Cincy, here we come!

Wow!  It has been awhile since my last blog!!  I guess I have been kept pretty busy!  As I am packing for our trip to Cincy, I am realizing this is the start of a new chapter.  Possibly, the final chapter.  October 1st is here!!!  1st day of insurance coverage!!  I feel like we should go out and celebrate!!!  This time feels so much different then where we were a year ago.  We have so much behind us and even more in front of us.  After a year of IVF tests and procedures without insurance coverage, this time I feel like we finally have the magical words of “We are covered.”  And that is what makes this chapter so much better and puts us even more at ease!  It takes one giant burden off our shoulders.  Phew!  The thoughts I have rushing to me as I pack my suitcase thinking this is it.  This is the start of something great.  This is our time.   This is the time we will get our baby.

Last night Pat and I saw the movie 50/50.  It was about a 27 year old guy who was diagnosed with a cancer and nothing seemed to be working out for him.  His world was crashing.  As I sit with my hands laced with pat’s, I began to regress back to that time 12 years ago.  The feelings of being so out of control of your life, listening to doctors using words you don’t even understand and just following order after order thinking when will this hell be over?  The nervous breakdowns, the emotional turmoil, the crushing of your heart and the will to continue to trudge forward.  Sounds familiar, right?  As the lights of the theatre turned on, pat and I looked at each other both saying wow, what a powerful movie.   Being a young cancer survivor, I thought the movie was true to form.  A lot of the same emotions and frustrations were captivated perfectly.  I explained this to pat where sometimes he doesn’t understand why I am so profound at times, and am “good” with putting words to my emotions.  It was because I had to get the help I needed as seen in the movie.  You learn to do that over time in crisis situations.   We were walking to our car, and we sat down and waited a few minutes before starting the car.  He was still holding my hand and said I can’t believe how strong you are.  “Katie, how did you do that?”  I could not even imagine how you dealt with such SCARY things at such a young age.  If this happened to me now, pat said I really don’t know how I would handle that and I am an adult…you were only 12.  Pat is going to kill me for writing this, but he did get teary-eyed at a couple points of the movie.  He said he could just picture me the entire time and his heart was just breaking.  As pat explains his feelings of the movie to me, I can see him starting to really get it…get me.   He always knew these things about me, but as we experience more together, go through more hardships, and how we deal we these hardships, the pieces come together and he makes sense of the emotional crazy loon I truly am.  I have seen some pretty scary things and have faced situations you only see in your nightmares, but it’s not because I am strong or fearless, its because when you aren’t given choices in life, you just learn some pretty good coping mechanisms – but still not made of steel!

An interesting fact - I was having a convo with my mom, and she still meets us with her parents of children with cancer support group.  They are typical women – reminiscing, catching up…doing what women do best – eat and chit chat!  She shared some pretty interesting info to me that again makes so much sense.  Other parents of children with cancer got diagnosed at even younger ages..I was more of an adolescent.  Young children under 10 years old face learning disabilities later in life due to the chemotherapy.  The drugs they were exposed to affected them while they were still in their developmental stages.  I, on the other hand, was affected after my major physical development, and my socio-emotional was more affected.  Interesting, huh?   Makes sense…another answer coming to me.

As we can feel our next attempt coming up, we decided we were going to settle on baby names.  We figured it would add to the fun and make it more real.  We have been using the names around our house to make each other smile and go into this cycle with every positive bone in our bodies.  I have to admit, even though we may be premature with it, we feel we are getting closer and is making it feel this journey is closer to ending.  We can’t wait for the day to share our names.  Hopefully, we don’t slip…

I know I will have more to update soon, but for now – keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we embark on a new chapter of our ivf journey…one I would like to call, “the final chapter.” 

Let the fun begin!