Play my doctor

Come on down!  It’s time to play PLAY MY DOCTOR!

Here is the scenario.  I ovulated this weekend and CP and I correctly timed our bedroom activities.  I have a short luteal phase which means that I need the drug Crinone to extend my luteal phase to even have a chance of an embryo to implant in my uterus.   The dilemma is this- in the two+ years that CP and I have been trying both naturally and through IUIs, we have failed to become pregnant even ONCE.  (I guess it’s possible that an egg did fertilize at some point, but there was no implantation because of my luteal phase defect, but we will never know.)  So if we have any chance of this month becoming a really happy month (aka I finally get pregnant month), I have to use the Crinone.

HOWEVER, we already know that IVF is going to be expensive and possibly the only way that we get pregnant.  Insurance covers NOTHING.  I have heard that the drugs are the most expensive part, and I would think that Crinone would have to be part of my drug regime when we finally start the IVF process.  I have maybe a box and a half of Crinone left (there are 15 sticks per box) and I would have to use one a day.  Not to mention the mess that comes with using Crinone…  I haven’t met with our new RE just yet (Oct 1^st) so I don’t feel comfortable calling her to ask what she thinks.  She probably hasn’t even looked at my medical records yet.

So what would you do?  (tick tock tick tock)  Your options are:

1.        Take the Crinone.  You never know when it could be your month!

2.       Don’t take the Crinone and hold onto your stash until IVF treatment.

Blog friends- what do you think??

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On another infertility note, with CP galavanting around England and Ireland for work, my next door neighbors invited me over for a casual BBQ with friends.  It ended up being a small gathering with my neighbors and two other couples, along with all of their kids.  When everyone found out that I didn’t have kids, I got the usual “our kids probably make you NOT want to have children.  Ha ha.”  UGH!

While the kids played around us in the backyard, one of the men started talking about Iowa and doing his residency there.  Turns out he is an OBGYN.  Actually, to be more specific, he is an infertility specialist.  I froze when I heard that.  I was wondering where this conversation was going to go and if I would have to excuse myself.  I just shut my mouth and decided not to talk for fear of outing myself as an infertile in front of our new neighbors and their friends.  The doctor then started talking about the practice and I realized that it was the practice that I would be going to in two short weeks.  Luckily his offices are not in the location that I am going to, but the doctor that I am scheduled to see on Oct 1^st shares an office location with him downtown.  I’m sure that doctors talk about patients within the practice (hopefully not with names or addresses!) to bounce ideas, get advice on treatment strategies, etc., but hopefully they don’t talk that much and/or give away identifying information. 

The conversation never took a weird turn and I didn’t end up saying a word.  Most likely the people around me had never needed fertility treatments as they were all, “oh that’s fantastic my friend X probably went to your clinic” and didn’t say anything about having troubles getting pregnant (they all had 2 or 3 kids appropriately spaced apart).  But I would have expected the doctor AND his wife to be a little more sensitive about what they said to me regarding kids.  They have no idea my age, but a married couple in their mid 30s that doesn’t have kids?  It wouldn’t have crossed either of their minds that we may be trying and not succeeding??  Or why not (on account of your job) realize that you  need to be more sensitive in general because who knows what my story is??

Friday bullets

I have been sleeping on the couch on our first floor the past two nights so that Fuzzy Britches doesn’t have to sleep by herself downstairs, but it hasn’t made for a completely deep sleep.  Because of my sleepiness, you guys are getting bullets today!

·         I picked up FB on Weds night and she is doing better than I thought she would be doing.  I had to lift her in and out of the car and could tell that she had dropped some weight.  I told her that just because she felt fat next to Buster, she should not have created the need for this surgery in order to drop some pounds.  ;-)  For the next two weeks she is not allowed to go up and down stairs (other than the two in/out the front door so that she can go to the bathroom), no playing/jumping/etc., and she must be on a leash at all times outside.  We are to keep her safe by not allowing fast movements.  For now that seems to be going okay.

·         I picked Buster up from the boarder last night.  I guess he was fine during the day while playing outside, but they had to move him to a smaller cage at night because they were worried that he was going to break down the door.  I guess the bigger room reminded him that FB was not there with him and it upset him.  WTF are we going to do when FB dies????  He is going to be so distraught.  Even when they are in doggie daycare together he will play for a while, then head over to FB to check on her and make sure she is okay (awwww).  [Just the thought of this is making me cry at work.]  Once I got him home last night he was very gentle with FB (which is not normal) and wanted to snuggle quite a bit with me (that is normal).

This is how I have caught the two of them sleeping before- Buster needing to get as close to FB as possible (he is on the left) while FB tolerates him touching her.

Buster seriously loves to snuggle.  He is bigger than this now, but still tries to get into this position on my lap as much as possible (and I love it, despite his 80 lb weight).

·         CP was in LA for work this week and took the red eye home this morning.  He will be around until tomorrow afternoon when his flight for England leaves.  Yep, CP’s first international trip for work (England and Ireland) is coming up.  Two weeks in Europe; I am so jealous.  I’m trying really hard to not be too jealous and bitter of where he is going to get to go for work…..  I have to keep reminding myself that even though it is going to suck that he is gone, that I will enjoy the hotel points and airline miles at some point in the future.  And maybe he will bring me something back from the trip!

·         Luckily I am close to ovulating- so we have tonight/tomorrow morning to make something happen this month.  Of course I don’t think that I will actually get pregnant, but I won’t see CP for two weeks so we might as well have some fun before he leaves anyway.

·         Not sure how much home improvement work is going to get done with CP gone.  We were thinking that I would paint a bunch, but I may just want to get the kitchen in order and clean the house a bit….

·         CP and I are trying to enjoy the perks of living near Chicago without breaking the bank.  While he is gone in Europe I will be attending the Cardinals/Cubs game with my sister, her boyfriend, and one of my friends.  I’m really excited because the tickets were free AND they are rooftop tickets- which means free food and beer all game long (my first rooftop game!). (Usually rooftop tickets are at least $100 a game.)  Yesterday I was emailed a special through work to go to a Bulls game, so CP and I will be heading to a game in October.  The seats are in the nosebleeds and preseason, but oh well.  The last time I was at a Bulls game Michael Jordan was still playing….so yeah, that’s how long it has been for me.  Finally, Book of Mormon, a play that CP and I have wanted to see for a while, is coming to Chicago!  We are going with my parents in January for my dad’s birthday.  I can’t wait!

Are you looking forward to anything either this weekend or in the next few months?

Emergency surgery

·         After such a happy post on Friday about being really close to have a working kitchen, that happy feeling was delayed a bit. Saturday the contractors from Home Depot showed up at 4pm and were able to hook up the new garbage disposal and the dishwasher, but no one told them that we had put in a new cooktop so they weren’t prepared to hook that up.  They also couldn’t hook up the new faucet.  *groan*  Luckily, CP thought that he could do it, and do it he did.  Color me very impressed.  So yay working kitchen!!  (no thanks to the HD contractors though)

·         To shoo away skunks we bought solar lights to put in the backyard.  We also will be putting in motion detection lights in the hopes of keeping them away (skunks don’t like light).  We’ll see if it works.

·         Now that we have our cable hooked up we get all of the Premium channels for free for two years.  Last year we saw the first episode of Homeland as a teaser, but we didn’t get Showtime so we missed the rest of the season.  Well we have now seen 2.5 episodes and we are hooked!  What a good show.  Can’t wait to catch up with the rest of the first season and watch the upcoming season!

·         The reason that we have only watched half of the third episode is because we were relaxing last night after a long day of home improvement (with a three hour break to watch football- GO EAGLES!), when Fuzzy Britches started acting weird.  She licked her chops and couldn’t get comfortable.  She puked up a small amount of white foam which I have never seen before.  I felt her stomach to see if it was distended, because if it was, then that most likely meant that she had bloat.  Her stomach didn’t feel tight, but as we listened to her labored breathing, we knew that something was wrong and we needed to take her to the emergency vet.

FB in her younger days

The emergency vet immediately took her back for Xrays while CP and I waited nervously in the waiting room.  After a while they led us back into a room and the vet explained that Fuzzy Britches had bloat.  Her stomach hadn’t fully turned and they could perform a procedure where they stick a tube down her throat to try to fix the problem (sorry don’t know the technique), but the vet did say that the technique could work, but then FB could have bloat again tomorrow.  The other option was surgery to correct the bloat and then tack the stomach to the side of the dog’s body so that bloat could almost never happen again.  The vet recommended the surgery over the tube.

We both agreed that despite the ~$5,000 surgery cost, we were going to have the vet perform the surgery.  Although we weren’t expecting this expense, our puppies are our kids right now and FB is still a lively and happy dog (thankfully she hasn’t had any more seizures).  We weren’t going to risk her life to save some money, knowing that bloat could happen again (and possibly at a time when we were not around and not able to respond as quickly as we did).

We walked out of the room and I did my best to hold back the tears as there were others in the waiting room.  CP joked, “well, there go our new windows” but I could see that he was trying to hold back tears too.  We paid for the surgery and then were able to go back to see her before she went into surgery.  They had already given her a sedative so her tongue was hanging farther out of her mouth than usual, she had an IV in her front leg, and I’m not sure that she recognized us.  I was continuing to try to hold back tears, but tried to give her encouragement and tell her that she was good dog.

As CP and I walked out of the building and to our car, I broke down.  I was so worried about her and whether she would make it.  We knew that we caught it early, but was it early enough?  She was an older dog- would that affect her in coming out of surgery?

When we got home it was midnight but I couldn’t sleep until I found out how the surgery went.  I folded clothes, I packed for my work trip, and I tried to busy myself.  Finally at 1:30 the vet called to tell us that she was out of surgery and doing well.  They saw some bruising on her gums which might indicate a problem with clotting, but so far she was doing okay.  They explained that they also took out her spleen because they saw an odd-looking nodule on it and felt it better safe than sorry.  The nodule will get biopsied and we should know the results by next week. 

Poor FB is going to be on pain meds and antibiotics for a few days and needs to rest for the next 10 days.  We will hopefully be able to pick her up from the hospital on Weds when I get back from my work trip.  My parents are thankfully taking Buster to Michigan with them this weekend and during the week we will take him to doggie daycare so that FB can rest during the day.

So my PSA for the day is if you have a large breed female dog that is not spayed yet and the breed is known to bloat, while they are getting spayed you can have them tack the stomach to the side of the dog’s body to prevent bloat from ever happening.  I know that if we ever get another female dog we will be doing just that as I’m sure it is less expensive, the dog doesn’t have to go through two surgeries, and you can have peace of mind for the rest of the dog’s life.

Thank goodness this story has a happy ending….I’m not sure what kind of state I would be in otherwise.  

Making progress

You know how I was complaining that we didn't have any countertops?  Well, I called the company yesterday to tell them that CP had installed the metal piece and asked them to work their magic because we really need a working kitchen.  Work their magic they did- the company called late yesterday afternoon to tell me that the installers would be arriving this morning.  Happy dance!

Get ready for pictures!!

Here is what the kitchen cabinets looked like before spray painting them.  At this point we had the floors refinished and the new double oven installed.

Here are the top cabinets- same ugly yellow color yet they inexplicably have wood cabinet doors.  You can see the wood side piece on the right side of the picture.  

CP worked hard to spray paint all of the metal a creamy white color.  We also took out the hood and the cabinet on the left in the previous picture (hood wasn't working).

CP then built a soffet between the cabinets so that we could hang our microwave/hood combo.

Yay for a working microwave (he still needs to finish the soffet but we need to get the electrician in the house to install a socket in the soffet to plug the microwave in.  CP tried to do it himself and when we turned on the power we heard a POP!  We then decided to leave it to the professional....

CP was then able to vent the microwave/hood out the side of the house (the black vent).  (Side note: how did my husband get so handy??)  CP did take some of the siding color off (whoops) when trying to remove excess caulk on the sides of the vent but we have to replace that anyway....  The other  HUGE vent is the old and now abandoned kitchen vent which is ugly and nasty.  We will have to get a professional to come in, pull it off, and somehow patch up the hole on the side of the house.

We thought about painting the wood cabinet doors the same color as the creamy white metal doors but decided that the color might look odd because of the two different surfaces.  Then CP and I saw a picture of a baby blue wall with white shelves in a kitchen- that was our inspiration.  We decided that we would tie in the creamy white from the metal parts into the wood cabinets by painting the trim white.  As you can see, the result was awful.  What a waste of time.

Originally I was worried that gray wood cabinet doors and the stainless steel appliances would be too industrial looking, but my dad insisted that they would look good.  As you can see in the picture above (the left cabinet), they look much better than the blue.  I still don't love them, but maybe I will change my mind after the room is complete.  Also notice the lovely laminate countertops.

Here's what the house has looked like the past two days without any countertops.

Here are our new granite countertops just installed today!!

Yay for our new cooktop with five burners!

And yay for our new undermounted sink!

Plumber comes tomorrow to hook up the cooktop, hook up the sink, install the new faucet and install the new garbage disposal.  After that WE WILL HAVE A WORKING KITCHEN!!!!  I can't tell you how excited that makes me.  We won't have to eat out every.single.meal!  We can unpack all of our kitchen boxes and free up some space in the garage!

We still have some things to do in the kitchen including figuring out what we want for the backsplash/how to install a backsplash (mental note: must learn how to tile), what color to paint above the top cabinets, painting the window and the ceiling, putting down contact paper so that the paint doesn't scratch off the metal cabinets, and installing all of the cabinets pulls.  But A WORKING KITCHEN!  Big step.

Oh!  And CP and I finally decided on new plates for our house.  We decided to give our old plates away in CT because we had broken a few and they were really large.  We read somewhere that if you eat off smaller plates/plates that have a smaller surface area, you tend to eat less.  While it's hard to find smaller plates these days (especially ones we liked), we went looking for plates that had a raised rim and our goal is to only put food within the smaller circle.

We ended up finding these at Pier 1....and we mixed it up a bit by buying pieces from two different sets.  We bought the large and small plates pictured below...

Martillo Dinnerware in Creme Brulee 

But because we were not huge fans of the bowls and mugs and wanted to spice it up a bit, we bought bowls and mugs from this collection:

"Sanctuary Dinnerware" from Pier1 

Pattern inside of the bowl.

Mugs!

The sets actually go really well together and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the pattern on the sanctuary bowls and mugs (the plates didn't have the raised rim that we wanted).

Doing the happy dance this Friday afternoon!  Have a great weekend!

Skunk

Last night as I got into bed, CP took Buster out for one last pee before bed.  I wish that I hadn’t insisted on it.  A minute later CP yelled into the house “Buster just got sprayed by a skunk!”  At first I thought that CP was joking, but sadly, he was not.  All I wanted to do after watching Clinton’s speech at the DNC was to go to bed.  That was clearly not going to happen.

I threw on my flip flops and headed down the stairs.  Poor Buster ran into the house, blinking his eyes furiously as I’m pretty sure the skunk hit him straight in the face (we are watching him closely to make sure he doesn’t get an eye infection).  He started trying to go upstairs but I wouldn’t let him.  I finally got him outside once again and I started looking up the homemade recipe for de-skunking a dog.  CP grabbed his shoes, got in the car and headed out to find an open store for hydrogen peroxide (1 quart), baking soda (1/4 cup), and liquid dish soap (2 tablespoons).  I kept Buster outside, trying to console him without actually touching him and also got him a wet towel to wipe his head and hopefully help his eyes.

Luckily Walgreens was open at 11pm on a weekday and CP was able to grab all of the supplies (and a bucket).  I poured everything together and mixed it up with a stick.  CP claimed that the smell was making him nauseous so I grabbed Buster and rubbed the homemade concoction all over his body, (focusing mainly on his head and neck) massaging it in for 10 minutes as per the internet directions.  After washing him off with the hose (thank goodness we had the plumber re-do the piping for the outside spigot AND that we had already hooked up the hose), I dried him off with a towel.

Buster got to sleep in the kitchen last night (poor buddy).  I jumped in the shower while CP took the towel and our stinky clothes and started the washer.  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to shower with so I used a scrub, regular soap, and body wash.  :-)  We opened all of the windows in our house that we could and kept a fan going all night in our room (it still stunk).

This morning when I got to work I realized that although I took another shower this morning, I still have a little skunk smell on me and oddly enough, on my phone (ewww).  Hopefully it comes off soon.  Buster has a bit of a smell left on his muzzle, but otherwise smells fine.  I’m hoping our house smells better than when I left it this morning.

I’d love to say that Buster has now learned his lesson, but he is still young and I don’t know if he will learn as quickly as FuzzyBritches did with the toad a few years back. Unfortunately, our town seems to be skunk heaven as we smell them ALL THE TIME.  We may need to think about getting motion detection lights in the back of our house to scare away skunks….or else have a lot of de-skunking supplies on hand.  *sigh*

Yesterday in general was a bit of a sh*tshow because CP stayed home in the morning to meet with the guys that were supposed to install our new granite countertops.  After that we would finally have a working kitchen- a cooktop!  A dishwasher!  A new sink!  But after they took off the old laminate countertops, they said that they couldn’t install the granite because one of the metal/steel support pieces was missing.  WTF.  CP was able to go to Home Depot to grab a piece of steel, cut it with his new reciprocal saw and screw it into place last night.  So now we have no countertops and no working sink…..

……and no idea when the installers can come back.  Fantastic.

Sunroom is finished!

WE HAVE A FINISHED ROOM!!!!  It's only one room out of the whole house, but still.  I am so freaking excited I can’t stand it.  It will be my sanctuary away from the mess, ugliness and general outdatedness (yes that is a made-up word) of the rest of the house.  We still need to put things on shelves, buy curtains or blinds, maybe put something up on the wall, but that's for later down the road.

The 14 x 16 sunroom has taken more time than we had hoped for the transformation.  Every day we worked on the room I cursed the person that thought that wood paneling on every surface was a good idea.  

Dirty, nasty carpeting

Poor picture quality, but wood paneling everywhere

Thank goodness for our electric sander because sanding the ceiling was difficult enough with it!  

Sanded sunroom

Then after taking out an ugly bookcase, CP had to get some use out of his miter saw and make two pieces of crown molding.  Let’s just say it took him a few hours to get the cuts right and for two 2-foot pieces he used the entire 12-foot length we bought at Home Depot!  We are learning as we go….

As CP knows, I HATE taping and all of the prep work that goes into painting.  I know that it makes it easier, but I would rather just get to painting!!!  But I reluctantly did it and then primed the stupid walls and ceiling.  That was especially annoying because the roller didn’t cover the separation between the boards….which meant having to do it all by hand with a small brush. 

The primed sunroom already looks better than the wood paneled sunroom.

As we started painting we realized that we would need to figure out what to do with the gas heater that was abandoned back in 1979 (the old man stuffed newspapers from 1979 in it which is how we know it has been AT LEAST that long since he has used it).  CP confirmed with the plumber that the gas line was abandoned and was able to pull the heater out.  But then that left a hole that went straight through the siding.  

Hello sunshine.

What does my brilliant husband do?  He creates a fake access panel (in my biased opinion I think it looks amazing!).

We still have to get someone to do something with the outside though…construction plastic won’t be appropriate come winter time, even with the insulation stuffed into the hole.

Please don't look closely at the siding....we know that it needs to be replaced.

In the end, the blue we picked is brighter than we thought it would be, but at this point it is too late.  It still makes the room nice and cheery

New paint on the ceiling, windows, and walls.....now to just get rid of the carpet.

Last Thursday the carpet installers came, quickly ripped up the old brown/orange nasty carpeting, and installed a stain resistant carpet.

Buster was a fan of the new carpet.

Phew.  The couch fits in the room.

This weekend we mounted our big tv and it's a little big for the space, but there is nothing we can do about that.

So....one room down.  Only 10 more rooms to go.  *sigh*

Holiday weekend

Overall, CP and I had a lovely long weekend.  I took off Thursday from work to be home while carpet was installed in the sunroom (pictures of the now-completed room tomorrow).  The same day I met with a chimney inspector who ruined my day by telling me that the fireplace/chimney is unsafe for use and we are going to have to completely rebuild it.  Add another cost to the list!

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent at my parent’s place in MI.  It was fantastic to relax, have a few drinks, play some golf, etc. with family and not think about house work.  Everyone on my side of my immediate family knows that we are trying and have been for a while.  I made sure to tell my sister after my surgery about the endometroisis because my doctor did say that it could be genetic.  My sister has always wanted kids (even when I didn’t) so I wanted to tell her about the possibility that she could have endo too.  Right now she and her boyfriend are not thinking marriage or kids so it’s not on her radar quite yet…..which is probably why she made some flippant comments about kids/pregnancy/etc.  The comments hurt me and I will definitely have to talk to her about being a bit more sensitive about the subject around us.

It’s amazing how infertility can seep into everyday life even when you aren’t thinking about it.  CP and I were playing Scattegories with my parents.  The letter was P and the category was medicine/drug.  What does CP come up with?  Progesterone…as in what I took back in February to bring on my period after my fibroid surgery.  Sad but true.  I’m amazed that he even remembered the name of the drug.

On the way home Sunday night CP and I were talking about various things and I didn’t realize that CP had told his sister not just about my surgery, but also that we had been trying for a while without any success.  I’m fine with CP telling her about it because she is not the type to keep secrets.  I don’t think that she is telling the world about what is going on with us, but we are sure that she told her mother and father because we suddenly aren’t hearing any “when are you going to have kids” comments or jokes from either of them….which is actually kind of nice.

Yesterday we were busy with house stuff.  We decided that we hated the paint color we originally picked out for the kitchen cabinets, so we bought a new paint color and I painted everything all over again (grrrr I hate wasted time).  Meanwhile CP built a soffet, hung a microwave/hood from the soffet, then vented the microwave/hood outside.  We then put up the new mount for our tv before crashing on the couch watching Family Guy.  Yes- we finally have internet and cable!!

How was your holiday weekend?