemo-induced menopause) - my mother and I would cycle together.  I really didn't think much of my periods or my cyclicity except for the PMS.  I think my father would hide for days on end because there would be an all out war at home.  Screaming, yelling, crying - all over a stack of papers hidden under my bed or if I came home with an A minus on some english test.

Of course what always happens in the situation is that when you are a teen - you are right.  I thought it was my mothers hormones, not mine.  There was no way there was anything wrong with me - in my head she was just being unreasonable.

After a full day yesterday of yelling at my husband for the most stupid things (especially since I almost never get mad at my husband at all) I realized a few things:

1) I am being a hormonally induced (insert swear word here) pain in the rear

2) I still miss my birth control pills

3) maybe it wasn't my mother after all - maybe it was me! (Sorry Mom)

So today I embark on the plan of self seclusion.  I can't treat my husband like this - he does not deserve my erratic wrath.  I am not sure how you cure the attitude when apparently I am not in control of it.  I think I will lock myself in my office and let him have a full day with his video games as a reward for having to deal with me.  (I'm bloated and pimply anyway with a going on 4 day migraine I am pretty dysfunctional.)  Infertility is a stress enough on any relationship - I wish I could at least feel normal in the times in between the crazy hormone injections and suppositories, but instead I am actually more crazy.

At least the crazy and the migraine will dissolve when I actually start my period, although then I will welcome the debilitating cramping.  If all this treatment works and I get pregnant I am pretty sure I will not feel normal - so this is a long amount of abnormal to be going through to get to a point of 9 months of abnormal to be followed by the postpartum abnormal which will likely be followed by another round of all of it.  When will I feel normal again?  Probably when I am 60 and menopausal long enough to have gotten used to the hormonal absence.  Will my husband be able to last through all of this?  I sure hope so.  If he does he will be a candidate for sainthood.

peaceful sorrow

I tested today at 13 days post trigger (yes I jumped the gun by a day and will test again in a few but I'm not delusional that it will change).   It was negative of course but different than before.  This time, I expected it to be negative, and while I hoped for something better I will admit that it didn't crush me nearly to the degree it has previously.  It was more of a gentle sting and a sadness as opposed to the soul sucking black hole that usually opens up in my chest.

Maybe I am getting better at this, maybe I'm just doing better because I am enjoying my vacation with my husband or maybe I am just meant to suffer through this a while longer.

Someone told me after my laparotomy that it would make me a better doctor.  I'm pretty sure that experiencing pain first hand never makes you feel better about being the one to inflict it (even when benefits are greater than the pain), but it did teach me a certain amount first hand about the process of healing.  It is more than just physical relief of pain, it is the slow process of getting back to your old self although maybe never being quite the same again.

I'm not sure why infertility has been placed in my life journey.  Maybe it will make be a better doctor, person or even mother.  All I hope is that when and if I emerge or move on with my life that there is some semblance of my old self left with the same level of innocent joy that I once had.  I know I will never be the same, but maybe I can grow at least some good roots to be more grounded, strong and peaceful even if the innocence is gone.