I just have to get it out.

I surged. Blah blah blah. Still waiting on an email from Dr. M to figure out the next steps, but I am thinking we're pushing to November at this point. I'm strangely 'whatever' about this. I don't feel like rushing in many ways, but in many other ways I'm ready for this to end.

I tried to keep this blog without any details of my personal life other than the most personal of things, you know, like dildo-cams and estrogen levels and oh yeah--hopes and dreams and fears of the deepest kind. But you know what I mean--I don't use real names, I don't talk about other details of our lives because I was so afraid of someone stumbling on this and connecting the dots...but I'm sort of over that too. The real person I aimed to protect was myself (from questions asked in real life about how in the hell we could do a fifth IVF) and also my mother. I seriously doubt my mother will find this and I hope if anyone who knows her did figure it out they'd honor my wishes and keep things quiet. So I'm just going to talk because I need to talk.

My Dad.

Oh my God my Dad.

I just returned from a visit. You all who have known me for a while know he had a massive stroke in June.

And while he's doing better than anyone expected and I am thrilled that he survived at all, I am just so pissed right now. I am so sad for him and the quality of life he has been handed. What a shaft. Someone who adored being outdoors, riding his tractor, riding his bike, working his land...now lays in a bed or sits in a wheelchair in a freakin' nursing home, biding his time between rehab sessions where he is making some, but not a lot, of progress. I do not think he will walk again. I think the most we can hope for is that he can help transfer himself from the bed to the wheelchair and back again. He has to wear adult diapers. He is humiliated.

How did this happen? This is the question he asked me this weekend. You do not know pain until your father's deep black eyes have stared into yours and asked "How did I wind up here?"

Of course I had no answer. Why does anything like this happen?

I am feeling angry. Angry and robbed. My children (if I ever get there) will never be driven around on Pumpaw's tractor like his other grandkids. They'll probably only know him as an old man in a wheelchair who is sort of scary and sometimes drools and is messy when he feeds himself. He'll never push them in the tire swing he built for them. He'll never reach down and scoop them up in both of his arms because his left arm is his "stupid dead arm" as he says.

I love him so much it hurts. And that is why it hurts to see him like this.

I have been so PollyAnna through this whole process, trying to be strong for my Mom, hearing only the positive, choosing only to believe that he could recover, reading story after story about recovery.

Kind of like I have done with infertility on so many levels.

Because I have to have hope. I'm addicted to hope.

And while my Dad is doing better, my heart is breaking for all that should have been, all that could have been, all that will never be.

PS I am going to put up a pic at my old place, and post there, where I will tell an equally true but much more positive tale, if you're so inclined...