I haven't mentioned it a whole lot on here, but currently I am in the final stretch of earning my Masters in Counseling. This final stretch involves completing a 100 hour practicum and 600 hour internship. The first portion of those hours I spent at an elementary school doing social skill lessons. I transitioned to the high school a little over four weeks ago and I absolutely LOVE it! After being at the elementary school, I wasn't sure that I still wanted to be a school counselor, but now that I am at the high school, I want to be one more than ever. But, that's really besides the point. Besides the age of the students, what I also enjoy about the high school is the comraderie among the staff members. Each day the staff in the office sit down to eat lunch together and, as someone who loves to socialize, it's totally up my ally. One of the best parts about lunch is that the cafeteria has an amazing selection of food, so if my frozen meal is looking less than appealing I can just hop downstairs and find something better (although, I try not to do it too often as the food isn't the healthiest I could choose).
Where is this leading? I've almost forgotten! Anyways...one day I went down just for a side salad and ended up getting a turkey reuben. I'm a sucker for reubens and I just couldn't resist giving in that day. BUT, because the sandwich was made with deli meat, I decided to microwave it, just to make sure my risk of listeria was really low. Two of the ladies in the office (the secretary and the registrar) saw this and kind of looked at me funny. I decided to just tell them the truth: I was microwaving my already warmed up reuben because my husband and I tried for two years to get pregnant and I'm not willing to take any unnecessary risks. I think they were surprised by my response to such a benign question, but lately I find myself looking for ways to share our infertility journey however I can. They asked what IVF was and I explained that it's the procedure where my eggs and my husband's sperm were mixed in a petri dish to creat embryos and those embryos were then put back inside me. I went on to say that this was cool because it means we have a picture of our daughter from when she was three days "old". The registrar then shared that there is a teacher in the building going through the exact same thing and she was having a really hard time. Apparently this teacher got OHSS and they cancelled her egg retrieval...and now the teacher wasn't sure she still wanted to go through IVF. The registrar then asked if she could pass along my information to this teacher in case she wanted to talk to anyone who had gone through the same thing. I said "OF COURSE!!! I went through it twice and it is soooo hard!" The registrar left it at that and hasn't mentioned much since that day, but you better believe that I have been thinking about her, wondering if she was cycling again.
Well, today I got my answer. I happened to be leaving at the same time as the registrar, so we walked out together. She told me that the teacher who joined us (briefly) at lunch was the one going through infertility. She then shared that last Friday was her egg transfer and next Wednesday is her beta. I felt hopeful for the teacher because we had two snow days this week, Monday and Tuesday, which means that the teacher had five whole days to sit on her butt and let the embryos settle in. And boy do I hope they do!! It's funny because I've never officially "met" this teacher and yet I feel like she and I have a connection. We're both infertiles. We've both had heartbreaks from IVF and we've both managed to still go on. All I really want to do is give this girl a hug and some chocolates and tell her that I am rooting for her! I want to commiserate over how much IF sucks!! I want to exchange cycle stories. But, since I can't do that, I will just root for her and continue to talk about my infertility with others in hopes that just knowing someone else has gone through it is somehow helpful. I know having friends who shared their IF journeys helped "normalize" it for me...I didn't feel like a failure because I knew I wasn't alone. Hopefully knowing my story somehow helped this teacher...gave her hope...and boy do I hope she gets a positive on Wednesday!!
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I've found it's pretty amazing what happend when you start talking about it. I'm always surprised at just how many people are going though this. It definitely makes one feel less alone.
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