Pick me up

show card

I picked up my prints from the photo lab yesterday.

I had to flip thru the images, to make sure they looked as I had intended.

The first image on the stack is that of a baby stroller, on seeing this, the photo tech said:

 "oh how cute is that!"

this made me cringe a little inside.

As I continued to flip thru the images her conversation turned to how they are the lab that processes the pictures for the crime scene investigators.

 (I thought that was a more appropriate response to images of loss)

She went into gruesome details of what they have seen and processed recently...it left me feeling weak and sad. As I had gone there excited to finally see the work printed.

I left in search of a pick me up...

I stopped by my garden and watered the sad, confused summer veggies and picked a couple baseball bat sized squash.

Then I went back to work and continued dropping off gallery cards to local venues.

When I made my last stop and placed my cards on the podium with the others,

the gallery sitter looked at me and said "I've seen this"

She was excited and frankly it was a great pat on the back!

all that postage and emailing was not in vain

She started telling me about her losses and what people said to her.

The good the bad and the simply mean.

Then she looked at me and said:

 "This is really important and it is a wonderful thing"

I didn't cry until I got back to the car.

Imagine

I am sitting here, trying to figure out details for my show...and trying to ignore the laughter and squeals from little people outside. Enjoying the last days of summer.

Alas, I could bare it no longer and had to see what was making them so so happy. Maybe in an attempt to feel that way too...

I saw a group of girls, all under 12 wearing bathing suits and taking turns running into a fountain of water that is spraying a slip and slide.

They are all so beautiful and unaware of their bodies, simply laughing and playing.

I stood there for a moment and tried to imagine that I was simply looking in on them, checking to make sure all were playing nicely. Sharing and taking turns...

After simply a moment, I felt the warm tears running down my face.

The idea was so so big, like when you realize how big the universe really is.

It was too much, all I could do was simply cry in awe of it.

Nerves

It feels as though every nerve in my body has been touched to a point of fraying.

Like a crazy old wire from a cloth covered cord in the 40's.

I have been bathing heavily in my history for weeks now and although it has been wonderful for my artmaking, it is starting to enter other aspects of my life again...the lack of sleep, the joy that doesn't linger too long, loss of hunger and loss of clarity.

I was talking with hubby and it seems that we are both nervous about the same thing. Watching the reactions of our family to the show. Watching them cry or tighten up and not speak to us again. Well, we know they will talk to us, but making them have to process their grief and loss in a more steadfast manner. My mother already cried at just the image from the gallery card. Hell, how will she or my father react when they see the far more personal work. I am nervous for them as well.

The one year anniversary of my first of three miscarriages is right around the corner and I am feeling the heaviness in my heart.

As I am trying to plan past my show to the next project/art idea, I am thinking about my Dia De Los Muertos altar. I wasn't able to make one last year, but this year I am.

Shortly after loosing the being...I found myself in a shop purchasing a little mexican folk art piece of a skeleton woman holding a baby. It seemed to comfort me, acknowledging our loss to myself. No one wanted to talk to me about it or their feelings. 

With my most recent recollections, I found myself seeking comfort again. My hubby told me that he feels it was and will be again, in some way, some where.  

I stumbled apon the Mizuko Jizo, a Japanese Bodhisattva.

"Jizo is the protector of children, expectant mothers, firemen, and travelers. Most of all, he is the protector of deceased children, including miscarried, aborted or stillborn infants. In Japanese folklore, Jizo hides the children in his robes to protect them from demons and guide them to salvation."

I am not a religious person(that is a whole other story), and finding this information brought me to tears.

I bought the snake oil and I now have a statue and it will be included in this years altar.

Hell, it made me feel better and that is all I was looking for.

I am coming out of the closet,slowly, but going public with our infertility on my other blog and social media sites. I hope it will mean something to someone other then myself. 

Listen & Feel

I live in a very fertile neighborhood....the place spills children out its pores around 5pm.

They run around in circles in the courtyards. I can hear them playing made up games and squeeling with joy at being chased.

I can hear childhood.

I remember mine and remember that I wanted to share it with my own child.

Chase an ice cream truck, walk barefoot when it rained, eat cereal out of a huge bowl in front of the TV on a Saturday morning.

What I hear now, is all those things not happening.

What I feel now is sad and lonely.

Slowly

I still haven't made up my mind about going back onto the pill...so I guess that really means I am waiting until I can wait no more.

I have been sending out press releases to my show since Sunday evening, and building one of the last pieces for it, slowly but surely.

 It is a nest...and I really like how it looks. the display of it is where I am stuck. My brother has offered to help make a stand for it...but did ask what it meant.

It was strange and almost embarrassing to explain it to him, but realized that I might have to do that over and over again. He has no reference point....I embrace his openness when he talks about his children and his life as a father. I in some ways try to image what it would be like to have a similar story to share with him. So and So did this and can you believe they said that, but I draw a blank and stories of the cats' adventures are a pale comparison to my niece and nephews' antics.

At the same time I have been stewing in the emotions of being childless, barren and suffering from an empty womb. I know now, that it is just my hubby and I forever. We need to make new adventures and have new dreams. I have found myself waking up in the middle of the night, just to hear him breathe, so I can have that forever in my mind and feel it in my heart. I can not image a life without him.

We have gone thru battle, we are still walking in that gear, billyclubs in hand, to beat away anything that might challenge that desire.

In many ways I can see my emptiness as temporary, as I have him to walk with. In other ways I see it as vast as the ocean, as it is just him and me.

Rounding the corner

So I realized today that my show falls just about one year from the first of my three miscarriages.

So if the first had taken I would have been holding my own child at the opening.

Instead, this show has become my child, my mission, my distraction.

I am overwhelmed with fears and anxiety about it finally being seen. Will my voice be strong enough?

I have shown the images to my art advisor/mentor and they were very well received. In fact she thinks that it could be a traveling show. In many ways that is wonderful, in other ways it scares me to death! I doubt my own abilities, I question my drive, and I wonder if I have what it takes to make this happen.

I have worked my gut into a frenzy and am on a doctors ordered bland diet and medicine for the rest of the month. I am so bored with food that now I am not eating much at all.

I am happy with the work and making it distracts me from new decisions that I need to make. When I saw the doctor for my gut, she saw the last ultrasound and said we need a follow up ASAP...as the "complex" cyst is something that can be pre-cancerous or nothing at all...like I need to add that to my plate of options right now! Also if it continues to grow poses a risk of fallopian tube torsion. Something that no one had mentioned to me before. I figured it was pretty well set in there and that a cyst would grow....I never thought of it as a dangerous stacking game.

So I have a prescription for pills...and I haven't taken it to the pharmacy or anything...I am just waiting still, I guess. Waiting for the very last minute...waiting until it is glaringly obvious to me that I need to take them again. I am really wanting to avoid that....really wanting to.

I think I am simply afraid.

Hubby and I spoke and we are both in agreement that we passed teh time to get pregnant. It is a sad reality for us both. The dream is really a ghost, we can see it, interact with it but it is not something we can touch.

It marks yet another milestone we do not get to experience.

In the middle of it ALL

The couple from Montreal

I am in the middle of putting the images for my solo show together. I have been having panic attacks and nightmares about this show....fear nightmares mostly.

I am terrified that no one will show, that I will miss a step....I feel totally propelled to make make make....I am reliving my years of infertility while ignoring my most recent need to make a decision about my body again.

~

Turns out the nurse didn't give me all the information about my results, so I am thankful that I asked for a copy of the results again. Turns out I have cysts on both my ovaries and numerous fibroids, the amount was not even mentioned. I feel full of rocks.

~

So I am diving head first back into the grief of all this and making the art I have dreamed of making about my infertility. It is shaping up well and varies from literal to symbolic. I think that it speaks to the many faces of my situation. I have chosen to avoid the easy images, distraught woman or "boo boo" faces.

I have been revisiting all my fears, my deep deep sadness and awareness of the long term reality. My husband is feeling it too....we have a piece that we are working on together and it is bringing up many hard and painful realities for him too, I am thankful that he is talking to me about it.

I don't want him to feel alone about any of this.

After a day of printing images and being covered with ink, I made dinner and settled into a movie. I chose Away We Go, I knew it was about pregnancy and babies and family...and although it was hard to watch, I felt I could process it. Until they met the couple from Montreal....I knew something was amuck...it wasn't until the club, when I knew what was really up and it hit me like a ton of brinks...

I wept openly and deeply and had another panic attack afterwards.

Watching the grief dance and the husband frozen and sad made it all hit home.

Made me feel the sadness of my losses so heavily.

I finished the film and quickly put it into the sleeve, never to watch it again. In a strange way, I don't even want to see Montreal. I am such a perfect movie go-er, personalizing all I see.

Today I am printing some more and starting a new work for another project I am working on, about fading memories.

I am in the middle of it all...in the thick of it, pulling my legs slowly thru the waters of this emotion.

I feel like I am carrying a heavy load, so I move even slower.

Why do I even bother

Waiting

I had my latest Ultrasound today. I drank 45 minutes before the exam and only drank 75% of what I was asked to. I have been on this ride before and I have made a fool of myself too many times before. So I am taking hold of my dignity and making the rules now.

The tech was running late (hence my master plan had already paid off) and I was still uncomfortable but able to talk and move without thinking I was going to loose it.

I made my appointment with a lady and doing so had me wait an extra few days...as there is only a female tech for half the week and a male tech the other half.

The tech was kind and spoke softly and used my name over and over, made me feel like I was more then an uterus and bladder. She pointed things out things of interest along the trip and took a fair bit of time looking around. In her previous career she was a midwife that specialized in high risk pregnancy and was kind and kept saying she was sorry. It made the experience softer, more honest.

She said she had to leave that job because it was so heartbreaking.

" It is always the nicest people it happens to"

At one point on the exam, she turned on the sound and I heard a heartbeat....I wondered what it was like to hear a second heartbeat...beating even faster then your own.

She looked at me and said softly and kindly..."that is your heart."

It made me stop, it made me feel that deep deep hole in my heart.

It made me ache.

The results are already in and the call from the nurse was sweet.

My doctor had already lost the notes on me...and had already suggested I see OB/GYN for further "assistance in getting pregnant"

I swear I need a new doc, bedside manner of a dinner plate.

I spent at least a half of an hour telling her exactly what I wanted noted on my chart.

So as to avoid this situation, this exact situation!

I still have a cyst on my left ovary, but its presence needs to be watched as it has been camped out there for several months and its size and contents have a risk of rupture.

My uterus is enlarged and my there are several fibroids noted of various degrees.

My shape might be bicornate, but it is hard to tell because of the locations of the fibroids.

So now I am here again...40 and looking at the risks and benefits of going back on the pill.

I need to close the salad bar, no more midnight snacking kids.

No kids

Repeating my fears

Maybe it is the upcoming ultrasound, maybe it is leftover fear...

regardless my dreams last night were somewhat comforting, but mostly heartbreaking.

I was on the beach participating in a silent protest, were were all wrapped in wool blankets and had buried ourselves in the sand so we looked like freshly dug graves. Dirt piled mounds.

I was peeking out of my blanket to see if others were doing the same...and after a period of time we all began to sit up.

Someone behind me asked if I had my period...I wasn't sure how long I had been laying with everyone but for some time...and I said "no, why?" and then she said "Oh My God!"

I reached behind myself and felt wet, I pulled my hand up and saw blood; a handful of blood and tissue.

I realized I was having another miscarriage and wrapped myself up in my blanket to walk away...

When I got up I was dizzy and it was then that I realized I was still bleeding.

I wandered looking for someone to help me... I remember my brother picking me up and carrying me somewhere as I was blacking out and hearing peoples voices say she has lost so much blood.

~

At some point I came to a room and my grandmothers were there.

They told me that they would take care of it....

I was in some sort of portal between worlds.

My grandmothers had come to take the lost baby away to live with them.

It was then, that I knew that they were aware of this loss and that they were trying to help me.

Something in the dream told me that there was more then one child they were watching and I began to weep and sway. I passed out in my dream...and awoke.

Quiet

"many choices"

I have been quiet...and I think I am simply processing.

I have graduated from therapy and have been shifted to "call if needed" status.

This is a big deal for me. I think in many ways I am still adjusting.

 When I started therapy 5 years ago I had given up on myself and my hopes,

 I didn't care if I slept days away on pain pills or if I didn't eat.

I was a shell of a person and terrified that if I went into therapy

 I would not retain the very last bits of self that I had left.

I was gladly wrong.

I think I came out of the whole thing with myself, intact and recharged.

Over the last 5 years I learned to manage my grief, my dark depression, my infertility much much better.

I wanted to learn how to not be bitter.

I still struggle daily at times with sadness and anger, but I have the skills to find new ways to deal with it.

I speak a lot more openly about our infertility, and in fact will be having a solo art show that in centered around my personal experience with it.

I have stopped trying to push The Barreness away and instead strapped on the baby Bjorn.

I will always have her on my back; sometimes she will be asleep sometimes screaming demands.

Mothers Day

 

I made it thru mothers day...there was some drama, some backlash, some response to our absence.

I was able to turn the channel when a commercial came on, or when a movie played. I turned off the radio when an ad was touting the all you should do for your mother.

I mostly did damage control. Control potential damage. 

Mothers day also fell on my fathers birthday...I wanted to celebrate my dad's birthday but not Mothers day.

We did his birthday, a day early....it felt like we had moved his birthday, like I had asked them to change their lives because of our sensitives...this is still sitting heavy with me.

My father was a little upset that we don't celebrate mothers day...I am not sure he can really wrap his head around the depth of hubby and my loss; the daily reminders and images.

I managed to give gifts to four women, this year...it was the best I could do and was happy that I managed that. It was hard to walk past those of mother themed cards and images, but I did and came out with something for them. It hurt, but was manageable and I was able to pack it away into a box that I can address in smaller pieces as time passes.

We mostly stayed home, my hubby made us homemade waffles and we ate them causally and together.

We stayed inside and watched movies and in the afternoon attended an art event I was showing in.

The venue was filled with costumed children who shuttled about here and there squealing and laughing.

We heard a lot of people wishing each other a happy mothers day and I was silent...I tried to keep conversations on work and subject.

I felt mostly numb, mostly, sometimes it felt more like floating.
Like in a dream when you look in on yourself.

 

When I did feel, it was the deep deep sorrow that surrounds you like a bath.

Round and round

I began to shake, deep shaking and then the cramping....in fact I am still shaking...

I rushed to see...what I had feared.

 Blood lots of blood and tissue lots and lots of tissue.

I can not share this with anyone...I didn't get a postive pee test...I was late and thought nothing of it.

In many ways I am glad I didn't see the lines, only to find myself days later, here.

I am spun

saddened and spun

Infertility Awareness Week

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

Visitor

I went in for my annual, I was kind of afraid, I was afraid of what might be found and what might get said.

I searched for a while when we had a choice of doctors, I wanted a real feeling of having a doctor that remembered me and cared about my health.

I think that time has past.

My blood pressure was elevated, to a point of concern.

(it reminded me of one doctor saying to me: "I am surprised you even go to a doctor anymore after all you have gone through")

My current doc did my pelvic exam and felt my lymph nodes, but was ready to leave after that.

It was then that I pulled out my list of questions and requested follow-up exams.

I need to schedule this and that and I would like...this is my yearly physical after all.

I was far more prepared then her.

She asked if I had any pregnancies and I told her about my miscarrages. She said they were not real pregnancies, that real ones have a postive pee test. I sank...I am a fake.

She told me at this point of the game, I could have a referral to a fertility specialist or have a hysterectomy.

I told her that those were not options for me.

We chose many years ago to not have assistance to get pregnant.

She followed up this with, "...then now would also be a good time to start the adoption process"

I told her that was not an option either.

I got my blood taken, peed in a cup and have slips for future ultrasounds and mammograms.

I have found the end of the road.

there is just barreness ahead of me.......no sign "thank you for visiting" or a pretty patch of wildflowers.

Just the end of the known road.

Really, you're not pregnant

My period arrived, a week and a half late.
One moment I was icky feeling and the next the back pain started and I was bleeding.
That quick, no gradual arrival...just a slam dunk.

I was afraid to look every time I went to the bathroom, I was afraid that there would be more evidence of another loss...another momentary motherhood.

Instead, I simply had a, "really you are not pregnant" kind of period.

Waiting at an empty station

My period has yet to arrive.
I was due to get it last week, Wednesday night is when it normally arrives...but it didn't.
Nor, did it appear, Thursday or Friday.
By Friday night I peed on a "You're not pregnant stick".
Then Saturday and Sunday passed with still no sign or even spotting.

I peed on another stick Sunday night..."You're still not pregnant"

I have only missed my period one other time, I was high, high up in the mountains of Nepal, and had been hiking for 10+ hours a day. I missed my period then and that was over 10 years ago. It was memorable then as it is now.

Except now, I am dealing with the mind-fuck that is infertility and the wake of two miscarriages.
Should I still pee on sticks to look for a faint, almost non-existent line, or continue to check the pee sticks I have already thrown into the trash because "maybe now that some real time has passed, it was really a positive and I just couldn't see it."

When should I stop wondering about this month, and have a glass of wine or stop wondering if that aspirin I just took was a good idea. When will I understand that the train is late, and might not stop at this station this month after all.

I wish I could have known you

It appears I lost another early pregnancy.

I am in total shock and wonder what I did to have this repeatedly happen to us.

I sat in the bath this time and watched the blood dissipate in the water...pieces of tissue floated and danced in the liquid. I thought of what might have been and how this was my only time with it before it all flowed away, down the drain.

I held the tissue in my hands and sang to it.

Over time, the pieces fell apart and became smaller and smaller until I was in a tub filled with slightly tinted water and tiny pieces of tissue.

I opened the plug and said goodbye, sitting and watching it all be pulled away and down into the darkness.

Goodbye sweet little something, I will never forget you.

Saturating

"I couldn't tell what was rain and what were tears"

I told my parents about our miscarriage today, I told them before I realized what words were falling out of my mouth. It surprised me and I could see the wind being knocked out of them.

My mother in her "way" told me that she thought I was pregnant and that she and my father were waiting for me to tell them.
She cried when I told her that it was gone, confirmed and gone. My father was silent and could not look at me for a long while. I don't think he knew what to say...or how to say what he wanted to say.

I told them I am racing the clock on the growing fibroids and that this was checkered flag...the last loss I could endure.

Ironically, my husband told someone today too, the first person he has shared it with and when I asked how he felt about sharing it he said "it made me really really sad, but I just told him..."
this is a really big thing for him...In someways I am very proud of him in others I am familiar with what he means and is possibly feeling.

Now I just have to fight feelings of imagining what it would have been and what it would have looked like and what we would have named it.

same news...different year

Well my desire to outwit and out hope my body have begun to be foiled yet again.
The results are back and were delivered by such a warm and kind person this time that the pain of its reality was almost unfelt.
I am growing again...and this time the ping pong game is back on about the shape of my uterus.
It appears that I might have calcified the older fibroids and grown a couple of new ones.
Only one appeared at the begining of the year and two plus some calciumed ones are there now. Plus my ovaries are making cysts and I have one folicle in one of my ovaries.
That one folicle will most likely become a cyst too....

It appears that my desire to grow is all about growing the wrong things or the right things for short periods of time.
Like an oyster, I have taken that speck of sand and coated it with hope apon hope untill I create a perfect orb that people will want to take from me.
Except my orb is not pretty and shiny, but intead hell-bent on taking me with it.

I planted seeds in my garden, at least I can watch that grown into something beautiful and right.

The results will be in shortly

I went to the ultrasound people yesterday....this after a very hard session with my therapist who insisted that I tell someone that I lost a pregnancy. So I am telling you....I lost a pregnancy and I am really not ok with it.
There.

In the real world, I told a long time friend, who repsonded in a surprising manner, thank goodness and was the perfect ear to tell it to. I also told my brother, who was quite shocked that I had lost a pregnancy.

So back to the probes...I went to the clinic and had the 417th ultrasound done, far less in real life...and was greeted with a tech who was all about me "keep trying" and how she lost one and that now she has a baby and that her sister had IVF because she wanted a boy and they spun the sperm to get one....argh
enough, oh and the URBAN myth of a woman here in my town who has two prgnancies in her bicornate uterus and they are two months apart...etc wtc WTF

She thinks I have a bicornate uterus, this can mean one of two things, I really do...or my fibroids are begining to rearrange things again.
then she saw two fibroids...only one was noted at the begining of the year. Then there was question if I had a calcuim fibroid...an oldie but a goodie.
But none were in my my uterus so I am fine to have a kid...go for it. Well, try and fail at it and then try not to slit your wrists from the pain of failure.
Oh and you have like a million follicles too....your ovaries are crazy.

I should hear all this and more next week when my results will be officially in.

So I left there, with a patch of missed ultrasound jelly in my crotch and a new sense of broken.
" Hello yes, I am the Barreness I will be your server for this meal of humble pie"