I just wanted to share about an amazing product that I've tried.  I was chosen by Smiley360 to receive a free sample of Rephresh Vaginal Gel.  This stuff really is amazing.  I haven't yet received my sample from them but I have tried it in the past at the recommendation of my OBGYN.  I really can't say enough good things about it.  Seriously works to balance your Ph level and leaves you feeling clean and fresh.

See, I knew I wouldn't keep up with this... Or more specifically - What's been happening with me recently.

And here we are, several months later.  I just knew I would post a couple posts and then forget all about this.  Well, let's try again.

Recently I've been dealing with a sick cat.  She had a lump on her abdomen and the vet said that it was probably cancer.  So me, trying to do the best thing for my beloved cat, agreed to surgery to have it removed.  Thus started the long saga of my recent troubles.

She had the surgery, no problem.  Stayed overnight when originally they said she wouldn't have to.  The lump was more extensive than they originally had anticipated.  She was understandably upset when we went to get her the following day.  They actually had to use a small plastic tote with lid on the bottom to "trap" my cat to bring her to the examination room.  They put the box part over her and slid the lid under her, latched it, and picked the whole thing up.  Once she was in the exam room, she managed to get free of the vet tech and leaped off the table onto the hard floor.  "She's fine" the vet said reassuringly.  Sure she is, since it happened under your watch.  I'm sure a flying leap onto a hard floor a day after major abdominal surgery is just peachy.  Especially considering I'm supposed to keep her calm and not let her get on furniture for a week or so. *rolls eyes*  Anyway, they managed to catch her and she jumped again two more times.  During one of those times I, stupidly, tried to help corral her.  Yeah, I ended up getting a deep bite in my hand for my troubles.  Not her fault, she was in pain and scared.  I was able to get on antibiotics the next day so it thankfully didn't end up infected.  They couldn't control her long enough to get the pressure bandage cut off her abdomen or the elizabethan collar (cone) on her head - so they sent us home and told us to do it.  We were able to get the bandage off after a lot of difficulty, but the cone wouldn't stay on.  She managed to push it right off.  I managed to get it on once where she couldn't get it off but she was so upset and disoriented I took it back off.  The vet didn't seem too worried about that, so we figured it was no big deal.  Yeah, not so much.

So she's licking her incision area - not obsessively so, but still licking it during normal grooming.  Vet says not to worry about it.  Exactly a week after her surgery I though the incision smelled a bit.  I called the vet and we went in.  Sure enough, it was infected.  They did a culture and sent us home, telling us to continue to give her the antibiotics she had been on for ten days at that point.  Oh and they got the cone on her, which I hadn't been able to do correctly so that it would stay.

Friday morning it looks worse than ever.  The flesh was actually dissolving with the staples in it and pulling away from her body.  Back to the vet we go after getting a call from them letting us know the culture came back and it was MRSA!  Oh shit.  She needed a second surgery to clean it out and was put on a new antibiotic twice a day.  This pill is so bitter that if they taste it they foam at the mouth and drool, so we managed to get it in capsule form.

It was hard, but we got the knack (mostly) of giving her the antibiotic, along with an anti-nausea pill.  About a week after starting the medicine, her appetite was dwindling.  Loss of appetite was a side effect of the medicine, so I was hand feeding her whatever she would eat - deli chicken breast, tuna.  Unfortunately at one point she also bit one of the capsules and got a taste of it, so now every time we wrap her in the towel to give her the medicine she starts drooling like a fountain.  We go back to the vet this past Friday and they say she's healing wonderfully.  At least another week of being on the medicine and she'll get her staples out this Friday.  Awesome.

Then we get home.  She refuses to eat anything that night or the following day.  Finally in desperation I put a can of tuna, a can of wet food, and some pureed pumpkin (helps with diarrhea and constipation) with some water in the blender and liquefied it.  Then I fed it to my cat with an eyedropper, followed by some water.  Yesterday I did this four times.  It's like feeding a baby.  Very messy.  My husband jokes and calls it a tuna smoothie.  I think it's helping, since she went and ate a tiny bit of dry food once I gave her my slurry mixture.  However, she hasn't pooped since Friday night and it's now Monday night.  I had, again, called the vet this morning and they want to see her tomorrow morning if she isn't doing any better.  I'm so exhausted.

Moral of the story.  Make sure your pet wears the damn cone after a surgery.  This has now been three weeks of hell when it didn't have to be.

Snow

Today we're having a major snowstorm.  The earliest on record.  They've upped our forecasted snow totals to 10-14 inches.  Ridiculous!  We had some trees and huge branches falling all along the hill behind our house.  We actually saw one of them take out the neighbor's power line.  As I type it's still laying across the road.  It was sparking when it disconnected from the pole, but I have no idea if it's live or not.  Not going to find out either.  And I had just come in from that same area after clearing the snow off the bamboo hanging in the road too.  Scary.

I guess I'll give this a try...

I've always said that I'd never have a blog, since my life isn't interesting enough to write about.  But I have had experiences that no one else I know has.  My husband and I suffer from infertility.  Now in a way this defines who we are, but for the most part it has little to do with our day to day lives.  We've had a ton of testing done, but there is nothing they can find that could be causing it.  So we have what's known as unexplained infertility.

We've been through two rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination), one on Clomid and one on injectable fertility medications.  Both were unsuccessful.  Then this past May we did a round of IVF (in-vitro fertilization) that changed my life.  I got pregnant.  For about three days.  It ended in a chemical pregnancy, or what is now referred to by the medical community as an early pregnancy loss.  Between the trauma of the IVF process and the loss, it really changed the way that I look at the world.

I'm incredibly thankful that I have the husband I do.  I know people always say that they've married their perfect soulmate, but in our case I truly believe that to be the case.  There's no one else I can imagine being as comfortable with or as happy with.  We both feel totally free to be who we are around the other, with no fear of judgement.  That's a nice feeling.  And I've never felt as loved as I do by him.  He's been incredibly supportive through this whole process of infertility.

My husband recently brought up the idea that maybe we weren't meant to have kids after all.  I know how much this hurts him to admit.  I'm selfish enough to be content with the life that we have - don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a baby - but I recognize that a lot of the things I enjoy wouldn't be possible if we had one.  But my husband truly wants a baby more than anything.  I feel guilt for not being able to make him a father.  He says he doesn't mind, but I still feel that guilt.  Neither one of us blames the other in any way.  We're pretty sure it's the combination that's a problem, since when we did IVF, even when they did ICSI (where they actually inject the sperm into the egg) there were much lower fertilization rates than should have happened.  He's never been on board with the idea of adoption, but recently mentioned it as a hypothetical in-the-future, maybe kind of option.  And then a couple days ago, an old friend of my husband's posted on Facebook that he and his wife had adopted a baby.  For some reason this brought all kinds of feeling swirling to the surface for me.  My husband said it didn't bother him, but it bothered me.  Me, the selfish one.  The one who loves being able to sleep in, go out when we want, eat what we want (within reason, since I'm dieting).

I had said that I didn't want to go through the second IVF round that would be covered by state mandated insurance coverage.  And I feel guilty for that too.  I have a lot of friends in the infertility community who would literally cut off a limb for one shot at IVF, and I'm throwing it away.  The experience was so difficult and traumatic for me that emotionally I'm not sure if I can do it again.  I want a baby, but I want to not have to go through that again even more.  I told my husband that if he wanted me to, I would happily do it, for him.

My thoughts right now are a jumble.

I'm currently dieting - initially to lose weight for the next IVF round, but now just for my health.  I'm down to 182.4 lbs. this morning.  That's 28 lbs. less than when I started - June 1st - the day I found out I was miscarrying.  I originally started dieting as a way to "punish" myself for not being able to keep the pregnancy.  My doctor reassured me that my weight was not a factor in why I hadn't gotten pregnant and wasn't a factor in losing it either.  But my heart didn't believe him.  I, twistedly, decided that I had been too fat to be pregnant and that it was my fault for losing the baby.  I've gotten past that way of thinking, but it took a long time and a lot of soul searching.  The loss also made me re-evaluate my spiritual beliefs, but that's for another post.

So yeah, this is me.  Kind of mixed up and confused, but these are the events of the last six months that have helped define me as a person.  Well, the infertility diagnosis has defined me for two years, the fertility treatments and loss are all within the last 6 months to a year.  But you get the picture.