Day by Day

So today wasn't a bad day but it wasn't the day we anticipated either. Daddy Hammer remains stable on the vent but he was coughing so bad we could not do a breathing test and hence he is still on said vent. That was a disappointment. He went without a fever all day and all night Wednesday but Thursday am spiked a temp again of 101. Dr Z was puzzled by it because none of his labs have come back positive for bacteria growth. So we changed antibiotic, again. Then he toyed with putting in a chest tube to drain out some fluid he saw on the chest xray. In the end he decided to take the conservative route and just pulled out a sample with a small needle. Thank goodness he did because he discovered there wasn't enough to toy with in the first place. So they did a CT scan just to make sure. The good news is that there still was very little fluid so we are just dealing with pneumonia, nasty pneumonia but only pneumonia as far as we know.

He had to be sedated pretty heavily most of the day because he kept coughing. Our thought was that maybe yesterday was too busy of a day and it wore him out. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. We are just hoping that the chest xray will be improved. This on again off again fever is the concerning and frustrating part. I'm on night duty and so far there has been a guy who has coded 5 times already and the freaky part is that his/her room is right near my dad's. So every time the code comes over the loud speaker I literally stop breathing until I hear the whole room number. I guess the good news is that the staff are really good here if they can keep someone from coding five times in one day.

I just wish they let me sleep in his room instead of the waiting room. There is this family that literally brought everyone including the guy's great grandchildren and they are all staying here. But they live less than 40 minutes away. And they stay up till 2 am with the tv blaring while the rest of us are trying to sleep. It's funny the 'culture' that develops in these situations. How everyone stakes out their area and 'protects' it. Three of the families we have become close with, prayed with and ask daily about their loved one. But this other one has taken over most of the room and it's been interesting. I know they are just as concerned about their family member too so I can't fault them. Although after only three hours of sleep it's tempting...

Hallelujah!

We have found the right drug! (we hope) The Pulmonologist did a brochoscopy of his lungs to look for foreign objects or something irritating but found nothing, yeah! They cleaned out a bunch of yucky pneumonia and took a sample. As of this morning the culture was not growing anything which is a great sign that we have the right antibiotic. He is still getting a fever through last night but it could a) still be the pneumonia he is fighting b) be a drug response or c) he could have messed up his body temperature regulation from going without oxygen. The last one is a random possibility by the Pulm Doc which they have to at least entertain since no one actually SAW him 'collapse.' Let's hope it's not 'c.'


From what I can tell I think this is probably a result of the pneumonia because his temperatures have been MUCH better today, in fact as of 5 pm he has not needed one drop of Tylenol today. We got the results of his MRI and everything looks perfect. So officially his EKG is perfect, Cardiac Echo is perfect, Brain is perfect and neurological tests are looking positive. This is wonderful news. When ever he wakes up we always make sure to tell him that he is safe, at the hospital and that his tests have all come back normal from his head to his toes. We want to make sure that he does not think he has a brain tumor like my uncle who died exactly one month to the day of my dad's cardiac arrest. And also my dad has always been afraid of being paralyzed or left as a vegetable so we always reassure him that this is not the case.


We did discover today that he needs to be sedated a bit more than we have been giving him starting around 3pm today. The day before he had a mix of the old sedative which takes about 24 to 48 hours to get out of the system. So we thought that maybe he could handle the same amount today but the old stuff is out and it was so not enough. He started to panic a bit because it's just so uncomfortable with a tube down your throat. I had to run out and get the nurse while trying to calm my dad down. They were able to sedate him and get him more comfortable. We are hoping that if the fever stays away tonight and the chest xray is improved that we can work on getting him off the ventilator by Saturday. Please pray for good results tomorrow and another day of improvement.

P.S. I have been so touched by all your prayers and comments of support. It has meant the world to me and my family to know so many people have been praying for Daddy Hammer. My ultimate prayer is for my father to get well so that he can enjoy being "Grandpa Hammer" some day soon!

Update on Dad #4: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Yesterday they had reduced the sedation and we were able to catch him intermittently waking up and he seemed to realize we were there. They've had him so drugged that it's been frustrating for us because we just want to communicate and let him know he is safe and being cared for here. As the day wore on he was waking up more often but began to spike a significant fever around 103 degrees. The day nurse he has had since Saturday was awful and we never left him because we kept having to keep an eye on her all day. Later in the evening he woke up more and I was talking with him and letting him know I was there. When I moved out of his line of sight he started moving toward me and setting off his alarms. I moved back in so he could see me and talked to him letting him know we are all right here. He calmed down and a tear fell from his eye. A few minutes later my brother was talking with him and wanted to let daddy know we were going to let him sleep for a bit and without thinking said, "We're going to take-off now." Suddenly his eyes flipped wide open and he began to raise himself up out of the bed. Mom and my brother had to calm him down. My brother felt so bad but at least we know he understands us, knows it's us and does not want us to leave him alone.

This morning when the doctor's rounded they told us that his lungs had gotten worse. They are doing a bronchoscopy of his lungs to make sure they are using the right antibiotic. The neurologist changed his sedative and he has been responding much better. I spent most of today at his side, holding his hand and talking to him when he wakes up for a few seconds. This afternoon he began coughing and the nurse came in and suctioned him. I went over afterwards to calm him down, stroking his hair and telling him it was OK. His face got all scrunchy and I thought he was in pain but instead he began to cry and this time it was big alligator tears. I continued to stroke his hair, wipe away his tears and let him know it would be ok. I know that my daddy is in there and understands what is going on. I just pray so much that the doctors find out how to treat this pneumonia so we can work to get him off the vent and feeling better. I know this will be a long process but I just can't wait to have my daddy back.

I have to keep reminding myself that God has been by my daddy's side from the beginning and will continue to be there for him. Please pray that we find the right drug to treat my daddy's lungs.

Update on My Dad #3

We have a guardian angel and her name is nurse Agnes. Saturday night was a rough night. The worst one since my dad was admitted to the hospital Thursday. We knew there was a risk for aspiration pneumonia and he had begun to spike a fever and his labs came back positive for staph. Not only that but his vitals were starting to tank. He was on 65% oxygen (normal is 20%) and his ability to absorb oxygen (ABG) was 56% (should be 80-100%). My mom being an ICU nurse saw the writing on the wall and knew he was getting Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) which as a 25% fatality rate. His lungs had developed inflammation because he had aspirated stomach juice into his lungs when he first had his cardiac arrest.

That night we got down on our knees and prayed while nurse Agnes spent the night suctioning, medicating, running labs and adjusting the vent settings. A last ditch effort was made to increase the PEEP setting and decrease the vent to 60%. PEEP stands for Positive end-expiratory pressure and this increases the amount of oxygen that remains in the lungs which hopefully would improve the exchange of oxygen in his lungs. Around noon Sunday my brother and I prayed over my dad again that God would work another miracle in healing his lungs and that the next set of labs would show improvement. Less than one hour later when I took my grandparents (Dad's parents) back to see him I noticed a significant improvement in his pulse and blood pressure. Around 4pm we saw that his oxygen saturation levels on the monitor were at 100% and our nurse, Rachael, came in with a smile on her face. She pulled up the latest lab results and waited for our reaction. They.Were.All.Perfect. Less that eight hours ago he was headed down a dark road and now he was perfect. It was another miracle.

As the evening wore on he became more alert and moving around every time someone came in the room. It was such a stark contrast to the day before when he was barely moving. He was certainly feeling much better. Sunday night we had our angel nurse Agnes again and we knew he was in good hands.

Infertility Update: Hammer and I made the decision to hold off this cycle with everything that is going on with my dad. I just don't think it would be a good decision to start a stressful process while going through another stressful process and I know all I will be worried about for a while will be my dad. I feel good about this decision. And right now the only place I want to be is at my dad's beside.

Update on My Dad #2

So when I changed the name of my blog to Expect Miracles I never imagined just how that would ring true in so many facets of my life. Right now we have witnessed a miracle in my Father's life. Let me tell you just how amazing my God is...

My dad actually works in another city (about 2 hours away from me) even though my parents still have the house I grew up in which is about 20 minutes from Hammer and I. It's a long story but my dad works during the week and comes back home on weekends. My mom commutes between the two homes and the plan was to keep this up until he can retire (this year). Normally the ONLY day my dad is alone is on Thursday. So if this had been just any other week he would have been completely alone and the outcome would have been drastically different.

So my dad had planned a weekend get away for my mom this weekend. They had both come back home on Wednesday because my dad had a meeting Thursday morning here in town and wanted to take the rest of the day off. He asked my brother to go on a bike ride and they headed out at about 3:30 pm. It was a gorgeous day and the bike path was literally crawling with people.

Now my mom was actually extremely on edge all day because Wednesday night she had an awful dream that either my brother or my dad were in the ICU and all she kept saying was, "We have to save the brain, we have to save the brain" Being a former ICU RN she thought maybe that she just had one of those weird dreams but it haunted her all day. Yet she didn't want to say anything because she thought they would think her crazy for being all uptight about them biking. So she kept quite and my dad and brother headed out for their ride. When my brother's tire blew out my mom had talked with my dad and knew that she should expect him home in 30 minutes. When that didn't happen she had been watching the clock and immediately called him. She said she had a pit in her stomach because of her dream even before the EMT answered my dad's phone and told them the bad news.

What we have learned, after talking with the people who saved my dad's life, is the following and it's absolutely the hand of God. My dad was actually found upright, still on his bike, leaning against the support beams of a bridge. So he did not crash his bike and therefore avoided any additional trauma to his body which is absolutely amazing. The couple who found him initially thought that it was just a bike propped up against the bridge because he was slumped over. He did not respond to them but was having labored breathing. This is extremely important that he was at least breathing when they found him because that meant his time without oxygen was very, very short. The man called 911 and the woman knew CPR so they got my dad off of the bike and down onto the ground and had just started resuscitative care when another biker came along. It was a physician who works at the best trauma hospital here in our city. He took over the CPR and when we spoke to him he said that they were able to give great resuscitative care because he went from blue to pink and had a great pulse.

By the time the squad came they had reached the point with CPR where they needed to do a shock paddle to keep up the rhythm. So the EMT shocked him and he immediately returned to a normal rhythm. Now when they reached the hospital the emergency room staff some how didn't get all the info that he really didn't go that long without oxygen so they decided to do the hypothermic protocol. We believe this was also a blessing because when he was coming to in the trauma ER he was not focusing or making purposeful movements. It seems that the decision to do the hypothermic protocol reset my dad's system and allowed his body to rest and return to a stable state.

So while we are still not out of the woods yet we know that the hand of God has been over my father EVEN BEFORE all these events took place. It seems that God knew that my father was going to go through this but He set up everything perfectly so that the best possible situations would occur for the absolute best possible outcome.

He will not be taken off the ventilator until tomorrow because the Pulmonologist says his lungs are too "wet" meaning that he has too much fluid on board. This is an effect of the warming up process because when you are cold the body does not make fluids to keep your body hydrated but when you warm up it does. It's not a concern just that he's not quite ready yet. So they are keeping him mildly sedated so he does not wake up too much, panic and pull out the ventilator tubing that he needs to breathe. But we know that he is mentally OK for now and just needs a bit more rest. We are taking sleep rotations so that two of us are always here at a time and he is never alone.

Prayer requests are that he can get off the ventilator tomorrow and that he does not develop pneumonia which is a risk from being on a ventilator. I am so thankful for all of your prayers and just had to share how Great our God is with you all. He hears our prayers!!!

On a side note: While God was busy taking care of my father with ALL of these amazing little miracles, He still found time for me. On Friday morning we heard back from the lab. Hammer's results were 8.5% strict morphology. This is below normal (14%) which means we do require IVF intervention and it is likely the reason why we have not conceived on our own. But we do not require ICSI so we can try for natural fertilization. And not only that but Aunt Flow didn't show up until TODAY. So when I talked to the nurse she said that I can call and let her know what we want to do for this cycle as late as Sunday and she would call in BCP script for me if we decided to start cycling for IVF this month. Right now I just want to get my dad off of the ventilator. So I think I'm going to wait to make a decision based upon getting him extubated and then go from there.

It is so humbling to think that here I was fussing and worrying about labs and wondering why this would happen. Meanwhile my God was not only in control of my little "situation" and working everything out perfectly, but also intimately involved in my father's life and blatantly showing us His presence and Almighty Power. I had been reading Job on Wednesday evening
Job 31:35 "Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense - let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing" Job is saying, "what have I done to deserve this? Let him who knows my offenses come forth and prove it." And what follows a few chapters later is God's defense where He declares to Job that He is God and controls all things, knows all things, designed all things, and is above all things. That He is in control of the small things and the big things. One of the things God says repeatedly is, "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me." God questioned me on who is in control of my fertility, our IVF schedule (the small things) as well as who is in control when it comes to my father's life. And my answer:

"I know you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, "Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, "Listen now and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me. My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.

Job 42:1-5

Update on My Dad

Last night they began the warming process at 11pm. His body temperature was 92 and they brought him up to 98 over the next six hours. That is two hours faster than what they anticipated because he was responding so well. About 5 am they decided to take him of the sedation to see if he would respond. Around 6:15 we were in the room and he started to raise his eyebrows and his arms twitched. The nurse was trying to hide us in the room during the rounding hours so we could be there when he woke up but we got 'caught' and were told to leave. About 20 minutes later the nurse ran into the waiting room shouting that he was awake. We went running into the ICU and his eyes were wide open. He focused on us, recognized us, understood he was at the hospital and when my mom said, "you had one heck of a bike ride" he acknowledged it and tried to talk (he is still on a vent so he can't right now). We are not out of the woods yet as he still needs to get off the vent, continue to progress mentally, hopefully not get aspiration pneumonia (he is starting to show signs) and figure out what caused all this. But right now all the signs are great. Keep up the prayers I know they are working!!!!!

Please Pray: When It Rains...

It pours. I need your prayers so much right now. IVF has taken a major back seat to what is going on with my family in the last 24 hours.

My dad was out biking last night at about 6:00 pm with my brother. My brother's bike tire blew a flat and his friend came and picked him up. My dad decided to finish his ride since he was only about 30 minutes from home. He called my mom to let her know he would be back at 6:30pm. He was on a crowded bike path and almost home when he stopped riding and suddenly collapsed. From witnesses we have learned that a couple saw him fall and immediately attended to him, calling 911. A physician was on the bike path and saw the couple laying my father down and taking off his helmet. Within less than a minute from his collapse the MD began CPR. He said that my father's color came back and he had a good femoral pulse. The squad was there in two minutes and because he had collapsed near the path entrance they had NO issues getting to him. He was in V-fib when they arrived and shocked him only once and got his heart back into rhythm.

Meanwhile at home my mom saw that it was 6:35 pm and told my brother (who had made it home by this time) to call my dad. When my brother called the EMT picked up the phone and told him that they were taking my dad to the hospital. My brother called me and we all made it there about 10 minutes after the ambulance had arrived.

There were concerns of trauma so they took him to get a CT scan immediately. My dad was intubated and sedated. All the labs and tests came back negative. Because the hospital did not yet know how fast CPR had been delivered from the onset of the incident they decided to initiate the hypothermic protocol. That means that right now my dad is being sedated and his body temperature decreased for 24 hours. The reason is because it helps protect the brain if he went without oxygen at all. The medical decision to do this was because they have no idea what happened and there are no risks only benefits. We are now just waiting until they will begin to slowly bring up his body temperature at about 11pm tonight. It will be a long 14 hour process but we are praying that he shows no signs of brain damage from lack of oxygen.

All of his tests are coming back normal and he is maintaining his blood pressure on his own. Please pray that as they bring him out of the hypothermia he begins to respond and shows no signs of neurological damage.

Thank you all so much in advance!

"Results Can Be Expected In 10 Days"

This is what the person at the lab told me today when I called in an act of total desperation.  10 DAYS?  You have got to be kidding me.  I am beyond frustrated.  I am kicking myself for not asking how long we would have to waiting to get results back when I was making the first appointment (three weeks ago pre-rescheduling twice).  So basically by the time we hear the scoop on the state of the sperm, Aunt Flow will have made her appearance and we'll be out another month. 

The worst part is remembering the argument Hammer and I had a few weeks ago when I wanted to forgo BD (since the last three years of BD have been less than successful) and just do the test so we get the results back in time.  He pushed to BD and I caved.  Now we will have yet another month under our belt before possibly starting IVF.  I'm trying to comfort myself by saying that the results could come back fine and we'd be doing this anyway until July but to be honest with you it's not working.

I just don't believe that chiropractic treatment is going to solve our problem good SA or not.  And I don't think it's worth the extra months of waiting around and putting off IVF until July if the SA results are good.  Obviously Hammer and I have a lot to talk about.  And this is my total 'human self' rambling and I have not taken this to the Lord yet but I just had to get out some steam somewhere since I'm stuck at work and this blog and my bloggy friends are such a safe place to vent.  Thank you bloggy friends, I'm giving you all a bloggy {{HUG}} right now!

Another Day Left in Suspense

My RN works 8:00 to 3:30 (nice hours) and I'm posting this at 3:50 pm. So she is now officially gone for the day and I am again left in the dark on our results. This stinks. What in the world is that lab doing with Hammer's sperm that takes 5 days!!!

Aunt Flow you better stay away if you know what is good for you!

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

And still no phone calls from the RN...

STILL Just Waiting...

Ah the suspense is driving me crazy! I called the RN today but the results are not in yet. She said that it takes 3-5 days. Now if we did the test Thursday and today is Monday, technically today is day 5 because the lab is open Mon-Sun. If you've noticed my cycle ticker...I'm running out of time and Aunt Flow is about to visit any day now. I'm nervous that even if the results are poor which means we are doing IVF this month it won't matter because I won't start the cycle on time. And I'm not willing to drop the $$ until I know for sure.

I don't FEEL like AF is on her way but she is a sneaky little thing...Oh please, please, please be late this month!

Just Waiting...

Well we FINALLY were able to get the SA done this Thursday. YEAH!!! But now I'm just waiting for the results. I can never tell if the labs are slow or if it's our less than sensational nurse who never calls with results. Hopefully we'll know soon, that and I'm going to call Monday regardless.

It's been a rough week and I'm so thankful that it's Saturday. I was on another trip but this time I could sleep in my own bed. I just had to get up each day around 4 and drive 1 1/2 hrs to the clinic. Which was totally fine but I burned the candle at both ends and ended up with a nasty cold (that Hammer gave me). I swear I had a low grade fever because my basal temp was 98.9 on Thursday morning. I'm never even remotely that high. The worst part is that I can't take any time off so I had to go to work sick. Because I'm in a union if I accrue comp-time and then take sick time at any point during that week they will only pay out my time straight i.e. no time and a half. Because our new union contract will be freezing our sick time, vacation time and personal time accrual for the next two years; comp-time becomes even more precious. If we finally have a baby I need all the time I can get but it comes at the worst time because I won't be able to recoup any time until 2011. All this to save our state some money but the kicker is that I'm 100% federally funded so none of my saved salary or benefits are allowed to be used for my state's budget. Basically I get the shaft for nothing. Which is why I went to work sick this week but enough about my job (at least I have one). Anyway nothing heals you like 10 hours of sweet solid sleep.

I also tried a neti pot for the first time. It was...different. But also very effective. The first few tries I kept thinking I was doing it wrong because the water was not coming out the other nostril but then I realized it was because I was so horribly stuffed up. The worst part is that feeling of water too far up your nose. I hate when you are swimming and the water gets up to high in your sinuses and it hurts; that's what it's like. But now I can actually breathe out of my nose so it was worth it. (If you watched the video on the neti pot; the lady is so stoic and calm while she does it. The face I was making the whole time was NOT stoic and calm. In fact it was down-right hilarious. Also I'm not sure what is up with the exercises in the video but I did do some "Ah this water up my nose thing is uncomfortable" dance a few times; I suppose it was the same thing.)

As another fun way to pass time I'll also share our most recent house project: Installing bamboo floors. It was crazy timing when they ended up being installed. It was delayed a week because of my uncle's passing, then it overlapped with Easter, and when it was all done this Wednesday, both Hammer and I were too sick to move everything out of the kitchen and back into the living room. But either way it looks awesome. We had a buddy of ours who does home remodeling put them in for us. The timing was perfect because he had literally just been laid off from his job the week before we were scheduled to have him install them. So it totally helped him and his family out.

Here is the before chaos.

Here is the half way done point with our poor dog in the shot who is trying to figure out what the heck is happening to his home.

And here is the completed project.

And just because I can't resist here is close up picture of our dog...I mean the floors but isn't our dog cute too?

"Hey, I put some new shoes on and suddenly everything is right"

OK I've figured out how to download photos from my camera so I can show you my old pair of shoes. Check out the slant on my right heel!

How did I not notice the significant difference in my right shoe? It wasn't until about three weeks ago that I realized my right foot was sliding off to the right side and that I was trying to keep my weight more on the inside of my right foot. All my shoes are like this but this one was the worst.

And this makes me think of the Paol.o Nu.tini song, "New Shoes," enjoy...

">

"What we've got here, is a failure to communi.cate"

As a young child I distinctly remember my father watching C.ool Hand Lu.ke and he would quote his favorite line, "What we've got here, is a failure to communi.cate," all the time. That is exactly what I think is going on between my reproductive organs and my brain. I needed to ovulate on time this month but did I? No. I feel like I'm in some sort of twilight zone for infertiles...

"Imagine, if you will, a fifth dime.ntion beyond that which is known to man." Where your uterus is completely ignoring your constant pleading to ovulate. Imagine that all your years of ovulating on day 11 or 12 suddenly changed to day 15. This is the dimension between when your body needed to ovulate and when your spouse needs to have his sperm analyzed. This is the dimension of utter frustration. This is the Infertile Zone.

Instead of getting Hammer's SA done this week we got to BD. Not that I mind BDing but I really, really wanted to get our results soon. Since there has to be at least two days abstinence before collection we had to postpone the SA until next Thursday. Now there will be less than a week post results before we may be starting IVF. Why is my body starting to be uncooperative? I decided this month to start temping again because last month I had a heck of a time trying to figure out if I had even ovulated. I think I might be sensing a pattern. So here is my chart with the most applicable temperatures.

Notice that there were two days where my temps completely sky rocketed. I have no idea why other than the outside temperatures were higher that week and then dropped into cold spells that resulted in overnight freezing in our surrounding areas. I decided to mark those as disturbances.

On a good note, I've continued to see the chiropractor an average of about 2-3 times per week. According to him, women can see delays in ovulation when they are receiving adjustments (so apparently I have him to blame?). Hammer happened to mention the delay during his appointment this past Monday and Dr. T asked me to come in an extra day. I don't know if it's related but I got a positive OPK the next day. I'm still too skeptical to believe it. Hammer told me Tuesday that if we get pregnant this cycle he's going to completely rub it in. But in my defense I have been extremely faithful going to all the chiropractor appointments (2-3 a week for almost two months), taking vitamins, high level antioxidants and yoga 2-3 times a week. I really don't think that he has too much to rub in but I'm still going to remain mildly hopeful. It has been almost three solid years without a single positive test so it's hard to believe that a little back-cracking will do the trick.

Every time I go in there they ask me if I'm feeling better. Better? I never felt bad to begin with so how can I feel better? The only symptoms I've ever had is some pain on the right side of my body when I run. I have, however, noticed a change in my gait when I walk. So I went out and picked up some new shoes; doctors orders I might add. I have to post a photo of my old pair of shoes when I can figure out how to download pictures off my new camera. Let's just say the right heel of my shoe is shockingly different than my left. They had told me that my right leg was shorter than my left due to my muscles being in a constant state of contraction to support my 'twisted' spine. So maybe there is something to this whole chiropractic thing. I'm not saying that it's the infertile cure-all but it did give me a great excuse to update my shoe wardrobe. Hammer wasn't thrilled about it but I told him it was doctors orders and that if I didn't get new shoes it would just perpetuate the problem. Is it wrong if I only half buy the chiropractic thing to get new shoes out of the deal?

During my last appointment this week I was told that all my adjustments had paid off and I had a perfect spine. Hopefully all these appointments will end up in an even bigger payoff...

IVF timeline fast approaching!

Well I called today to schedule another SA (since we cancelled last weeks due to the funeral) and they won't have another 7:30 am time until NEXT Thursday and that is the only time that works with our schedules. That means we won't know if we are doing IVF until 2 weeks before my anticipated start date if the strict morphology comes back as poor.

At first I felt panicky. Then I stopped myself from full blown panic mode. Seriously what can I do about this? Nothing. God called my uncle home and we dropped everything to support my family; while it threw off our plans it did not throw off God's. God clearly knew that calling him home would mean my appointment would be cancelled so if He's not worried about it why should I be. And when I thought about this I told myself that God must have a very good reason for it all. The new appointment will actually be a couple of days after I ovulate so that means we won't have to choose between BDing for our natural cycle or SA for our IVF test. And it's not like I haven't been mentally preparing myself for an April cycle. So panic was avoided.

The other thing God will have to work out for us is the issue with one more business trip in early June. There is a possibility that my ET will fall during the week I am supposed to help out a co-worker with her audit. My supervisor told me not to worry about it and whatever happens she will make sure that it won't effect our cycle (if we start our cycle in April).

I hate to say it but I really think that the SA results will be poor. I guess I just can't fathom that three years with NOTHING would not result in SOMETHING being wrong with Hammer. But you never know and eventually I will, next Thursday.

On the Chiropractor front I've been going almost three days a week (minus business trips) for nearly two solid months. According to the Doc's they are being aggressive to get this baby making show on the road. They say that I've made excellent progress which is good to hear because I really don't feel any different. Although I do notice that my right leg feels different when I walk (the right leg being the one they said was a 1/2 inch shorter than the left). According to them I needed about 2 months of treatment before seeing any positive fertility affects. That time line is up on April 24th. So my 'positive fertility effects' timeline will fall right before we possibly start IVF, either way it will be a good thing.

At this point I am beyond ready to get this party started. May will mark three years of TTC and I will love to celebrate that anniversary with a BFP!