Et tu, Brute? *Updated

Brutus

Originally uploaded by NotACrayon
My little Brutus is very sick. He’s 14 and has a serious heart condition. My mom called at 6am and she doesn’t think he is going to make it through the day. He’s lethargic and seems depressed. He was diagnosed with a pretty serious heart murmur 2 years ago and was doing OK. He’s been getting sicker in the past week. He collapsed on Wednesday and again this morning. The vet can’t do anything for him because his problem requires surgery and they won’t do surgery on a dog his age. It doesn’t help that he’s a yorkie and tiny.
My little Brutus was the first dog I ever called my own. My mom bred Yorkshire Terriers and he was born when we were reading Julius Casear in 10th grade. We were able to sell all of his littermates, but no one wanted Brutus. He was an oversized Yorkie (11 pounds) and was too big to register (AKC regulations limit Yorkies to 7 lbs). Because of his size the name seemed appropriate. He has the attitude to go along with it. He has never been aware that he wasn’t a big dog. Just last month he took on a possum that dared to venture up onto HIS porch. He was constantly getting into fights with dogs that were 10 times his size. You couldn’t convince him that he was too small to fight dogs who ate things his size for breakfast. He could (and often did) back any Rottweiler or Chow into a corner.
When I moved out of the house my mom wouldn’t let me take Brutus with me. I was devastated and so was he. My mom took him to the vet a few weeks after I left because she thought he was sick. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong with him and diagnosed him with depression. He perked up when I came home though. Brutus was always the first one to greet me when I came home. If he took a running start he could jump high enough to hit the handle and let himself out the screen door. He would run up to my car and jump into my lap as soon as I opened the door. This backfired one day when he ran under my car about 2 months after I got my license and I ran over him. He survived with only one broken bone and had a slight limp once he got older and arthritis set in. When he ran he would hold the back leg that had been broken off the ground, it never slowed him down.
I have never slept a night in my house after I got Brutus without him by my side. After I moved out and came back to visit I wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom without Brutus. He would paw and bark at any door that separated the two of us.
I hope he makes it through the day. I hope he makes it another 13 days. I will be leaving for NC on the 13th of July and hope that he’ll be there to greet me as I pull in the driveway. I want to snuggle with him and be able to say goodbye to my little buddy.

*Update: Brutus started having seizures Saturday afternoon. My mom took him back to the vet. They did some blood work to see what was causing the seizures. None of the options (brain tumor, heart disease, or liver disease) are very promising. He’s going back in today for a chest x-ray. If it is something manageable he will be put on phenobarbital to control the seizures. The only problem with the phenobarbital is it can take a week to 10 days to actually control the seizures. I’m still hoping that I will get to see him in 2 weeks. I hope I’m not setting myself up for a heartbreak.

Search Terms

So every once and awhile I check out the search terms that bring people to my humble site. Usually they pertain to something like 12 dpo, known donor, home insem, CA, NC, chemistry, or, on the rare occasion Bl0ckbuster. Today was a shocker though. Someone found me by searching “I hate being a mother”. I guess the title of the site mixed with my “I hate that I’m selfish” post brought them in. That someone could actually hate being a mother, to me, seems impossible. How I wish I could get drunk, have a one night stand, and oops! get knocked up, actually stay pregnant long enough to give birth to a live baby only to hate the baby (watch out, don’t slip on the dripping sarcasm). It baffles me that people might actually hate something that I want so badly. I just want to get to a point that I can be the Other Mother to something other than the furry kids.

While we’re on the topic of knockin’ up my wife, we don’t know if we’re going to get to insem in July either. The class I’m teaching ends July 13th. After that I’m planning on taking a trip to NC to try to interview for some jobs and find a place to live. R is almost out of vacation time and wants to save some for the move so she doesn’t think she can get off of work for the long weekend. She should O around the 19th so that weekend would be too early anyway.  I’m hoping to find a job and then come back and help R pack. Once the movers show up (oh how I love that word, we’ve moved 7 times together and never had movers) R & I will head to NC and stay with my family until our stuff gets delivered. We’re hoping that I can find a job and a place to live in time for us to try again in August.

101 Reasons Our Donor Rocks: Round Three

9. Our donor called yesterday and he was worried about us. He knows how badly we want this and just wanted to make sure we weren’t too upset to be missing this month (again!). He’s the best.

10. He’s also offered to get a sem.en analysis. We told him that, since R had a (nondescript) diagnosis that affected her fertility, it was unlikely that he would also have a problem. Basically R told him, “It’s not you, it’s me.” He agreed to give it a few more months and then we can get him checked out. For all of you out there that are freaking out that we haven’t had him tested: he has had blood tests to make sure he was disease free (S T D s, H I V, H e p, etc.), we just didn’t have a semen analysis done. He’s young and healthy. He does have a few health problems (allergies & asthma) but it’s nice that we have the same medical history (can you guess why?). I know it’s not great but, at least I know every detail.

Sort of as a distraction, we had a yard sale today. We wanted to be productive since we didn’t get to insem this month. R still has a lot of things from her childhood at her mom’s. So much for that distraction. The yard sale was at R’s mom’s house (my mother out law) since our driveway and yard are way to steep to even fit one table out. It was so cute to see her going through her things from when she was a kid. We saved a few boxes of books & stuffed animals for the theoretical child. We also made some money, not too much, but enough to put our extra car on Eba.y (anyone in the PA area want a vintage Sa.ab that needs way too much work to make it worth anything?), go out for a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant, and pay for our gas on our next insem trip.

Damn

It looks like we may not get a TWW this month. R had a slightly positive OPK last night & a very dark OPK and definitely positive one this morning. We’re waiting on the temp to confirm it tomorrow, but it looks like she’s going to ovulate before we can even get to visit our donor. Not much EWCM, but we’ve noticed that there’s not much of that with the Clomid. I have to teach tomorrow morning at 7am & then we were planning on hitting the road. That still means our first insem wouldn’t be until at least 6pm. We don’t want to spend the money ($300) to take the furry kids to camp for the weekend, the $200 in gas to get there & back, and the three lost days of work for each of us for a long shot. I can’t believe that at one time I thought KD insems were going to be cheaper than buying frozen. We hope we can try in July but it looks like we may be moving the week R ovulates. The good news is that when we move our donor will only be 150 miles away.

It’s only the first week, but…

I love my new job! I’m teaching an intro to chemistry class to 20 Upward Bound students. They’re not all angels, but I’ve managed to keep their attention. The only downside if the class is the time; it’s at 7am. They’ve all managed to stay awake so far. I’ve never taught before and I really enjoy it. I have class for 4 more weeks & I hope I love it as much the last day as I do today.

I don’t normally post these

I do have an online quiz problem. I can’t keep away from them when I’m procrastinating. I haven’t ever posted the results from one of them, but I couldn’t resist this one.

Your Score: Si

You scored 42 Mass, 64 Electronegativity, and 6 Abundance.

Link: The Which Chemical Element Are You Test written by julie503 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Yes, I’m a dork. I’ve confirmed what R has always told me with countless online quizzes.

Oh yeah, I have internet access again. The rest of the neighborhood had their cable fixed Tuesday. I was talking to my neighbor and she said that hers was working again. I called C0mcast to see why my cable wasn’t on. The problem: I owed them $7.02. Apparently sometime around thesis defense/finals/graduation my cable bill went up. I have all of my bills that are the same amount each month set up with Billpay to send a check for the same amount every month. In the craziness that was April and May I missed the letter about the increase and they never sent a letter to let me know that I still owed money. They turned off my premium services because of a past due balance of $7.02. To make matters worse there’s a $35 reconnection fee, a $4.95 fee for paying my bill over the phone and the DVR still isn’t working. GRRRRR!

I hate C0mcast!

We have no internet in our house. I love summer thunderstorms but I hate what they do to our cable; no digital cable, no DVR, & no internet. I can’t check my email AND I have to watch commercials. Damn, I sound really spoiled don’t I. Oh well, I got used to not having to watch commercials when we got DVR 2 years ago and feel cut off from the world without internet access. To make matters worse I missed the Tony’s last night. I had set up the DVR to record them and completely forgot that they were on. They should be out to fix it sometime this week. Lots of people in our area had problems so we just have to wait until they get to our neighborhood.

On the baby makin’ front, we’re just waiting. Today is the first day of Cl0mid. We will be visiting our donor 1 week from Wednesday so hopefully our timing is just right.

I have at least one job interview in NC next week so wish me luck! Just in case we don’t move I have an interview in my area on Thursday.

New Job & Same Protocol

I got a new job today. I will be teaching Chemistry to Upward Bound students for the next 5 weeks. I’m still looking for full time work in NC, but we won’t be moving until the end of July at the earliest.

I spoke with the doctor today. We’ll use the same protocol this month with a few more blood draws to make sure the Cl0mid is working. If not, he will increase the dosage. So it’s 50 mg on CDs 5-9 and then OPKs starting on CD 11. Blood draws to check hormone levels on CD 3, 14, & 21. He actually suggested that we temp, which we’re already doing.  This is the same guy that asked us why we were temping when we saw him a few months ago!

We were right

Yesterday was CD 1, AF showed up when R was at work last night. No surprises there. I was a bit dissappointed but we really lost all hope last week. R just didn’t think that anything was happening in there. I’m calling the doctor today because R completely forgot to go in for her bloodwork while I was gone and I want to see what he wants her to do. It’s nice to know I’m needed in this process; I make sure she takes her meds, goes to her appointments, & pretend to be her on the phone when we need to talk to the doctor.

Still nothing

13 dpo & no BFP. We’re not looking for one either. I would be seriously surprised if AF wasn’t here by Friday. R is off work 20-26 June and we’re going to visit our donor then. I’m also trying to schedule some job interviews during that time. It looks like we’ll be moving to NC. My dad made us an offer we can’t refuse. He has offered to move us and get us set up in a house. We will rent first. If I decide to go to graduate school down there we’ll buy a house. It just doesn’t make much sense to buy a house if there’s a possibility that we will only be in NC for a year or so. My family is very excited that we may be moving down there, especially my sister. She really misses us.