Camping Rocks!

How I have missed camping! It’s been eight months since we were able to sleep outside, cook over the fire, and look at the stars at night instead of TV. We were at the beach, in Delaware (hey, trust me, it’s nice). The shore was glorious, sunny, bright and warm. The ocean was blue and perfect, the waves enchanting but not overwhelming. I loved cooking over the fire, hanging with friends, and biking the trails with my dog running along side me…

Right up until his retractable leash got tangled around the handlebars and we went down together. I have a beautiful scrape on my left knee, and somehow, a perfect impression in bruises of my bike gears on my inside right calf. The dog, fortunately, is unscathed.

And while chopping wood for our first meal, I managed to hack my finger (it’s still attached, just has a nice divot where some flesh used to be) with a hatchet.

Saturday at the beach? The retractable leash strikes again. While playing in the surf with my dog (I had a rock in my hand, and he really, really wanted that rock), I released his leash and it managed to snap back into my husband’s leg at warp speed, whacking him in the shin, and raising a three inch high hematoma (you know, a big, blood filled bulge) on the front of his leg. Fortunately, I’ve seen this before (my wacky life), and applied pressure before it got too big. For the rest of the day, he hobbled between the chilly water and the blanket putting pressure on his shin.

My husband often refers to our camping trips as “Survivor Jackass” thanks to our propensity for injury. Last year, at the Shenandoah National Park, he tripped over the cement barricade at the end of a parking space (what do you call those, anyway?) and whacked his head on the ground. I had already burned myself in the fire, and this is how we camp.

But we love it. We get better as the summer goes on—it’s just the first couple of trips out that we injure ourselves. After that, we’re fine. A good thing too—since Wednesday we’re going back out for another five days.

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I decided on Friday that I was going to get my period over the weekend, so I went ahead and scheduled an ultrasound and blood work for this morning. I don’t know if I’ve actually had a period: I’ve had over ten days of some sort of brown discharge, and over the weekend, I sometimes needed a tampon, but never more than three a day. Yesterday I actually spotted some blood (which I greeted with shrieks of glee) so I figured, hey—that’s cycle day one.

I’ve only spoken to the ultrasound tech, but even she seemed relieved to see that my ovaries were fairly normal again. With any luck, I’ll start on Estrace tonight and be ready to do the frozen embryo transfer in another couple of weeks.

I’m worried, of course, about all the things that can still go wrong, but I’m glad to be moving forward.

I did find myself, this morning, briefly, a little sad to have to switch from Camping Cecily to Infertile Cecily. I’m not feeling too well—crashing a bit from the steroids I got for my chest cold, plus I’ve developed a lovely case of thrush from the drugs (it’s kinda like having a yeast infection in your throat…fabulous), plus a wicked sunburn, so I don’t know if how I feel physically impacts on how I am mentally, but when the phlebotomist stuck the needle in my arm I felt a small shift, back to the world of ART. Even though I know I’ll be camping again this weekend, it will be overshadowed by the fact that we might do a transfer this cycle, and by the end of the month, I could be pregnant.

Camping is something I thought I’d give up two years ago, when we first started trying to conceive. That summer we started trying, we enjoyed every campout with that particular glee that it could be the last one (at least, the last one childless. Camping with kids is a whole other thing entirely). But now, heading into our third last summer of camping, with pregnancy as a much more real possibility, I find myself feeling sad about giving up my life to be at the beck and call of a small, demanding person.

One of the characteristics of an alcoholic (even a recovering one) is the amazing ability to believe, wholeheartedly, two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself feeling conflicted, now that it’s summer, and I have become a different person—an outdoorsy one—that I would feel some regret at the idea of giving up some of my independence, even while I work as hard as medical technology will allow to do just that.

But I am still a bit surprised to find myself feeling this way. I noticed, while I waited for the ultrasonic probing to begin, that I wouldn’t mind having to wait another cycle out before doing the transfer (even though I am secretly terrified of a summer storm knocking out the freezers that are storing our little fertilized eggs). It’s a weird feeling. Hopefully, it will pass.

Comments

[cherylc]

This relates to the more trivial part of your post, but be careful with those retractable leashes! I got a large, second degree burn from my dog wrapping around my leg. At that point I found that people have lost fingers to those things.

Camping with a baby is fun. It's camping with a two year old that I did not enjoy. And, possibly, camping while pregnant might not be so fun. But, you will camp again, even after you get pregnant, and it will be great because you will have your wonderful child with you.

This relates to the more trivial part of your post, but be careful with those retractable leashes! I got a large, second degree burn from my dog wrapping around my leg. At that point I found that people have lost fingers to those things.

Camping with a baby is fun. It's camping with a two year old that I did not enjoy. And, possibly, camping while pregnant might not be so fun. But, you will camp again, even after you get pregnant, and it will be great because you will have your wonderful child with you.

[cherylc]

Dang, double post. Sorry.

[Kristine]

Oh I think your gloriously normal for having feelings of regret for what you'll give up even as you make plans to try to become pregnant.

[Cyn]

The camping put you in a good frame of mind to go on with your frozen embryo transfer... best of luck. My EC is next week...

Thank you a million times over for the "Survivor Jackass" comment. I needed that laugh. Im severely hormonal and when I went for my blood draw this morning, I got poked more times than I'd like to count. I'm like a dartboard for the blind.

Enjoy your camping trip honey, you deserve it!

[Dennis Hansbury]

Hi Cecily, it's Dennis (Denika's Fiance) and wanted to just say that I love reading your blog. I have to admit that the "Survivor Jackass" made me laugh at loud!
Denika is having a great time in Japan and I have a bunch of pictures she's uploaded so far. I have to resize them to fit online, but it's 12:08 in the morning and I'm done with websites tonight. Anyway, I sincerely wish you good luck with all of your reproductive adventures.