RESOLVE's Resolve on Amendment 48

If y'all don't live in Colorado, then you might not be aware of this potentially historic making amendment that Colorado voters will have to grapple with, along with a long list of other issues to mull over. Amendment 48 would define "personhood" at the point of fertilization. This is one scary piece of legislation that has only one agenda, to outlaw abortion. In that process, it would likely take away fertility treatments and IVF.

That fact that I have to vote on this crap makes me sick. It leaves a lot of gray room for what is legal and what isn't. We had another well intentioned but vaguely worded amendment pass in Colorado a couple of years ago. Amendment 41 prohibits government workers and their beneficiaries from accepting gifts. This amendment was intended on preventing lobbyist from giving gifts to lawmakers. However, when it first was passed, it was unclear if a child of a government employee could accept a college scholarship. As a government employee myself, it was even unclear if I could accept gifts of value over $50 from my husband!! It took two years for an independent ethics committee to deem that this was ok. That's the mess that can be caused by vague and broadly worded amendments.

I asked Magic if we would have to get social security numbers for our frozen embryos, and he said yes. We would probably also have to get birth certificates for them. This makes my brain go *tilt*. What a mind game it plays with all infertility patients. If all of our fertilized eggs instantly became children, then we could all breath a lot easier, eh? When one of our embryos doesn't take, do we have to get a death certificate too?! In short, this amendment would be a nightmare if passed.

RESOLVE put out their statement on the amendment a couple of months ago. It's worth reading, because the same type of legislation may be coming to a state near you soon! One statement in particular got my attention:

"Would women with fibroids or other uterine abnormalities be forbidden to try to have babies because the problems with their uteruses reduce the chances that an embryo will successfully implant after IVF or an insemination?"

Seriously?

And other gotcha:

"If a Colorado woman travels to another state for IVF, would her eggs still be defined by Colorado law such that doctors in no other states would offer her treatment? Would she be forbidden to move any currently frozen embryos to another state to continue her treatment?"

This one got me worried. I never thought that Amendment 48 might prevent me from transferring my frozen embryos.

Amendment 48 was initiated by a 21 year old woman Kristi Burton who was homeschooled. She isn't old enough to know if she even has fertility issues. I'm sure she isn't aware of all the other sticky issues that this amendment would create. For example, what if a woman has an etopic pregnancy? Who do you save then?

All those of you who think CCRM, the #1 fertility clinic in the US, is your last chance for success with IVF, forget it with this amendment. So, if you are thinking of cycling at CCRM in the near future, you better call all your friends and relatives in Colorado and tell them to vote No on this one.

As much as I think this one is a no-brainer, you never know in Colorado how people are going to vote. After all, it got 130,000 signatures to get on the ballot. In the case that it does pass, it might push the issue of when I do my FET. I think I would have until January 1 before the law went into effect. I couldn't wait for the years it's going to take to untangle the legal mess this amendment will create to get pregnant. I hope I'm not pushed to make that decision!

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The Traumarama continues. Yesterday was my first trauma therapy session with a second therapist. I'm taking the shotgun approach. I felt good after the session, which I took as a positive sign. However, I had my usual agitation in the evening before going to bed. After listening to my Brainspotting CDs for 45 minutes, I finally got calm enough to sleep. Unfortunately, Magic wasn't sleeping well either, and he ended up waking me up about three hours after I fell asleep. I've been up ever since.

While I feel I made some progress in my session, I'm back stuck in my reactive state again. I swear, sometimes I feel like the Universe is after me. I walked out of my session feeling pretty good, and there is a dead squirrel right outside the driveway that wasn't there when I went in. I try not to let things like that bother me, but then I got upset when one of my favorite characters in the TV show "Heroes" got killed last night. The littlest things just build into a giant mushroom cloud.

Sometimes I feel like I'll never get beyond this, that I'm too damaged. I feel completely hopeless. I feel that this trauma will keep me from ever being a mother, and of course, there is the piece related back to my mother, so it feels like a vicious cycle. When I get like this, I feel that I'm to blame for everything, which of course isn't true. There is no reasoning in a state like this. You just wait for it to pass. You just hope that it will eventually pass, sooner rather than later. The blame takes the place of the not knowing. I want to know that everything that happened was ok and that everything will be ok. I either come up with answers I can not feel settled with or no answers at all. I'm not sure which is worse.

All I wanted was to get pregnant, be happy, and have a family. It was the story book ending that wasn't. Kinda like my childhood. I thought I was ready to be over it, but apparently I opened the Pandora's box without even knowing I was doing so.

I've always wanted to be a mom, and even after all that's happened, that hasn't gone away. I'm just a bit more wary of what I ask for.

If I didn't have so much to do at work, I would have taken another sick day and tried to get some sleep. I'm sure the sleep deprivation isn't helping either.

Progress

I hope I don't sound too "woe is me" on some of my ramblings about depression and trauma. The intent here is to educate, while some of you may possibly be here for the entertainment factor. I actually view crisises such as depression and trauma as catalysts for change, usually big change. I think such was the case last week. The Traumarama caused me to go out and get a book I've been thinking about for some time. I'll do a review of that book later. After reading that book, I think something shifted, if ever so slightly, in my consciousness. It's not what happened over the weekend, it's what didn't happen that delighted me.

Did anyone see the birth announcement of Lisa Marie Presley's twins? I typically see these tidbits of earth shattering news when I log into my ya.hoo account. The amazing part about it was that (pause for emphasis)...I was not fazed at all!! No reaction what so ever.

Ok, when you don't have a reaction, there's really not much to say about it.

I think I've made some progress here.

Show & Tell: We Are The Ones

Why?

Because I like it.
Because I want change.
Because I'm insired.

Because I don't want to be Sarah Palin for Halloween for the next four years. Yes, I'm plannin' on being Sarah Palin this year for Halloween. I'm practicing droppin' my Gs at the end of words, gosh darn it.

Zoe Kravit sings on this video, "We Are The Ones"



Mel's Show & Tell

Trigger Un-Happy

It was an exciting week in Trauma land this week. I had not one but TWO trauma triggers.

The week started off with more enlightenment training landmines. We do this thing in my enlightenment training that's kinda like group therapy. I was working on some particularly lovely issue about my mother, when in the middle of being all vulnerable and open, one of my group member's phone beeped. That's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that he said; "sorry about that, my wife is in labor". All eyes turned to him, with a couple of female group members making ooh-aah eyes at him. It didn't help that I had already been obsessing that I was supposed to be delivering about this time. As I felt my whole nervous system beginning to go haywire, I managed to hold it together enough to say, "I'm done". I thought I had dodged a bullet, but the trauma reaction came around and got me the next morning with a full blown panic attack upon waking, much like the ones I experienced when I was pregnant. I called in work sick and moped around much of the day.

I recovered from that when just two days later, I get a phone call from the local multiples group I joined back in April calling to see how I was doing. Apparently this woman didn't talk with the women I broke the news to in July. I said something like, "I don't think you got the message..." Then, the uncomfortable reply of, "well that doesn't mean you can't be part of our club. We have people that work on that kind of thing." My jaw dropped, as in a Katie-Couric-interviewing-Sarah-Palin type of jaw dropping.

"...if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Talk about ruining your day.

Before, I used to talk about how I was traumatized. Now, I get to experience what trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder means. Trauma is something that happens in the lower brain center, the limbic brain, and your nervous system. Trauma is also experienced physiologically, such as in panic attacks or dissociation. Triggers are anything that remind you of the trauma and set you off emotionally. In my enlightenment training, you are encouraged to feel your feelings. During an enlightenment training exercise a few weeks ago, a woman in a group of three next to my group of three decides to let out an ear-piercing scream. My group was exploring the openness of love when this scream happened. I was immediately reminded of my mother being crazy and screaming. All my good feelings vanished, my nervous system started going haywire, and I started shutting down. This is an example of what a trigger can do to you if you have not worked out all your trauma.

In hindsight, I realize the trauma began last year. I think each loss the fertility treatments brought was a new trauma. Then, my pregnancy opened up memories of trauma that were deeply hidden. One of them, I think, was my birth trauma. I'm not sure about this, seeing as I didn't have language back then to remember the trauma, but I had this recurring nightmare as a kid about being suffocated. The dream was so confusing because it had very abstract images, but with a crippling sensation of being crushed. The feeling of being suffocated come up again when I was pregnant. I think it might have something to do with being born breech with the umbilicord wrapped around my neck and being blue when I was born.

Next week, I will start back up with the trauma therapy, so I'm hoping that will help.

A Beautiful Mind

"Michi's on the front page of the Sunday paper," declared Magic the other day.

"You're kidding." I say. She's been dead for two years, I'm thinking.

Michi was a brilliant colleague of Magic's who tragically committed suicide two years ago, almost to the day. However, her suicide was no ordinary one. She committed suicide while on 24 suicide watch in a hospital. Never leave a brilliant suicidal person alone in a room with her glasses. Michi really wanted to die, so she found a way to do it. She broke her glasses and cut herself to use her blood to leave a message to her loved ones. She figured out when she was being watched, which was about every 15 minutes. When she wasn't being watched, she set up something to make it look like she had her head down on the desk in the room that was in view of the camera. Then, she used the broken glass to shred her gown and hang herself off-view of the camera. I normally wouldn't talk about something so personal to someone else's life, but all of this was in the newspaper article. Michi made the news because her parents are suing the hospital that majorly screwed up. The hospital is going to lose this one, but who wins?

I remember being upset by Michi's suicide. We all knew Michi, Magic the kids and I. We liked her, but we knew she was a troubled soul. I'm always impacted when someone I know commits suicide. I know that it could have been me. I hate seeing how suicide affects those who are left behind as they grapple with the questions of "why?", the anger, and the grief. I've been on the receiving end of the fallout as a good friend of mine from high school committed suicide at age 20. I take it upon myself to tell the spouses, parents, sisters, and friends left behind how mental illness took their life, not the person they loved. I can say this as someone who has been to the edge of the abyss, but backed away. I don't enjoy being able to speak from experience, but I think it does help those left behind to know that it was mental illness. When you feel that depressed, you are not aware of the love others have for you. It's like being in the hell of a black hole that you can't get out of. So you might as well be dead.

Michi's boss, a prominent professor at our local university said in the newspaper article that he did not notice any outward signs of depression. Michi apparently hid it pretty well. I also know how this works. I wondered while I was pregnant if I fooled people by appearing functional, when in reality, I was falling apart inside. I have a long list of health care practitioners who dropped the ball on me while I was pregnant. All of them either didn't notice that I was depressed, or didn't care. Their apathy took the form of assuming someone else was taking care of me, or assuming I would "be alright". One doctor boldly wrote me off in her notes of my visit with her. I was so angry about that. It's not like I didn't tell them, I did. I don't know if they just didn't take me seriously because they were so used to seeing me be so competent and functional, or they didn't have the time to deal with me. I asked Magic if he thought I was fooling people, and he said, no, I was not in my right mind when I was pregnant.

No wonder I had no trust of doctors to help me when I was pregnant and depressed. The system had failed Michi. People are so clueless about mental illness, even health care professionals. It wasn't only doctors who failed me. It was doulas and acupuncturists as well. I'm glad her parents are suing. If it saves another life in the future, I guess it's worth it.

The photo at the top is a picture of Michi's art that she won an award for. Michi had a flair for photographing liquid crystals under a microscope. Don't they look like colorful snowflakes?

The One that Got Away

And Various Political Commentary...

Within a 24 hour period, I had a contract on my house, and then I lost it. The prospective buyer couldn't get a loan. I was not surprised, but I did have fantasies of getting rid of this black cloud and actually being able to afford trauma therapy and maybe an FET. The lame economy is affecting regular people like me. I bought my house in the beginning of the Bush administration when the housing market was still high. Six months after I bought my house, 911 happened. Now I'm trying to sell my house at the end of the Bush administration when the economy and real estate market is at an all time low. I dropped the price on my house to lower than what I bought it for seven years ago so I could sell it. If lending wasn't so tight, I'd be selling my house in two weeks. I'm not in favor of a 700 billion federal bail out that does not get to the people that need it, like me, and increasing our national debt even more, but something needs to change.

Yes, I need to get rid of my house and all the emotional baggage that is attached with it, even if it means losing thousands of dollars in equity. I am not freaking out. I lived in the house two years before I moved in with Magic, and I've been renting it for five years. I did have a Rent-to-Own buyer, but they bailed on their commitment and trashed my house in the meanwhile. I really don't want to rent longer, dealing with who knows what kind of renters I will get, and have to fix up my house again to put it on the market.

Did anyone see the Saturday Night Live skit with Tina Fey as a dead ringer for Sarah (aw-shucks) Palin being interviewed by "Katie Couric"? I love the part where Palin says, "I'd like to use a life line," and Couric saying, "you don't have life lines". Do we really expect this bailout to be a life line? I don't know, but if you want to have a chuckle, The Muser has set up the SNL clip next to the actual Palin/Couric interview. I also like the video she has included on her post "Time for Some Campaignin'!", which I have included below. I hope this cheers you up from your economic gloom and doom. I'm voting for the unicorn that shoots rainbows out it's ass!

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab