Happy Anniversary to my hubby and me..

Happy 6th anniversary to my hubby and me! Oh my gosh, it has been six years already that we got hitched. Time do seem to fly away without us realizing it and now suddenly we are an old married couple (without kids!). Our plan of TTC is currently being put on hold is giving us another round of honeymooning days. Let's just hope it won't turn into honeymooning years again. Huhu..

Well, since we are on a break from LPPKN's treatment (illegally so since I didn't actually tell my doctor that I want to take a break from all the poking and needles), it gives us time to just relax and enjoy our singles-ness (I mean childless-ness).Yeah, right! As if the word 'relax' is a common word I get to use often especially so since I am doing triple the work at the office nowadays (my boss seems to find it funny to give me extra work while doing nothing herself) with the same pay. How I wish I could get a loooong break from work and concentrate on my well-being and our mission to get at least an heir to our not-so-much-richness. >.<

Anyways, here's looking forward to long years of being together with my dear hubby! Hope that our marriage will stand the trials and tribulation ahead (hope it is gonna be filled with lots of greens and a bouncing baby). ( ^.^ )

 For the past 6 years, my hubby deserves an 'A' for passing with flying colours! Hehe..

TTC Is No Fun and Games!

TTC is really not fun when you have a condition. And people around you seems to be getting preggies left and right does not make it any easier and elevates your stress level on the matter. Unsympathetic pretentious people and those who doesn't understand because they are blessed with good health and can easily conceive makes it even worse for people like me. Sometimes I wonder is this trial a blessing in disguise?

Plan to Be Stressfree Goes Kaboom!

Oh my! What a hectic week I've been having. Working at my office is really not fun at all and makes one feel really unappreciated and sometimes like a black sheep. As usual, there's bias-ness everywhere and I happen to be the person that people like to be biased against. Why? I am not sure  but I do know that I don't suck up to people. Maybe that's the problem?

As of lately, I have been scrutinizing on how my working field ticks. And the big picture of it all is veeerryyyy ugly! I am not liking what I see and really hate what it has become. Almost everywhere I go there's somebody who likes to suck up to the bosses, back stab others, doesn't share knowledge or teach others to become more competent in their work and announce to the world that he/she is the only one doing all the job (whereas he/she doesn't want to guide a new colleague in the first place anyway).

So, my plan to have the rest of the year stress-free and more relaxed especially from TTC and LPPKN seems to go kaboom! I don't get to be stress-free, I am always in a hurry to get my job done, I have to run errands to and fro for almost everyone and I don't get enough rest everyday. I can actually feel the stress level is hiking up just like in the Miss Management game I played a couple of years ago.

Wouldn't it be nice if money could fall off from the sky and make me a billionaire? I could quit my job, have a nice loooooon vacation and then settle down doing something I love.

My motto song as of now is 'I want to be a billionaire' with high hopes that money could fall from the sky. Heh heh..

Game Plan..

Raya Festive Season is coming to an end. It means that my LPPKN treatment is commencing once more. As usual, at the first sign of monthly Aunt Flo, I am supposed to call LPPKN to get an appointment to see my doctor. But seeing that there's too much going on currently with my sister being in confinement, my mother trying to help my sister in confinement, four little tyrants shouting, crying and screeching all at once plus a small baby on the side, we had been running to and fro giving our hand in helping as best we could. I'm not complaining but it is quite tiring with having to go to the office, run errands during lunch time and after office hours.

So, after we talked it over, we decided that we need to take a breather from treatment for this year. We practically kept on being postponed all year long anyways so we might as well be postponed without being told to. Seeing that it is near the end of the year, we might as well wait for next year to continue with all the jabbing, prodding, hoping and being disappointed again. So, that's our current game plan.. Let's hope for the best! \( ^_ ^ )/

Tough Business..

I just started to do an online/word of mouth business recently just to humour myself (since project baby is not going too well, I'd might as well find some kind of activity to distract myself). I found a great indie company based in the US producing vegan and all natural lip balms and lip colours. The products are all made of natural ingredients and they 85% of them are organic. These lip products are moisturizing and they are also animal cruelty free.

So I ventured into this business head on without thinking too much about it. Heck! I didn't even get much profit out of it either. It is just a hobby for me to do since I do like these products and wear them, so I thought, why not share them with whoever's interested? To promote my small non quite profitable business, I engaged some of my dear friends to spread the word about them. I do have good faith in my friends that they are helping me out of the goodness of their hearts.

I guess trying to sell an idea and the actual product itself is kind of difficult (especially when you are a shy person). But in my heart, I feel that a wonderful product will sell itself one day. But not at the moment though. So, for the first week of trying to sell, I encountered the answer to why online sellers DO NOT accept nor entertain requests for exchange. The reason being is that a customer may want to change a product she/he had bought because she/he didn't like it or it didn't meet up to her/his expectations. BUT, in giving in to requests to exchange bought products, the seller may received an opened/used product in return.

For example, a seller just sold a tube of lipstick in a certain shade to a customer via her good friend. The lipstick is unopened and safely sealed. Suddenly, the customer who bought the lipstick decided that she didn't like the shade she had chosen and requested for an exchange of another shade more to her liking. The seller asked whether the tube of the original order had been opened or not? The customer said no, it hasn't been opened. So the seller, not wanting to disappoint her customer agreed. The exchange took place. The seller just put the returned tube aside to attend to other matters. Later on when she wanted to put back the returned and supposedly unopened tube inside her stock carton, she found that the tube indeed had been opened because the seal is no longer intact!

Now the seller is left with the dilema of telling her good friend to tell his friend who bought the product that the safety seal on the dang thing is broken and cannot be sold anymore to any other customers. So, in the end after a loooong battle with herself, she decided to tell her friend about the whole fiasco and hoped that her friend could understand her dilema. What about the opened lip color? Well, since it had been opened, it can no longer be sold to anyone anymore. So it has become a loss to the seller. Tough business.. I sooo pity her.

So there.. I learned the lesson of why "Goods sold are not returnable!" is an important policy for online/small time business owners especially when the products they are selling involves cosmetic, innerwear, and food (plus other stuff I can't think of at the moment).

Hmm.. let's see what I can get my hands on next to sell in a small scale..

Not Again!!

I seem to have a bad luck streak when it comes to IT stuff lately. Just last month I had a panic attack when my external hardisk crashed, then suddenly out of nowhere my PC at my office blinked and died! I tried to reboot the dang thing but all I got was a blank black screen with some error message that a ntoskrnl.exe is missing. Wha?? How did that happen?!

Since it is an official asset, I had to call up a technician to come and take a look with high hopes that my suddenly banged up PC could be restored. She tried to do some recovery with Windows Boot CD but that didn't work. She had to take my PC away to get some diagnostic things done to it. Fine. I'll just hang around doing nothing since I don't have my source of work tool anymore.

Waiting around doing nothing is no fun I tell you. So I asked my dear husband to send me my netbook so at least I have something to do while waiting. Later on, another technician came by my office room and told me the bad news. The hardisk on my PC is dead! What??!! Again??!!!! I nearly hyperventilated when I think about all my work data inside that PC! Oh My God!!!! I begged the technician to try and do some recovery data pronto since there are quite a number of classified information involved. He told me that the vendor didn't cater to recovery of data but they did gave him two numbers to contact regarding this problem. The recovery is quite costly because the cheapest is RM400 and it can go up to RM4000 per recovery! I told him just to try anything and ask the treasury whether it is allowed to be financed by the organization since it is their property to begin with. (Hope it works!!!)

Then, at home I had some trouble with my bluetooth mouse not connecting to my netbook! Arrrghhh! It was working fine during the day but suddenly the bluetooth toggle didn't recognize any devices at all! I feel like killing somebody (my netbook maybe?) since there are too many problems associated with IT lately. I looked up loads of information on how to make my netbook detect bluetooth devices but to no avail. I even tried reinstalling the bluetooth's driver this morning but still it would not cooperate! Lastly I resorted to just using a normal wired mouse grudgingly. I am going to have my brother take a look later with hopes that he can do some miracle with this thing!

Reaaalllyyyy not a good time for me! :(

Hardisk Crashed!

My treatment is currently put on hold during this holy month of Ramadhan.. I guess it's a good thing to take time off and relax from all those needles, ultrasounds and poking (really really not a fun experience I tell you). 

Last weekend my husband and I went to Low Yat Plaza to buy IT stuff because we wanted to get good bargains during the PC Fair event. We went there with the intention to buy a printer (the one that can be modified to cater external ink tank), external hardisk casing (my old casing got busted because I dropped in once too many times!), external hardisk for each of us (they are getting cheaper by the month!), bluetooth mouse for my netbook, a cable replacement for our GPS, and a set of speakers (my husband added this item on our shopping list at the last minute!).

So, on a fine Saturday afternoon, we drove there and trotted up and down the aisles of shops to find the most best bargain we could. It was tiring and my feet were killing me. We didn't bring a lot of cash but armed ourselves with plastic cards. The problem with Low Yat retailers is that they do not want to bear the cost of government tax for credit card accessibility and imposed that tax to the customers. That is SO unfair! They have this attitude of 'you don't want to pay? Some other people will come and buy'. This is because throngs of IT-starved people like us do go there and succumb to the greedy merchandiser there just because there's no other place to go for IT parts and merchandise. So, note to all: brings lots of cash when shopping for IT stuff at Low Yat Plaza.

Ok, moving on.. So we went there and bought all the stuff on our list plus a couple of other things as well (impulse buying is not good - but I call it shopping therapy.. hehe!). We brought home along with  the other stuff a cigarette port extension (for the car), a USB port replicator and a very cute portable speaker (for me!).

I had quite a tough time finding a replacement casing for my IDE hardisk because it seems that they are not produced anymore since all the external hardisk sold now is SATA. The salesman that sold me the casing told me this fact. He also has an IDE hardisk and he's praying that his casing won't break or malfunction because it's hard to get a replacement. Even though the casing wasn't at all nice-looking, I had to make to with it. 

Back at home I tried plugging in the newly-cased old hardisk of mine into my laptop and it worked fine. It suddenly struck me that I need to make a backup just in case anything happens to it. So when I unplug the hardisk, and plug it into another laptop, it wasn't recognizable! Suddenly the computer is asking for me to format the hardisk! What?!! Oh no! Backup intuition came too late! I panicked BIG TIME! So i unplug it and tried plugging in into the other computer and the outcome is still the same. I thought it was because of the casing so I changed the hardisk back into the old casing with high hopes that it would all be all right. I was dead wrong! The hardisk was still unreadable.

I called my IT-whiz brother and told him about my predicament. He broke the bad news to me that my hardisk had crashed. It is now officially DEAD. Waaaaa!! All my life is in that hardisk! So now I am on a quest to try to recover all my data from the crashed and burned hardisk. Hope I can find a solution with freewares one of these days.. huhu..

Waiting Out..

I called the LPPKN today to set up my appointment. As usual patients have to call after 2.30 pm on the first day of their menses. The line is usually congested at this hour but sometimes your luck kicks in and you'd get through the busy line. Today my lady luck kinda laid back so I had to call a few times to get to my designated doctor's office to book an appointment.

The nurse that picked up my call sounded unfamiliar and she even asked out-of-routine questions. Usually the questions are 'what's your registration number?', 'when did your menses start?' and then you'd get a date for your appointment. This time around since the questions were getting a little bit weird, I sensed that I wouldn't get any dates at all for this cycle. And I was right!

The nurse told me since Ramadhan is around the corner (about three more weeks to be exact!), they are not taking Muslims appointments until after Raya. Meaning I'd have to wait out two whole cycles this time. I wasn't that disappointed since I have figured out that something like this would definitely happen to me (yeah, I kind of have the most rotten luck in the world.. bummer). But I did some quick count of the days to start a treatment cycle starting tomorrow and it actually could be done. If I were to meet the doctor tomorrow morning, I'd get three sets of hormone injections for 31st of July, 2nd and 4th of August. Then I'd have to see the doctor on the 6th for an ultrasound scan, give myself a Pregnyl injection on the 7th and undergo IUI procedure on the 9th. See? Ample time for a cycle treatment. But it depends on how big my eggs grow since my doctor is a perfectionist and he wants the eggs to be a certain size and no less for him to agree to do a procedure. Very very frustrating!

So, since I am told to wait out two whole months (four if you counted the two last abandoned cycles), that's just what I have to do I guess. Let's just take a break..

Bills! Bills! Bills!

Tomorrow is pay day. Whoopee! I am sitting alone at home counting my pennies before I can even spend them. Yup! Pennies! Every month is the same routine for me. I get my paycheck, then pay off as many bills off as I can with my meager income and then stretch as much as I can with the balance until the next pay day comes. It's not much but it's my life. My hospital bills are actually the culprit to adding up my monthly bills because every visit to the doctor's office costs more than RM100. And that's a cheap visit mind you! Oh well..

This month there's not much LPPKN activity for me. It has been almost two weeks after my last visit to the doctor's office and the abandonment of my last treatment cycle. We just let things go natural this cycle but so far there's no indication or early pregnancy symptoms whatsoever. My mood has been going up and down like a roller coaster and I find everything uninteresting. I know that this is also a sign of depression but I just can't help it. I guess I need a looong holiday to flush out all these bad vibes that's pulling me down.

God please please make me a billionaire.. (one can wish can't they?) ;)

And here we go again..

After the last visit to the doctor's office I was given a change of hormonal medicine. The three shots of Menopur was not as bad as I had anticipated. I googled some information on the web and found a video on Youtube giving tips on how to do a Menopur injection without getting the burning feeling too much. In the video the lady mentioned that after the medicine had been mixed, we should let it sit for about 5 minutes in the syringe to make sure that it won't burn too much when going in. Oh, and she did say that the area that the patch of skin we swabbed with the alcohol swab should be dried first because injecting on a wet area would contribute to the burning feeling of the injection. I did all that and the result was bearable injection sessions (not as bad as before). I like the effect.. Maybe next time I can even build up the courage to do the injection myself.

As scheduled, we went to the doctor's office for an ultrasound scan. The result was not as what the doctor had hoped for because the size of the ovums are not as he expected. He expected the eggs to be at least 14mm by now but unfortunately they are only 11mm. He pondered for a while and finally he decided to abandon this cycle and wait for my next menses to start a new cycle (as I had expected, of course, since that's all what I had been hearing from  him through almost every treatment cycle). I do feel disappointed to abandon this cycle none the less.. I couldn't help but wonder did I let the medicine sit too long in the syringe that the eggs' growth was stunted? Or maybe the fact that I am under high pressure lately and had been feeling tense and depression is a contributing factor too? Or maybe the medicine just did not work for me..

I am getting a little bit discouraged about the whole treatment process. It is taking too long and is sapping my energy along the way. I've even thought of abandoning the whole idea of TTC since baby dust is not getting to me at all.. Well.. whatever comes to mind I do still have to wait out this cycle and start a fourth cycle next month.. The waiting game is starting all over again.. *sigh*

3rd attempt..

Today was another start for a new cycle. I actually have mixed feelings about going through treatment this time. I am emotionally and physically tired of all the needles, the looks my office mates and bosses give me when I tell them I'm going yet for another treatment session.. I just wish I could have a long break so I can concentrate on my well-being. But if I do that then who's going to take up all my bills? *Sigh*

So here goes another painful and tiring cycle again. This time the doctor changed my hormone medicine from Menonys to Menopur. The dosage is still the same. I'm scheduled to start taking Clomid today and start the injections tomorrow. I hope the needle they gave me is not as bad as the ones from the 2nd cycle (which hurts so bad!!). Ultrasound scanning is scheduled to be on the 6th next week.

Please God give me strength..

IUI.. Second Attempt..

My first attempt of TTC via IUI didn't work out so my husband and I went for another round of treatment cycle at LPPKN. This time my doctor gave me a higher dosage of hormone medicine to make the eggs grow faster (time is ticking!). After the third injection, we went for an ultrasound scan and my doctor told me the growth is still unsatisfactory, PLUS if we were to go for IUI, the dates were all wrong since I was supposed to be scheduled for IUI on Friday but Friday is a public holiday. Huh! Go figure.. Actually the nurse that booked me my appointment did a boo boo since she booked me 3 days later (was supposed to be the next day of the first day of my menses). So the doctor advised us to abort our second mission of IUI and try the natural way to conceive.

AF did actually came late this month and I was feeling quite happy and hopeful. I did a Home Pregnancy Test (HPT) on the 13th of June and got a faint line. I was so excited and did another one later in the afternoon. I broke the news to my husband (who was in Johor at that time) and he was quite happy. On the 15th we went for a Urine Pregnancy Test (UPT) at LPPKN and the result came in with a faint trace of pregnancy hormone. My doctor told me it's not a sign to jump for joy yet since it's just a faint sign. We just have to treat it as an early sign of pregnancy and I have to be really careful not to exert myself. We were scheduled for a second UPT on the 25th. We did all we can to be extra careful and I tried my best no to feel too stressful with my job and the fact that my application for study leave was revoked in an inhumanely kind of way.

On the 20th I did another HPT and the result came as negative! I panicked BIGTIME! We went and bought Clearblue and I did the test on 23rd. The result was positive. I never get a positive sign before using Clearblue and I felt happy and hopeful again.

 The positive result on Clearblue HPT

So on the 25th we went for our second UPT (me with high hopes chiming in my head and heart). When the doctor told us that the result was negative the news came crashing down on me like a big explosion. I was in total denial so I showed the doctor the picture that I took of my positive result on the Clearblue HPT stick. The doctor told me that the colour of the line is very faint so it might be a false positive. He told us to go back and just wait for my menses to come and then call in for another appointment.

We went home and I was totally depressed, and I felt helpless and hopeless. I was still thinking pregnant, pregnant, pregnant! I wanted it to be true so much that it really hurts. Unfortunately for me, that evening my menses did came just like what the doctor expected. I cried and cried and cried and still haven't come to terms about the loss until this moment.

For couples who are blessed to be able to conceive naturally and early in their marriage life is deemed as lucky in my eyes. As for me, this journey of trying to conceive is emotionally straining, mentally and physically tiring. No matter how I look at it, the negative results are pulling me down and piling depression unto me. I just wish that I could have a break from work so that I can concentrate on my treatment and mental well being for the moment. And the people surrounding me doesn't seem to understand the trying ordeal I am going through..

Well.. the cycle begins all over again for us.. please pray for us.. please.. please..

Trying To Conceive.. The Waiting Game.. Again!

I had undergone my laparotomy to get my endometriosis cyst removed in early June 2009. The operation was a success and I had to go through a pre-menopause treatment for six months which supposedly aimed to kill the cyst cells in hopes that they don't come back.

Early this year (2010) I resumed my treatment at LPPKN but I actually had to go through the tests all over again (hence the blood test, the painful HSG scan, the waiting). I did all that and my doctor started me on my second treatment for IUI. I was given three syringes with instructions on how to mix the medicine and then inject myself with the needle. I didn't have the courage to do it myself since I am soooo afraid of needles so my husband did the injecting. The pain is quite bad when the medicine is seeping in. After a  few days and 3 injections later, we went for another ultrasound scan. Unfortunately my doctor told me the size of my ovum wasn't satisfactory (meaning it wasn't fat and plump like he wants it to be) so he told me to take another two hormone injections and come for another ultrasound a day after the last injection. We did just that and he gave us Pregnyl (an injection-type medicine to release the ovums from the tubes). A day after that, we did the IUI procedure and continued on the excrutiating Two Weeks Wait (TTW).

I didn't actually get through the TWW since Aunt Flo came on the 13th of May. The pain and disappointment overwhelmed me but I had to deal with it since it wasn't meant to be at first try. So the cycle begins all over again..