Saturday, October 31, 2009

Fertility Decision Making Survey

I just completed this survey. It is a bit long, but hey if it can help at all in the field that I am such good friends and so very familiar with, I am all for it!

Visit here if you want to take it.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Sleigh bells ring are you listening...



So its almost official. I am packin' my bags and headin' home for a month or so. (exciting, cause I can catch holiday sales and eat holiday inspired goodies and drink holiday flavored coffees. btw i don't do christmas anymore, some of my family does- but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the time, always have!) Don't judge me k? Don't ask me why either- k, thanks. LOL!!!

So here's the plan ....

1. I do immune testing now, in next few days and get results in like 10-14 days
2. I go home in early December come back to Cairo early January
3. Take immune test results with me in case I want to consult with anyone back home (not likely- mucho expensive there, but in case)
4. We start appropriate immune treatment (that is if needed) when I get home, or I start while I'm there- depending on what Dr. K suggests
5. IVF number 4 starts in January 2010

This is the best possible scenario for us. I really have to travel now and am not able to put that off.

So letting my precious little eggs age a few months more, will it affect us that much? Yes I know every second counts, but... I feel on one hand, we have been at this IVF for 4+ years (ttc for 10+, shut up, i know) now and another two months or so, so what.

Then I think ok, I am not 30 anymore...... I am 37, there I said it. So that puts me in that wonderful little 35 and over category that seems to deem all things fertile damned.

Oh well we shall hit the IVF heffa hard when I get back and hope 2010 is finally our year.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Infertility a great new gift for the holidays





Well theres another possible little bitch glitch in our IVF game, what's new?

It seems I may be going home to take care of some business in December and I will have to be gone for like a month. (expense) So IVF gets put on hold.

I have not yet done any of the intended immune testing (expense), but I think I should try to get the tests done before I leave so this way they will be done, we will know what we have to address if anything and if I have any questions and if I wanted to talk to someone in the US (expense) about it I will have my results.

We were planning to start IVF this month, AF is here (yesterday) and we did not do anything. If I start injections next month, November, retrieval would fall like early December when I am planning to travel.

So, if i come back mid January, then that puts us into February's period, with retrieval being like in March, when my Mother is coming. I'd actually like to be happy and not the crying little bitch I turn into when I am doing a cycle.

I guess we could start in January (expense), but I will have just got home 2nd week or so in January, could be a little hectic? But I think that is the best scenario, maybe.

Oh the fun this infertility brings us, scheduling to try to get pregnant, and not even scheduling the "fun stuff" like before. Today the reality is scheduling injections (expense) and drugs (expense) and depression (not a monetary expense, but an expense) and hormones (expense), don't you just love it. I do.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Domino's Pizza Cairo, Egypt






I think i ate pizza from Dominos like once when we lived in the US. We had our little neighborhood pizzeria that we always ordered from, a large cheese and 50 wings... man do I miss that!

But here, we usually get pizza from a local, non-US chain. And since Papa John's SUCKS and Pizza Hut is well just that, Pizza Hut, no difference from the US really, we decided to try Domino's for a change from our usual.

Here's our Egyptian Domino's pizzas.



Veggie Feast (green peppers, onions, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, black olives and jalapenos)





A slice of each. Aren't they cute, so tiny...






Deluxe Feast (Beef pepperoni, beef italian sausage, green peppers, mushrooms and onions).


The verdict...

We got two large, as we like to save for lunch the next day or sometimes a snack later, and they had a special for two large and a soda. These pizzas were like small sized mediums.

Could it be that we are used to American LARGE, no. Other pizza places here we ordered from had a decent sized large.

Maybe the photos don't show the acurate size, actually they look ok in the pics, but i swear to you, these were THE smallest larges we have ever seen, we laughed until we finished both of them.

Taste, not too bad. Will we order again from DomiNO's, um NO.

Oh Super S went up on the roof after we ate, snapped the picture below just before sunset...

And to those of you here from ICLW, welcome!!! Aren't you glad you stopped by for this exciting Friday review? Thanks, I know you'll be back soon.




Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Immune Testing for next IVF

So my clinic does not do immune testing, but will treat it and do so regularly. I know weird. But then again all testing is done in labs outside premises of clinics and doctors offices usually. The doctor writes you a prescription for lab work requested, you take to lab and then bring results back to doctor.

You can also walk into any lab, pay and get tested for anything, no prescription needed. Same for medicines, go into pharmacy, pay and you are on your way. Only exception to this is some narcotics.

So i found a lab that will do the following immune tests for me:

1. APA
2. ANA
3. Thrombophilia Panel
4. ATA
5. Possibly an NK cell assay (on this one the lab wrote down test description as "Immunophenotyping CD56" Is this even a test that would show elevation or not in my NK cells?)

So my question is are these sufficient as a start to look at? Are there any other tests that I should absolutely do with these?

Also, if anyone knows about the NK test I described above, is this what I want or not?

I know some of you have experience with this immune testing and any advice would be greatly appreciated. xoxoxoxoxo

Wordless Wednesday: Speechless

** CLICKING LINK BELOW WILL TAKE YOU TO A SATARICAL WEBSITE, NOT MINE, WITH A NOT SO NICE NAME... IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE OR GET OFFENDED EASILY DON'T VISIT**


Why the "BLANK" do you have a kid?



Check out other Wordless Wednesdays here

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Thankful

Today was a deep Saturday. Very.very.deep.

It started off by picking up Super S's brother and taking him across town, actually near downtown Cairo, to his first radiation appointment. He is not able to take chemo. His situation is actually pretty bad and not sure the radiation will stop the cancer from spreading, but hopefully it will relieve some of the pain he has and also kill some of the cancer cells.

While we were at this hospital, in the waiting room, there were lots of cancer patients there. Obviously they were going through chemo and/or radiation from their apperances. They touched my heart. A very fraile mother and her son holding her arm, a man who had the preparartory markings for radiation on his head (brain cancer maybe), an older woman in a wheelchair, fraile, tired and her face showed dispair. And then us, Super S's brother, who is a bit thin now, but no signs of treatment have affected him yet.

I sat there, tearing up, trying to hide this and then got up and walked outside. Super S came and we stood outside for awhile. I told him "you know we have a problem, but we are so lucky, we are healthy..." We said nothing for a few minutes but it was agreed.

Sure we long for a child, we are doing everything possible we can to fullfill this dream of ours, but we are healthy. I thanked God many times today for our health and asked Him, as I always do, to give us a child if that is His Will, but i will say, my suppplications today were more thankful for our health than usual.

Yesterday was also World Food Day and I saw a CNN International special, broke.my.heart. One in six people do not get enough food. 1.02 billion are considred hungry. So many of these are children. They showed videos of affected children, impossible to watch.

So while we long for our child, we are extremely thankful for good health, food to eat and pray for all those who don't have either.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Perfect moment monday on a friday




What could be better than an e-mail like this from your Mom who is 5,500+ miles away from you on an early Friday morning.

"I wanted to tell you about a dream I had last night about you....you were just a sweet little girl of five...and I kept stroking your face...and kept saying..."I miss you so much"....it was so real and so sweet...and then I woke up..the dream has stayed with me all day!"

To post your Perfect Moment Monday, on a Monday- visit the great Weebles Wobblog.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Blogger bloglist widget- you CAN lose it!

Those of you that are on my blogroll/bloglist, down to the right there, I love you!

Yup, i love you so much, that i manually entered all of your blog url's that the Blogger Bloglist widget LOST back onto my blog.

So if you are there and I haven't visited in awhile, doesn't mean i forgot you. I am planning to visit each and every one of you in the next few days. I appreciate your blog that much more after losing it. If you're not there and you should be, leave your blog url in the comment section here and I will add it.

Now i am working on entering the non-IF related blogs, under "I dig these too" as those were lost as well.

Word of advice:

If you are planning to make changes to your Blogger template or html, even if you save a copy, the bloglist widget info will be lost. As you know now, I learned the hard way.

I saved a copy BEFORE I made changes. Then I didn't like the changes i made, so I copied and pasted the OLD html I saved and all widgets were there EXCEPT for the bloglist widgets.

So i did a google search for my blog url, hit the CACHED button and got a snapshot of my blog from the day before. The bloglists were there and when i put my mouse on the blog name, it showed me the url at the bottom of my screen and I started entering away!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Spotlight? On who?



Well i am very surprised proud to announce that I, you read right, yes me Wishing4One am the spotlight blog this month on the trakkrz infertilty page.

I am their first spotlight for the Infertility category and I am honored man!

Who would have thought anyone, let alone this great new site trakkrz, would spotlight the Wishy?

I guess my reproductive failures coupled with my "super fun life" in Cairo, Egypt is worth something after all, LOL!

Anyway check em out as they feature alot of blogs from the IF community and blogs on just about subject you can think of conveniently listed alphabetically.

If you're not listed there (i know alot of you are already) go ahead and get listed as its a fast, fun growing resource. And who wouldn't be cool, spelling trakkrz they way they do!

I promise to get back to my regular fun-filled posts you all loathe crave soon. Got a few things going one here, not infertility related and i will share with you soon. Have a great Wednesday! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

* EDIT* You may noticed some ads on my site now, I thought I would never ad ads, but momma needs some money even if its cents per click! I am even thinking of offering LOW monthly ads for people to place if they want. IVF hits the kitty hard man! 

Wordless Wednesday: Rested







Sunday, October 11, 2009

Change of address and a cigarette

Today Super S and I went to change the address on his ID. He did not update it since we moved into our house.

The office, police station actually (thats where you do this) was quiet, not too many people and it went rather smooth.

The guy at the window was smoking, no surprise, it's common. Strange smoking on the job I know, but extremely common.

The surprising thing was as we were standing to side of the walk-up window filling out the needed form, the guy just threw the cigarette out his window, into the waiting area where we were. It just flew by us.... very cool.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Wordless Wednesday: Stunted





Wordless Wednesday , go ahead, play along!

Monday, October 5, 2009

If there was an award this post would get it

No, no, no, not my post, this one that Lollipop Goldstein, a.k.a. our beloved Mel over at the new Stirrup-Queens wrote.

I know that all of you feel as I do, grateful to Mel for providing so many resources for those of us in the online ALI community.

I always think of Mel as like our den mother, or our RA in the dorm, or the cool teacher at school, or the lady in front of you in line at the grocery store who just excudes something special and you want to talk to her. Her brilliant writing and sincerity really come through in this one.

____________________________________________________________

In other news, we met with Dr. K yesterday, turned out to be an early appointment actually, 7:30pm, LOL. The really cool thing is that he called me! I was suppose to call him and hadn't yet by late afternoon and he called asking what time we could come in.

So in a nutshell, we are making some changes for IVF #4 this month. Won't go into too much detail now, but may share some later. I feel good about it and hope that the tweaks will help. It does involve some testing and appropriate treatments if we find we need them.

We stayed for three hours talking, and mind you this was not a pay appointment. Just like a pop-in conference, on him i guess? He's actually like a friend now- we invited him and his family to come to our home if he ever takes time off, which we told him we are sure he does.

Its so different here, you really feel at ease with doctors, or at least we have been lucky and its happened that way for us. We always have their mobile (cell) number, emails, etc. and can really call anytime we need to. Maybe you can too, I don't know, but this relationship with Dr. K is a special one. When we thanked him so much for meeting with us, he told us his wish is to always be able to see us and for our baby to arrive soon. He is so sincere and I swear it makes all the difference.

So fingers crossed, prayers ready, candles lit, whatever it is you do, join me in hoping maybe, just maybe four (4th IVF trial) and eight (8th embryo transfer) will be our lucky numbers. Hope you're weekend was great! xoxoxoxo

Friday, October 2, 2009

Friday Night Dinner Party

... and we are the hosts!

Super S will have seven friends over, just the guys and not their entire families, which I am actually grateful for, for a few reasons....

One, we don't have dining room set yet, so its not so easy to seat so many. But we manage, every time.

We eat on the second floor, (or outside in the garden) where we have a fairly good sized round glass table and it is open to our living room area.

The first floor of our house, has a large open area for a dining room, and two salons (seating areas) and it is also where our kitchen is. We have not furnished it all yet. It needs so much and we are doing things little by little. IVF is more important than furniture, for now.

Two, I am just not in the mood for entertaining, well talking to ladies I don't know and the kids I am sure they would bring along. I love entertaining and having guests, its one of my favorite things to do, but these few days have been alittle tough. Not in the cheeriest of moods and thinking about the next IVF, hoping that we can get some answers before we go for it again. But I'm good, just don't feel like socializing I guess.

Anyway... I made my Gram's famous cheesecake and I must say looks yummy, even before the cherry topping I plan to put on it tomorrow. No graham crackers here so I crumble up these yummy butter cookies. I use a cheese called Kiri, its super creamy and better than Philadelphia I think (which they do have here). And the roll, that is how they sell wax paper here. Wora Zebda, translated literally to English is butter paper. You just cut it with scissors, I thought it was weird, but it works great! The white plastic container is yogurt bought fresh from a store that makes it daily. The other ingredients I did not photograph as they are pretty regular.




Super yummy rich butter cookies, Kiri cheese, wax paper without a dispenser and yogurt.





Crumbled butter cookie crust.





Bake me please!





Perfect, and no cracks. This is just my second time making too!


Making all this for Super S and his friends does make me feel good though. Its funny, every day after dinner, he always says "thank you for the food babe, it was so good." No matter what I make, he always says thank you and most always always says it was good. I think its so cute, what a great guy I have.

And what a patient guy I might add. I am not always easy to be around, I know surprising huh, LOL. I get my share of moodiness and more than less these days too. He deals with me in such a good way and alot of times I feel guilty for feeling so shitty. I am so lucky in so many ways, I just wish I could be lucky in the baby department too. I am grateful for everything I have and I try to focus on that.

Its cliche, but if it is meant for us, it will be. If not, well then I have to live with that. But i always end that statement, I feel like it is meant for us.