Clomid=Crazy

I was worried about the Clomid. I didn't like having to take medicine to get my body to do something it should have been doing naturally, but I accepted I needed the boost. Without the meds I only had four or five chances a year, if that, to get pregnant, so I filled the prescriptions Dr.R gave me. He had told me to take the Clomid, take some Mucinex to thin my cervical fluid, and call the office when I started my period so they could decide whether or not to alter my dosage. Those were my only instructions and they seemed easy enough.
January 09
I started my period on New Years Day. I took it as a good sign-- new year, new cycle, new chance and all that. Dr.R had me start at 50mg of Clomid days 5-9 of my cycle. I waited until day 10 to start my temping since nothing would happen before then anyways. I anxiously awaited my temperature shift, but, again, I only got another mountain range on my chart. Luckily, I didn't have many side effects outside of some hot flashes.
February 09
My cycle lasted 38 days and ended on Feb. 8. I called Dr.R's office and left a message for the nurse to tell her how long my cycle had lasted. She called me back later to tell me she had called in a refill and that they were upping my dosage to 100mg. The higher dosage came with side-effects... lots of side effects. I felt like if the warnings listed it, I had it. My cervical mucus was was non-existent if I didn't take the Mucinex, I was bloated, nauseous, had headaches. I had hot flashes so severe I felt like I was about to spontaneously combust! I was burning from the inside out. The worst, though? I was a classic case of the Clomid Crazies. I feel sorry for Patrick during that time. I was an emotional mess.
I ovulated perfectly on day 14. Patrick and I had timed everything perfectly. My chart was a thing of beauty.
March 09
On March 1, 8 DPO, I had a dip in temperature. Implantation dip? I was hopeful. Following the dip, my chart became tri-phasic, my temps between 98.4-98.6 degrees. I became very hopeful. My nausea got worse, as did my mood swings, and my breasts were so swollen and tender, I had to wear a bra, a cami with a built-in bra, and a shirt to keep them contained and not moving. Surely these were pregnancy symptoms. I took pregnancy tests and they all came up negative, but my temp stayed up. I took so many pregnancy tests, I should have bought stock. My temperature didn't drop until 19 DPO. My period started Fri. March 13. I was DEVASTATED!!
Dr.R decided to keep me at the 100mg dosage. This time I ovulated on day 16, and again we timed it pretty good.
April 09
I refused to get my hopes up like I had with my last cycle. I tested obsessively, yes, but I kept a certain amount of disconnect. The side effects seemed worse this time. After another 19 day luteal phase, Aunt Flow came on April 17.
May 09
After another round of 100mg Clomid, I ovulated May 4, day 18 of my cycle. The mood swings were getting worse with each cycle. My luteal phase was only 16 days that cycle, and AF came May 21.
June 09
I was excited for this cycle. I had gotten a fertility monitor and really hoped it would help. It pin-pointed my ovulation on day 18, but I was beginning to understand why we weren't getting pregnant. I was a raging monster of emotion. It never failed, the days leading up to ovulation, I would start picking stupid fights with Patrick. We'd have little spats that built into a massive blowout fight the night before my temperature shift. It made it difficult to be intimate. AF came 16 DPO, on June 24.
July 09
I decided to stop the Clomid. I hated what it did to my body, the way it made me feel. More than that, our house was in complete disarray. After the hurricane, once the power came back on, we found some more damage and decided to file a claim. The insurance company's check wouldn't even fix our roof, let alone the damage inside, but we decided to fix it and send the insurance the bill. After we opened the wall in the guest room, though, it was obvious that the damage was a lot more than we thought, so we called to have another adjuster out. Six adjusters later, and we were getting ignored. To make it worse, on the advise of adjuster 2 and 3, we had taken the walls down to studs in the master and guest bedrooms so they "could see all the damage" and we were now sleeping in our tiny office on a full-size bed. Patrick is not a small guy... it was not comfortable. We never thought it would take that long, but it was apparent that the insurance company wasn't going to be paying up any time soon.
Even though I wasn't taking the Clomid, I continued charting. I ovulated on my own on July 18, day 25 of my cycle. AF came 13 days later, on Aug.1.
August-December 09
The rest of the year was difficult for us. I was depressed that the Clomid hadn't worked. I stopped tracking my cycle completely. I was still getting the pains in my abdomen with every cycle but I blew them off.
It was miserable living in the office at home, so when the weather cooled, we moved upstairs into our game-room. Since two rooms were down to studs, we couldn't run the A/C on that side of the house, and summers in Houston can be brutal. We ended up hiring a lawyer to start litigation against the insurance company.
People started telling us that "it was for the best" that I hadn't gotten pregnant yet. I hated those words. I hated that people knew how badly I wanted a baby and that they were so insensitive. Maybe they were trying to help or make me feel better, but it made it worse. I knew it wasn't a good time, I didn't need to hear it. I started avoiding pregnant ladies and babies because I was tired of hearing, "Oh, Zui needs to rub your belly so maybe it'll rub off on her" and "Oh, watch out! Zui is baby-crazy, she might try to steal your baby" and all such nonsense. Do people realize what they're saying when they open their mouths? Do they not realize how hurtful they can be?
In the beginning of Dec. one of our dogs got sick. We started taking him to the vet about twice a week but he wasn't getting better. The week before Christmas we had to rush him to Gulf Coast Vets (a referral only, specialty vet in Houston) to have emergency surgery to remove a mass the size of a baseball off his kidney. The X-ray from when he first got sick showed nothing, and in three weeks it had grown that big. They removed the mass and the kidney, and told us he should be fine but they would call us with biopsy results. The week after Christmas, the veterinary oncologist told us it was cancer-- the most aggressive she had seen. We could do chemo but she wasn't sure he would make it through the $12k treatment cycle, and if he did, she said he probably wouldn't have more than a year afterwards. If we did nothing, she only gave him two months.
Patrick and I were devastated! Our dogs were like our children! We'd had Rudy since shortly after we started dating. He was only five... how could he have cancer. We couldn't afford to do the chemo and didn't want to put him through the pain and discomfort to only buy him a few months. So we decided to make him comfortable and try our hardest to make his last few months the best ever.