Things to Look Forward to

First, I still owe three blogs: one about my sister, one about my father-in-law, and another about infertility. I'll get to those. But FIRST..I want to write about what I'm looking forward to over the next few months.

1) My sister's tumors being removed! I'm not looking forward to her having surgery, but I'm excited about the fact that the tumors will be GONE! We will find out more about surgery on May 10, so I'm looking forward to that day as well. Hoping for GREAT news!

2) My CF appointment on May 10. I'm interested (although anxious) to see how my lung function is doing. I've had more stress than ever before in my life and I'm curious to see if my lung function has tanked or stayed about the same. 

3) Infertility treatments starting soon. We finally got our last letter of approval for infertility treatments and therefore we'll be starting them (barring no more red tape gets thrown our way) within a few months!

4) WEDDINGS! This is the year of weddings! We have three weddings we're looking forward to before the end of the year (one of which we are honored to be standing up for).  I'm so happy for all of the couples. I love weddings, and I love to see true love celebrated!

5) The arrival of a new niece or nephew!! Ahh babies! :) That's really all that needs to be said, but I'll include that I'm so excited to have another Murray running around in October!! 

6) Working with my sister to plan her wedding and our trip to Walt Disney World. Ellen's engagement happened awhile ago, but now it's time to start wedding planning (one of my favorite things to do)! Also, we've decided that when she goes into remission, we are headed down to Florida to spend some time with Mickey! It will be the first vacation we've ever taken together (without parents), and we're both REALLY looking forward to it! :)

Honestly, we have SO much to look forward to over the next year or so. I love focusing on the blessings we have, and we truly have been greatly blessed. 

Sporadic Posting (and Reading)

For the past few months I've been such a terrible blogger! I've either had too much sensitive material that I can't (or have chosen not to) write about, or I've been too busy! My reading of blogs has fallen by the wayside as well. I catch up on posts here and there, but I'm not the dedicated reader I used to be. I feel so bad about those facts, but I also know they will continue to be the trend for at least a month or two. The reason for this lack of writing/reading now comes down to a lack of time. Two weeks ago, I started up a part-time job working 24 hours a week. This was a necessary change for us because when our insurance deductibles/copays doubled, our ability to live off of one income vanished! With working 3 days a week, I've been using my other 4 days to clean the house, cook meals, go grocery shopping, do general errands, get a bit more sleep, visit family, and spend time with my husband. All of that has left little to NO time for websurfing or blogging. In fact, I used to be a Facebook nut, but I've checked it a handful of times in the past two weeks now!

Realistically, it will take me a month or two to really get into a good rhythm with balancing work and everything else which is why the posts will be sporadic for the time being. I hope to get into a good balance of 1 post a week once I start getting time worked out.  Today, I'm up early doing my treatment prior to heading up to U of C for a diabetes appointment. I figured I could use this peace and quiet time of nebbing to write the blog.  Usually, I spend my nebbing time reading now as I have lost a significant chunk of my reading time.  I may have to start alternating reading/blogging time during my treatments. Hopefully, that idea could catch me back up with my friend's blogs and with maintaining mine as well!

So overall, expect approximately weekly postings from me for the next month or two, and then hopefully I can pick back up to a better pace! 

The Road Ahead

So, I haven't posted much fertility information recently and decided it was time for a brief update.

David and I had our last genetic test done up at U of C and we are still waiting for the results of that news.  I also had my liver test done (due to my high liver enzyme levels), and they came back...NORMAL! Such great news!!! My doctors aren't concerned about IVF in regards to my liver, and once the genetic tests come back all of my doctor approvals will be in.  As far as I can tell, this is our last step before we are ABLE to start IVF.

That said, we've made the decision (I still need to talk to the doctor fully about it) to try IUI first. I just want to try doing the less invasive first, especially since I've now ovulated for two cycles.  I feel like this may be the smart approach, and then if it doesn't work we can head into IVF knowing that we tried the least invasive measure first.  Before doing IUI, however, I am going to try a month of mucinex to see if I can thin out my cervical mucus even more.  I'm not holding on to any hope for it to work, but I figure it's worth a try.

So for now, the game plan is to try one cycle with the mucinex, and then move on to IUI for at least 3 cycles before reevaluating.  We did decide to still try naturally for this current cycle. Oddly enough, I think I have become so used to getting BFNs that I'm not focusing on "pregnancy symptoms" this month.  I'm a week past ovulation now (with EWCM, YAY!) and normally I start seeing everything as a sign, but this time absolutely NOTHING.  Very odd for me, but it's nice to not be obsessing over it for once. :)

Hoping everyone else is doing well and feeling healthy! 

March 2012: One of the Most Difficult Months

This blog was actually published for my WordPress account. Most of the information you have already read, but some of it is new... We also decided to share that we are going through infertility with the rest of the world...

I can’t believe that it’s been nearly a month since my last post, but then when I think of everything that has happened it makes sense.  At first, I was avoiding blogging because family needed to know what was going on with my sister prior to the world finding out.  After that, life got pretty busy and pretty tough extremely fast.  I guess the only place to start is at the beginning. . .

Around midnight on March 6, 2012 my sister went into the hospital due to excruciating abdominal pain. Immediately, the E.R. staff performed an abdominal CT which showed lesions on the liver and swollen lymph nodes. She was promptly admitted and scheduled for a colonscopy the following morning. Upon completion of that, they found a large tumor in the colon which was biopsied.  Although it had yet to be confirmed by the biopsy, it was pretty obvious by that point that my sister had colon cancer.  Due to the tumor in her colon, they also biopsied her liver to discover if the lesions there were cancerous or not as well.  The results came back that those lesions were also cancerous, and suddenly we heard the term “Stage IV Colon Cancer.”

Our lives were completely flipped upside down that day and almost instantaneously we became familiar with words that previously never entered into our conversations “Chemo, radiation, oncologist, Folfox, Avastin, cancer,” etc. Things moved pretty quickly after that, and she has already had two chemo sessions and has met with a surgical oncologist up at Northwestern. I will post more in detail about what’s going on with her within another post.

Due to the diagnosis, life was pretty hectic for David and me, and we were trying to spend as much time as possible with my sister.  Just as things felt like they were returning to a somewhat regular pace, we learned on March 29th that my father-in-law (David’s father) passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. The news was shocking, and yet again our world was flipped upside down.  We immediately headed up to Michigan so that David could help his brother with arrangements. Then we came back to Illinois, and returned to Michigan a few days later for the wake and funeral. My father-in-law was a great guy who always complimented me on my writing and my personality. He took the time to make sure I knew how special he thought I was, and I will always be grateful for that. In the very near future I will be writing a dedication post to him.   

Life has been difficult since then, and we miss him dearly each and every day.  We have been trying (yet again) to reach that sense of normalcy that we once had.  Sadly, while trying to recover emotionally, we found out that my great aunt passed away on Good Friday. We will be attending her wake and funeral tomorrow evening and Friday morning respectively.  

To say that March was a tough month would be the understatement of the year. March was extremely difficult on us, and we clung to each other harder and more often than we ever have before. As sad as the situations have been, the one benefit is that our relationship has become stronger than ever before. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we will handle whatever is thrown our way as long as we are together. It’s truly amazing to feel that love and that bond with your significant other; it’s beautiful in spite of all the heartache.  

In addition to all the sadness we have felt, we have talked extensively and felt that it was time to share the other big issue we have been facing lately. Late last year, after trying naturally to conceive a child, it was discovered that I have infertility and that we will need to go through some sort of fertility treatment to manage a pregnancy. The reason I have chosen to share this is because I unfortunately do not believe that enough women talk about this, and the subject is seen as very “taboo” in our culture.  Sadly, because of this many women feel alone and frightened throughout their journey.  My hope, when I began this blog, was to help someone else in some way, shape, or form. If I can possibly help someone who may also be going through infertility to not feel as alone, then I will have succeeded in my goal.  The scope of an infertility diagnosis and what our options are is too large to condense into this (already long) post, and therefore it is yet another topic that I will be writing more thoroughly about in the near future.  When I write about infertility, I will not be giving all the details and specifics, but will share my journey as much as possible.  Please bear with  me over the next few weeks as I begin to blog about all that has been going on, and please don’t hesitate to e-mail me or comment with any questions you may have!

Words we have been living by recently...