One small step for Anne ...

I'm not sure how to write this post without getting all gross and graphic ... yeah, not sure it's even possible. I refer you first to this excellent wikipedia article on endometriosis -- it's a good, squeamish read on quite a common thing very few people talk about. I was 12 ("my mother slapped me, my father went out for a bottle of Sangria ... We all wanted it to come!") I'd had my period for about a year and was exhibiting a lot of the classic endometriosis symptoms: long, heavy periods; debilitating cramps; gastrointestinal problems; fatigue and bleeding between periods. There was no way they were going to laparoscopy (although they did do a CT scan and found some little cysts, which is really neither here nor there for endometriosis diagnosis, but sucked, I mean ... 12 years old ...welcome to womanhood.) My gynecologist reasoned that I had enough scar tissue already: they would just start me on birth control and see if that helped.

I know a lot of women have a love-hate relationship with The Pill, but birth control and I have so much history together, I feel I have a word to add on the subject. We tried a bunch of different types, trying to find something where the side effects wouldn't completely negate the benefits. I was on pills that gave me morning sickness, made me lactate, gave me facial hair, made my acne worse, and made it awfully easy to gain weight (and difficult to lose it). It made adolescence just that much more .... more. But birth control also made my periods shorter and more predictable: the cramps and other symptoms were terrible once a month, not all the time. As I got older and we narrowed down the options, the birth control seemed to be doing a better and better job of handling the really bad stuff. When I was giving my medical history to the physician's assistant at the MFM office, I completely forgot to mention endometriosis--it's been that long since I worried about it.

So, tonight I'm not starting another pack of Yazmin ("Yaz! I will pretend I am having a casual conversation while I very quickly list all the side effects of this drug! I didn't go to med school for nothing! Yaz!") and I have, unsurprisingly, mixed feelings. The only time I've been off the pill in recent memory was when a random student health doc at MSU wouldn't refill my prescription because she thought it was irresponsible to give birth control to a woman with chronic migraines. So I had to skip a month before I could go back on (with a scrip from a reasonable doctor) and ... cue the worst migraines of my life, the worst cramps, bleeding all the time ... I couldn't wait to get my normal life back, nicely regulated.

I'm in a different place now: I want to try to have a baby. I worry about scarring, pain, all of that ... but I'm also feeling adventurous. This is totally new territory for me, with potentially life-changing results. Glad I'm not in it alone. =)

Planning

Sean and I share a passion for planning: on the drive back to school yesterday we planned meals, housing and activities for my parents' visit to our new apartment in June. We like to start with a big brainstormed list of almost infinite possibilities and then winnow it down to the ideal plan: we did this for the Feast of the 7 Fishes we hope to host someday, and also with names for hypotheticalfuturebaby. We've got it down to one and half possibilities for boys and three possibilities for girls, with one clear front runner if none of our siblings claim it first (their future babies being less hypothetical than ours.)
. . . . . . . . . .
I was about 13, in the car with my mom, planning out loud the names of my future children and oblivious to her growing agitation. "You may not want to be naming your babies," she said, finally unable to stand it anymore. "You probably can't have children of your own."
As I calmed down from my initial shock and tears, she explained her worries--concerns that seemed obvious when she named them, but hadn't occurred to me yet. Most of it connected back to two surgeries I had when I was 4 years old: one to remove a football-sized ganglioneuroma from my abdomen, the other to remove my left kidney. In addition to the scar tissue, surgical staples and some worry over the one kidney, Mom's biggest concern was the remnant tumor: the 5% of the tumor that they couldn't remove because it is wrapped around my aorta. How would this bunch of cells--that started misbehaving when I was a fetus--react if my body was exposed to those kind of hormones again?
As much as this conversation with my mom upset me (so ... much ... angsty ... journaling ... ) I appreciated (still do) the way it made me seriously consider the possibility that I may not, biologically, have children. It gave me lots of low-pressure time to think about other options and made "OK-with-adoption" a dating criterion. A result my mom did not intend is that I've felt guilty about wanting to try to have a biological child: that it is selfish and irresponsible for me to want this.
As Sean reported, Maternal Fetal Medicine has given us the go ahead to try whenever we're ready. Based on a recommendation from the Doc, we're going to check in with an oncologist too, just to be a little more sure about that tumor. I'm going to work with my doctor here to get my migraine meds and symptoms stabilized: no triptans during the pregnancy! With all these pieces in place, plans may still depend on how my fertility has been affected by endometriosis, and a host of other factors we can't even predict right now. I feel good, though: excited, not guilty. I want to keep planning, talking and writing it out.

Ben Franklin House (not his actual house)

Had our first trip to MFM at the Benjamin Franklin House (which, from the outside looks like a run down motel in a Muppet movie, but is all posh fountains and marble inside) yesterday to go over Annie's medical history and light this firecracker. Our sis highly recommended them. The Doc was impressed but by no means intimidated, and tickled pink that we decided to visit before we got pregnant.

"So, you're really not pregnant yet?"

Then I played hooky from training and Annie from class and we spent a beautiful afternoon strolling around Chinatown to celebrate.