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went to the doctor...

December 1st, 2009 at 06:11 am

and the news is disappointing but hopeful. My aunt sent me a book about the St. Paul VI Institute in Omaha and how they treat women's infertility. It was a good book, but I couldn't drive to Omaha for checkups as they suggested. But, it turns out that there is a doctor in Salina that has been trained their way, and I met with her last week.

Basically, they treat the woman's entire body and not just her ovaries. They don't throw birth control pills at you and don't throw clomid at you. They try to get your body healthy, measure estrogen, progesterone and other hormones on a regular schedule, teach you to recognize your fertility markers and encourage you to eat healthy (low carbs in my case because of PCOS) and exercise. I don't think I have ovulated in the past two months, and I have been charting my basal body temperature, and it has been mostly below 97'. (The lowest number on the chart is 97', so that was a clue that something was wrong.) I think it might be thyroid, especially since at my first appointment from when I was pregnant the doctor circled the thyroid numbers, but didn't say anything else about it. (That shocked this new doctor. She said the thyroid can be very instrumental in getting and staying pregnant.) I feel a lot more comfortable with this doctor and my specific problems compared to my previous doctor that didn't even know that metformin can be prescribed for PCOS, and who had to call another doctor after my miscarriage to discover she should have had me on progesterone the entire time.

So, either PCOS and thyroid problems are making me gain weight, or my weight gain is exacerbating my PCOS and thyroid problems. So, we get to lose weight.

GAH! It seems like an impossible battle. But, if I don't do it, I won't be a mom. It is that simple. So, a lot of hard work is in front of me.

I started the diet today, since my last Thanksgiving thing was yesterday. Doing Atkins, which has worked for me in the past, but is really hard to stay on. I need to work on proceeding up the levels instead of staying on the induction phase forever and then stopping cold turkey. Made a yummy italian salad dressing from scratch to put on my salad tonight and DH made steak. Leftovers for tomorrow!

I played in an alumni basketball game for our high school on Saturday and played a little paintball on Sunday. Today I worked out using an old VHS tape I was going to throw out. It is a Power 90 tape I had from back when I was in college. It used to be so EASY (I was used to working out 3 hours a day for basketball, so I didn't even break a sweat then) and now it was terribly hard. I am looking forward to getting to level 2 because he is kind of annoying on the tape in level 1 Smile

I went in for a blood test on Friday, but haven't heard the results yet.

I have an appointment on Tuesday to meet with the person who is going to teach me the Creighton Model Fertility Care System (charting your mucus) to tell when you are ovulating. It will also give an indication of how your hormone levels are doing. It is very interesting. We have so much information we can get about our bodies if only we know how to read it!

I really think it is a shame that medicine has shifted towards the pill for PCOS and IVF and other non-natural remedies for infertility. Many doctors I have gone to don't actually know much about a woman's cycle, or don't want to follow up to see if you can regulate it any other way. The message seems to be "acne? take the pill. PMS? take the pill. PCOS? take the pill. athlete's foot? take the pill." I mean, goodness, it is not the panacea to all female problems. In fact, I think it may mask some problems, and be treating the symptoms, not the problems.

I don't know what all this is going to cost out of pocket. She is treating PCOS, so it should be covered by insurance, but I don't know about the Creighton Model teacher. Probably not.

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In money news, I have figured out my debt snow ball (can't remember if I blogged about this yet, but too lazy to look). Tomorrow the last payment for the ambulance ride from 3 years ago will be paid. My debt snowball is currently $335 (pickup, table and Bandit surgery), so I was able to send the entire $320.50 that was left with no problem. Add the normal ambulance payment of $36 and the new snowball is $370. (I like round numbers. So sue me.)

Next is the house. We owe about $1300 on it, but we aren't really on a set schedule to pay it off as it is private contract. DH would like to pay the entire thing off by the end of the year, but I can't send that much out of the bill bucket. We would have to sell something. We are selling calves in January, so maybe we will use some of that money to pay it off. But, if it comes out of the bill bucket, I'll be able to for sure send $565 on Jan 1, maybe $10 more, depending on the electric bill. That puts the house pay off by March 1 at a minimum. Of course, that won't grow the snowball because we hadn't been making regular payments (with the previous owner's blessing, by the way) but another debt will be gone.

One bad thing is that our smallest debts are also the lowest interest rates, and even though I know in my head that paying off highest interest rates first makes more money sense, I think I need to follow a system. DR seems to be a good one, so there you go. The next debt is a credit card with $1477 currently on it at 0% interest, then student loan of $2590 at 3.125% interest. I should get through these by the end of next year.

I guess there are my goals for 2010:
1. pay off house
2. pay off capital one
3. pay off student loan

That is all the further out I'm going to project, except that my preliminary numbers show I can get us out of all of our non-farm debt in 3.5 years (though technically, all the credit card debt did come from farm purchases. it just feels differently than a bank loan, though.)

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I have been wanting to get a preliminary estimate of our taxes finished so I can convert my rollover IRA (from my old 401k) to a Roth IRA this year. I want to roll over enough to keep us in the 15% tax bracket, and not get in the 25% bracket, as I see taxes going up and up and up in the future. We may look back at 15% with longing and nostalgia. Hell, we may look back at 28% with nostalgia. I learned tonight that I will have more wiggle room than I thought. We bought about 60 cows cows this year, and I can section 179 as many as I need to bring the income level down to 15%. I didn't know if I had to do all or nothing, but a friend of mine who does farm taxes said I could do a specific dollar amount, not even a whole cow! So, figuring we didn't pay any taxes last year, lost my $92,000 job, I was on unemployment for 6 months, and my new job is only $60,000, AND having $72,000 of wiggle room from the cows, I think I can safely move $20,000 from IRA to Roth IRA. I still want to go through the receipts and do a better check, but if I don't get to it in the next week, I'll have my adviser pull the trigger. I can always recharacterize it next year before I submit my return, so the only risk is not doing enough, I suppose.

9 Responses to “went to the doctor...”

  1. lizajane Says:
    1259649245

    Very interesting!

    And there's nothing like an annoying Level 1 exercise to get you motivated to get to Level 2!

  2. zetta Says:
    1259653399

    Check out http://www.fertilityfriend.com

    It's a great online community where you can learn everything you need to know about charting temperature and mucus. They offer a free charting course and also have an ebook. I used the message boards extensively for support as I was going through infertility and IVF, and found the information there to be very reliable.

    Also look for the Answer 20 day ovulation test kit at Target and your pharmacy -- you'll save a bundle using these instead of the regular 7 day kits, especially since PCOS makes your cycle so variable.

    Feel free to PM me.

  3. Petunia Says:
    1259669601

    You may also want to consider joining the Catholic fertility yahoo group http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/catholic-fertility/. Many of the ladies in that group have worked with Dr Hilgers or other doctors trained by him. They are a wealth of information and support.

    We're just full of helpful suggestions today. Smile
    Looks like you have a good plan for your debt. I don't know what section 179 is, but LOL about reporting part of a cow!

  4. momcents Says:
    1259675618


    I used the ClearPlan Fertility Monitor. That is how we ended up with child #4 and #5 (surviving child #3 and #4). It cost about $150 eight years ago with another $30 monthly for the sticks. I wasn't one to take my temperature every morning before getting out of bed. If you're ovulating you have an egg in the window, it also tracks an increase in your hormones showing when your leading up to peak fertility. I used it because my cycles vary monthly (from 28 days to 32 days). Good luck with whatever method you chose!

  5. creditcardfree Says:
    1259687709

    Best wishes to getting healthy and pregnant!!

  6. Jerry Says:
    1259971237

    Good luck with your health and fertility! I remember how surprised I was when we lived in Massachusetts that fertility and in-vitro treatments were covered by health insurance. A number of our friends who lived there for school were very fortunate and saw that benefit lead to the growth of their families. I hope that your doc and caregivers are really good to you, and that the holistic vantage point is successful!
    Jerry

  7. baselle Says:
    1260852471

    Good luck pursuing health for fertility. Its wise to remember that women are more than uteri with feet.

  8. cptacek Says:
    1260852760

    nice, baselle! Big Grin

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