speaking of cleansing...

So Intended D beat me to the punch today. (Thanks a lot babe!)
Yesterday was a start at trying to cleanse in many ways. It was spring cleaning on a beautiful day in our nation’s capital. I just read Intended D’s post and will lobby to remove the back up of the donor profile that we have saved somewhere. There is no reason to keep it in our home. I don’t want to stumble upon it in 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years. I’m over it. Like Intended D said, it was “nice knowin’ ya, and we paid you well to give us some of your genetic material.” And it didn’t work and we’re not going down that path again. I have no attachment to this stranger who was going to potentially be a genetic link to my child. NONE. As Michael Jackson sang, “she’s out of my life.”

I have a need to cleanse lately. Intended D and I are in a holding pattern as we move toward adoption, mostly because of circumstances that are out of our control. But I believe we are also in a healing mode. I have always been the type that jumps into the next step for the sake of my sanity. I am not an impulsive person, but I need to keep moving. I don’t like to feel complacent. So yes, I am happy to say I tackled our bags o’meds yesterday. And I do wish we would have had a ritualistic burning on par with the women’s lib bra burning bon-fires of decades past. Intended D wasn’t willing to participate which worries me a little bit because I think he needs catharsis. But c’est la vie. We are on different time tables. I don't think that's uncommon.

I haven’t had an intermuscular shot for– well, it’s been a few months now—and I still have pain in my butt where we have hit nerves time after time. Pain not deep down in my butt where the drugs were injected, but more from nerves that are closer to the surface of my skin. I believe it’s the nerves healing. I have had numb spots on my butt for years now from the many PIO shots I’ve had to endure. I have also developed hypersensitivity on certain areas of my butt where the nerves are healing. I have a medical background and I think I understand what’s going on so I’m not my normal hypochondriacal mess about it. Nonetheless, it’s a constant reminder of the last several years of hell. I’m still healing from the injections physically and obviously emotionally. I’m sure someone more poetically equipped than I am would be able to write novels about the parallels between the physical healing and the emotional. But I’ll abstain.

The point is that I have made a decision I’m not going back there again. I’m not going to put myself through any more cycles. I just cannot. I don't think it's good for Intended D either. This has been too painful of a journey for me to consider another needle. I need closure to this experience. I am so scarred by this experience I am pretty certain I have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). No I’m not kidding. My heart rate elevates when I see a pregnant woman. I can’t look babies in the eye. – well that was kind of joke because I started picturing avoiding eye contact with a newborn. So funny on so many levels. They can’t see a damn thing anyway.

But I digress… I know I’m scarred and I know that at this point, the only way I will recover is to find resolution. And finding resolution means having a child of our own through adoption. I think intended D and I both know that. I am not happy about our plight. I just know I need to protect my psyche. I know he understands why I can’t do another cycle and I’m pretty certain he is also done with it. But deep, deep down, I think he still wants to because of the “what if…” factor. Which I completely understand. Believe me.

So anyway, yesterday, I finally decided the bags of meds in the closet needed to be addressed. We have a small walk-in closet that is more like a narrow hallway leading to nowhere and at the end of it, we’ve had bags of meds, needles, and sharps containers that have accumulated over the years. Every time a cycle ends painfully (which they always do) one of us has dropped the new accumulation of meds into the closet to get it out of our line of sight. We had lupron, ganirelex, progesterone (in oil AND suppositories), and even some follistim. I’m not sure what else. I stopped looking at the labels. This was not a great walk down memory lane. I also had more needles than you can shake a stick at. I needed to purge it all. I could not tolerate the thought of this paraphernalia existing in our home anymore. I want nothing to do with them. They have caused us nothing but pain.

So I pulled out all the bags, threw all the meds away (I thought about donating them but to be honest, they have been sitting in a closet that gets 30 degrees in winter and over 100 in summer… I wouldn’t even want to use these meds anymore even if I WERE cycling!). I still have the sharps containers and the bags and bags of needles which I’ll take to the RE clinic when I have a chance.

Unfortunately it felt very anti-climactic. I tried to bring Intended D into it by asking for his help and letting him throw away a couple vials. But he wasn’t interested in participating. I feel like I need a ceremony or something. Or a party. Maybe that’s what we need. A 'WE'RE NOT FUCKING WITH MY BODY AND OUR MINDS TO TRY TO CONCEIVE A CHILD ANYMORE' party. Do people have those?