I’m Sorry for What I Said When I Was on Clomid

Credit: http://www.someecards.com

To catch you up to speed in my last post I talked about my struggles with infertility-but I really didn’t get in to the nitty gritty details of my story.  I mentioned that my husband and I started trying to have a baby last December.  It was fun, it was stress free.  January, February, March passed.  No positive tests.  It was a little less fun, still stress free.  It doesn’t happen right away for everyone.  I went to my annual exam at the end of April.  The nurse practitioner said everything looked fine.  I quizzed her about why I only had three cycles in 2014 and why cystic acne had completely taken over my body when I quit the pill last year.  “Nothing to be worried about”, she replied.  “It takes a while for your body to adjust back from the pill”.  After a year and a half?  Hey, what do I know.

I get a call three days later from the nurse at my doctor’s office.  It’s 1 PM and she wants me to get to the closest lab to get some testing done.  “Everything closes by 4” I said to her.  She knows this, she says it’s urgent they need the blood work today.  She finds me the closest lab in the downtown area.  I’m shaking the whole way.  I don’t entirely get what’s happening but it doesn’t sound great.  Didn’t the Nurse Practioner just say three days ago that everything looked fine?  The next day, the nurse from the doctor’s office calls me again with the results.  My progesterone levels are pretty much non-existent, therefore I am not ovulating.  She told me that the doctor wanted to prescribe me a fertility drug called Clomid.  She told me to take a little time to think about it and call the office back when I was ready to move forward. So much for fun and stress free.

I still remember the conversation I had with the nurse when I called her back to tell her that we wanted to move forward.

Nurse: Great!  I will let Dr. P know to send the prescription to your local pharmacy.  You know…I used Clomid to conceive all three of my children.

Me: So it is pretty successful then?

Nurse: Typically yes.  However, I feel like I should tell you about the side effects that I got.  Have you ever heard of ovulation pains?

Me: Yeah.  But I’ve never had them.

Nurse: Same here but you may!  Oh and the hot flashes were bad.  But everyone has different experiences with it.  Just thought I should warn you.

I took my first round of Clomid on days 3-7 of my cycle.  I remember idiotically thinking “Huh maybe I won’t get any side effects”, until about Day 15 when my ovaries literally felt like they were exploding.  I also thought I was pregnant that first month because I had some pretty intense nausea.  I could hardly even look at food. On the 4th cycle my OBGYN thought it was necessary to double the dosage as a last ditch effort.  Hot flash city.  I suddenly felt terrible for ever making fun of my Mom during Menopause.  It was just hot, it was fire ants crawling up your neck hot.  I would get so hot at work that I thought I was going to be sick. My coworkers probably thought I was nuts when I would start stripping off sweat soaked layers.

The worst part was my mood.  I was so up and down and easy to anger.  One time a customer at work yelled at me and I cried in our bathroom for 15 minutes.  I had massive sobbing fests.  My husband literally thought I was possessed. When I would get angry, I would literally throw a temper tantrum.  I would scream and punch pillows like a two year old.  I felt out of control. It hurt our marriage.  I even saw a therapist a few times.  The therapist gently suggested that we stop trying altogether.  “Your marriage is suffering” she told me.  “I think it’s time you guys took a break”.

This leads me back to the title of this blog post.  I saw this on the internet during a low time after I discovered last month that I was yet again not pregnant.  Just the fact that this existed out there made me feel 100 times better knowing that what I was going through was normal.  That there are other people out there that understand.  We start another round of Clomid again next in a few weeks after a few months off from my 4 round stint.  Wish me luck that the Clomid rage doesn’t strike again and if it does please disregard the crazy lady.