Worst Week: Part II

If you missed the beginning of our Worst Week you can get the details here.

I stayed in bed most of Wednesday, while Scott continued to try to get me to drink Gatorade (which made me feel disgusting) and force-feed me anything he could think of. He was also trying to get me to walk around a bit to keep some strength up, but Scott has a hard time making me do anything.

On Wednesday evening some friends brought dinner over for us, so I tried to build up some strength to head downstairs to greet them. I ate some dinner and hung out downstairs for awhile. I hadn't showered since before the retrieval, so I decided to try to do that. Knowing I wouldn't be able to stand for a shower, I decided to go into the guest bathroom where I could run the shower but still sit on the edge of the tub. But that wasn't really working out, so I plugged the tub and went for a bath instead. Sidenote: we had used the shower in the guest bath several times when we had company, but had never used the bath.

When I was done with my bath, I drained the tub and crawled back to our bathroom to sit down and dry my hair. All of the sudden I started hearing this ear-piercing screech coming from downstairs. It was the highest pitch I had ever heard and also the loudest noise. I was yelling for Scott, but wasn't getting a response. I had no idea what was going on, or where Scott was. But at the same time I started feeling super nauseous. Should I try to go figure out what the awful screeching noise was or stay put and throw up? I reluctantly chose to puke. I kept trying to call for Scott but I couldn't muster up much of a yell and the crazy squeal was drowning me out anyway. No husband was coming to my relief so I crawled back into bed and tried to cover my ears from the deafening constant squeal.

Finally, the noise stopped and Scott soon appeared in our room. He said there was apparently a leak in the tub drain (upstairs) that had gone through the ceiling into our laundry room, which was now flooded. The noise was a water sensor alarm alerting us of the problem. "That sucks," I said. "By the way, I threw up in the bathroom. I was calling for you, but you couldn't hear me." Poor Scott looked so defeated. All of this on no sleep because of our ER adventure throughout the night. He got the water cleaned up and got me more Gatorade, called a plumber to come out the next day and we all went to bed.

Scott had to go into work on Thursday, so his mom came to take on the tasks of forcing Gatorade down me, dragging me out of bed to walk around, and trying to get me to eat anything. 'Twas a tough job, but she was more successful than Scott. I think because its easier to tell your husband to shove it and leave you alone than it is to say that to your mother-in-law. So I actually ate a little bit that day and got up to walk to the guest room a couple of times.

But another fun fact about Thursday: in addition to the plumber we now had coming over, we had also scheduled to have our newly purchased garage doors installed that day. So I moved to the couch and listened to lots of banging, drilling and such instead of sleeping. Or instead of being proactive with the repairmen and answering their questions and whatnot, I just laid on the couch convincing them they would catch a deadly disease from me. Oh, and because I never got up to go outside and check the garage doors they were installing, to this day, I still think they installed the wrong color.

 I think the ones we chose were the color of the front door, but at that point, I was picking my battles carefully. And its amazing how you can talk yourself into liking something when you're completely unmotivated to go through the hassle of changing it. They don't look that bad, right?

To make this whole situation worse, I was supposed to be doing a ton of stuff at work to get ready for our new summer staff training on Friday. So all week I was feeling guilty for leaving it to other people to finish for me. But luckily Whitney and Emily are awesome friends and filled in to finish everything for me. Finally, a glimpse of God's grace!

Friday morning rolled around and as Scott was leaving for work he came back upstairs and told me something was wrong with Kodi, our sweet puppy. I went downstairs with him and found Kodi looking up at me with one side of her face three times the size of the other side. She looked crazy! We had no idea what had happened to her. So once again, looking defeated, instead of going to work, Scott was driving Kodi to the vet. That's a long story in itself, but he ended up bringing her home after a shot and then having to take her back again later because the swelling wasn't going down. Apparently some sort of crazy allergic reaction. Perfect timing. It had never happened before or since then either.

Thankfully, she's perfectly fine now!

My mom had come in on Thursday to help out since by then it was apparent things weren't going well. I was trying to make it to our staff training day because it was really important for me to be there with the team and I wanted my life back. Since I still wasn't in any state to drive, my mom drove me to the staff training and dropped me off, middle-school style. It was pretty awkward. Nothing like meeting new people you're supposed to be really excited about, but you can barely walk, you look pregnant but aren't, and you don't really want to go into the whole story, so you just kind of gloss over the issue like its normal.

Saturday finally arrived. This was five days after our retrieval, which meant it was the day for the second part of the IVF process: the embryo(s) transfer. This is where they put the embryo back into your uterus to implant. From the moment I woke up, I did not feel good about it. I still felt so overwhelmed with my body that the thought of adding on a twin pregnancy in that state was sickening to me. I actually puked again that morning and was generally dreading the process when I was hoping to be excited about it. My mom and Scott were trying really hard to pump me up for it and encourage me, and I knew it was better for the embryos to be put in then, rather than "freezing" them and transferring them at a later time, so we loaded up in the car and headed back to the surgery center.

Dr. Vaughn evaluated me and was concerned I was still so swollen and had so much fluid. He explained that a pregnancy will actually produce those same hormones and therefore add additional fluid to the abdomen. He also added that some people can't tolerate Gatorade so instead I could just eat lots of tortilla chips because salt would do the same thing as the electrolytes. Oh, thanks. In the words of Adam Sandler: "that information would have been much more useful to me YESTERDAY." Or on Tuesday. Tortilla chips are much more my style and to this day I cringe when I see Gatorade. Dr. Vaughn decided I wasn't healthy enough to do the procedure, so we had to cyropreserve our embryos and were sent home. I was actually relieved. I felt free to go home and recover and not have to worry about growing babies.

It was a pretty awful week. Seriously, how many things can unexpectedly go wrong in one week? We have never had any of those experiences again, thankfully. But I love that we laugh about it now. And really, we kind of laughed about it as it was happening. Some of it. I'm thankful that week is behind us. But I know there will be other weeks like those. Some less humorous. But we've learned that God's grace is bigger than our circumstances. And He always works things out for the good. Maybe not what we think is "good" in our minds, but what is truly good.