So I've been on Lupron for five days and I must say it's been pretty uneventful. I don't know what I was expecting. To grow chest hair and turn into The Incredible Hulk? To turn 55 and wake up to a head of gray hair and hot flashes? Kinda. Luckily I had two super rage filled cranky days and now I feel ok (aside from a splitting headache).
It's hard to know what is hormonal and what are my legitimate feelings. Well, they're all legitimate feelings, I think I mean it's hard to know what is me and what are the meds. I think I've earned the right to blame every emotional outburst I have on medication or hormones until 2015.
The hard thing about trying to figure out what is "really me," is that I almost don't remember what I was like before infertility hijacked my life. How did I occupy my time before managing my baby making process became a full time job? What was my emotional baseline before I was repeatedly cycling through the stages of grief?
OK. Full disclosure, I've always been super emotional, so infertility has just exacerbated an already intense situation. But this cycling the stages of grief thing is something I definitely didn't have to deal with before.
The classic stages of grief are: Denial (Who me? Infertility? Yeah right, that's crazy!), Anger (I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!!), Bargaining (OK. If I am good to other people, if I volunteer or donate to charity, then will someone please just let something work!?), Depression (Nothing is working. Nothing is ever going to work. I'm going to die a barren old maid), and finally Acceptance (The baby that is meant to be mine will be. There are other ways to build a family).
I feel like I cycle through or leap frog from one stage to the next on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. It's exhausting. Last week at the doctor's, just when I felt I had accepted our path and our plan, I suddenly stepped back into the Anger square. Now is it hormones or just my continued journey of processing my feelings?
At the end of the day, I don't know. All I can do is be grateful when I'm in a better place, and kind to myself when I'm not. And eventually something will be different. Nothing stays the same forever. Sometimes it just feels like it.
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