I’m a worrier by nature. The female members of my family are Olympic gold medalists when it comes to worrying. There has always been a part of my brain hardwired for worry. I have always been a worrier. All my life, a worrier.

But during my luteal phase, I hit the rock bottom of worry. I binge on worry until I’m stumbling around, trying to figure out what is a legit concern, and what is amped up on hormones (or lack thereof). Although, I’m not sure I’d call it rock bottom, because “rock” suggests there’s nowhere else to sink. It’s more like Quicksand Bottom. (I’m just coming up with that now—forgive my sloppy brainstorm.) I hit Quicksand Bottom. I may feel pretty awful, and it may seem as though I can’t sink any lower, but I find ways in which to do so. And the more I fight against it, the more it sucks me in. Worry turns into paranoia, paranoia spawns delusions. Before I know it, I’m immersed.

(Man, this metaphor is lame.)

It doesn’t help that I know it’s coming every month. I can see it speeding toward me. But no matter what I do, I can’t stop myself. No amount of reasoning or preparation helps.

Quicksand.

I’m guessing, based on years worth of detailed note taking, that my body just doesn’t bode well and is highly sensitive to the extreme shift in hormones.

Here’s the skinny: many women fight a difficult battle every month when it comes to coping with the seemingly schizophrenic nature of our menstrual cycle. Our body gives us a healthy dose of “the happy hormone” (estrogen) and then, right as we ovulate, drops that shit right down to nothing letting progesterone take over. And if progesterone levels are high, you are more likely to be depressed and anxious. My progesterone levels are usually off the charts. So when I hit, I hit it at the speed of light and from great heights because, on the flip side, I have high estrogen levels as well.

Thud.

At the beginning of the month, when the estrogen is flowing, I’m a goddamn treat to be around. I will sing to you, make you cookies. I’ll give you back rubs, make awesome jokes. I will hug you and kiss you and tell you how awesome you are. I will remark about how amazing it feels to be alive. I will plan on living forever because, hell, who wouldn’t want to? Being alive is just the best thing ever! I feel awesome. No, I am awesome. I am Tom Cruise on Oprah happy. To put it simply: when my estrogen is high I am the fucking shit. I am untouchable. Nothing can bring me down, and if you’re a part of my life, I will make it my job to try and make sure nothing brings you down either.

Sweet, sweet estrogen.

But then my body just takes it away. Just like that. It doesn’t simply poke a tiny hole in the balloon so I come down slowly from my estrogen high. It doesn’t pull the plug from the drain and let it all just naturally fall away from the basin. No. It blows the balloon to smithereens and drops the bottom out of the bathtub.

Progesterone takes over. And I’m a mess.

Many women have it hard. On top of dealing with the “nurture” part of who we are and who we’re becoming—our histories, the things we’ve been through, those we share our lives with, whatever hardships we’ve endured just by existing—we’re also dealing with chemistry, chemistry that is comically unfair if you ask me.

Anyway, the last few days, I have been in the trenches. The rise of progesterone, along with my natural ability at inventing scenarios based on very little actual evidence thanks to the art of worrying, has had me in a terrible state. I’m not myself. I’m reacting poorly online. I’m skittish around those I talk to every day (although, I’ve come a long way with the people I share my days with simply by being more honest about my situation). The past week, I have been a big ol’ ugly mess.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have witnessed bits and pieces of this over time. But instead of getting the unedited, desultory version I’m about to share with you, you’re getting the 140 characters or less version. And frankly, I’m not sure which is worse. You be the judge.

Here are a few sample conversations I’ve had with myself. (I’ve simplified the end-of-world scenarios to some degree. But it almost always boils down to death, darkness, torture and outlaws with machetes. Man, reading that back sounds ridiculous. Haha!):

Your husband eats too much greek yogurt and that yogurt is an environmental nightmare so you need to tell Toby that he can’t eat greek yogurt anymore. He has to eat less damaging yogurt or, OR! you can make him greek yogurt from scratch! You don’t have much in the way of time, but you can do this. You have to do this. Until they figure out what to do with all that byproduct, you will make him greek yogurt so you don’t help destroy the world and end up living in darkness surrounded by people with machetes. It might be beneficial to know how to make yogurt when everything begins to end anyway.

……………………………………..

You know it’s bad when you’re obsessing over losing followers on twitter. But I do this when I’m in that bad place.

Someone unfollowed you on twitter, someone you’ve been friends with for a while. They used to like you. They hate you now, Michele. They hate you because you’re a selfish asshole who can’t stop tweeting and you should have shut up more often. No one cares about what you have to say. And how could you have gotten that tweet about rape jokes so wrong? What’s wrong with you, Michele? Pay attention! You’re a dick. You would unfollow yourself if you could. You should just quit twitter because one day it will be overrun by people with machetes and we’re all going to die anyway because of the measles outbreak in Williamsburg and because of that new virus you forgot the name of. Oh, don’t forget to send that virus information to Toby.

……………………………………..

This next scenario continued for days. And I brought several people into it with me both in real life and online.

The neighbors smoke weed. But this? This is a new smell. It’s chemical. You need to google this. HOLY SHIT. They’re cooking meth! You have babies and animals! Your neighbors are cooking meth! This is not good. You should call the cops. No, call Toby. You need to tell Toby. He knows all about drugs. But he’s in California. You need to ask twitter. Twitter will tell you what you should do about your meth-cooking neighbors. Yes. Twitter and Toby. Is this what it’s going to be like at the end of everything? Drug dealers with summer teeth cooking meth, buying machetes and eating their young? God I hope my kids don’t see that. I’ll have to tell them not to have children.

……………………………………..

Your son uses too much paper and goes through too much clothing and we’re completely destroying the world because of it. You need to be more diligent and teach him why he can’t do that. He needs to be aware of all the landfills and trash and garbage. You need to tell him all of this so his kids won’t be completely fucked and live in a world surrounded by darkness and fire and people with machetes.

……………………………………..

We can’t buy anymore plastic toys from China because it’s killing everyone and everything slowly. And soon we’ll be surrounded by mountains made up entirely of horrible plastic toys. And maybe those mountains will help shade us from the hot sun and all the life-altering weather we have heading our way thanks to global warming and the fact that so many people don’t think it’s happening. That This American Life really scared you, didn’t it, Michele? It should! YOU MUST ACT NOW before you’re forced to take your family and hide inside caves bored out of mountains of plastic toys that will protect us from the people with machetes. But you can make yogurt from scratch if you can find the cows which will likely all be dead, killed at the hands of people with machetes and summer teeth.

And I’m only embellishing a little bit for the sake of brevity. I have tangential thoughts like this. And they continue for hours, sometimes even days.

So, if you’re (still!) reading this, and you’ve witnessed some of my trite and irrational, internal battles trickle out onto the Internet: I am sorry. I am sorry you had to see it. I am sorry that I am like this sometimes. I am trying so hard to get a hold of my own head when the bottom falls out.

P.S. I am OK. I promise. This was meant to be a bit funny, making light of something I’ve come to know and live with every month. My life, it’s overall very good.

I didn’t write about my infertility while it was happening and I wish I had because I know many of you could have helped me. Over the years, I’ve tried to go back and write about it, but that’s been difficult for me. Writing about it after the fact feels a bit disingenuous since I’m no longer immersed in it. While I was going through it, I was a totally different person. I’m not trying to be dramatic here. I was simply different. I’m not entirely sure what that person would have written and I’ve often wondered if I’ll do a decent job.

Toby and I refer to that time as “The Lost Years” because our life together became about one thing, and everything else was put on hold. Our attempt at having another child became our main focus. Well, it became my main focus; I merely brought him into it with me. And I have long since realized that had I married a less understanding man, a less caring person, I’d probably be divorced right now. Infertility puts a massive strain on even the best relationship.

So today, for the umpth time, I’m going to try and write a little about The Lost Years. And maybe if I start, I will find it in me to continue. Because there are so many stories, some of which are even humorous. I sat in that doctor’s office every day for two weeks during every month for a year. I watched countless stories unfold before me. Sometimes they were horribly sad. But on a few occasions I found myself texting Toby Joe and laughing about something I’d witnessed. And many times I’d text him as a way of keeping notes, because I regularly thought, “One day, when you feel better, you need to share this because, bad or good, it’s important stuff.”

I think, if nothing else, it will help me to write it down. And I hope that one day it might help someone else as well.

And so! If you’re reading this, and any of what I’m about to write sounds familiar, please know you’re not alone.

My Recollect

I remember the endless testing, the Clomid, the injections, the daily blood draws, the sonograms; I remember the catheters, the weird headaches, the expense of time and funds, the pregnancy tests, the HCG shots in my ass (administered by a nurse in a line of cubicles filled with other nurses administering shots into other asses).

I remember feeling guilty we had the money to go through it at all, and then feeling pissed off I had to.

I peed on hundreds of sticks, some of which would be a clear negative so I’d throw it out. Then, 30 minutes later, I’d return to the bathroom, dig it out of the trash (even though instructions EXPLICITLY say not to!) and imagine seeing a faint line. And on a few occasions, I would see a faint line—an evaporation line! Oh how I hated those lines.

I would hold sticks under sunlight, in front of TV light, beneath candlelight—any light that MIGHT show me a positive.

I took them apart, believing that maybe the window wasn’t clear enough, that the clear plastic might not actually be clear?

There were the times I would get my period and STILL come up with reasons as to why I could still be pregnant. Implantation bleeding! (On day 28?) I had to hold onto hope somehow even if it meant entering some type of fantasy land.

Hope!

Hope was my most necessary friend and my worst goddamn enemy.

(Perhaps you’ve met her? She gets around.)

I remember changing my diet based on something I’d read, then doing the exact opposite based on something else I’d read. I remember eating a LOT of pineapple and flax.

And, oh my goodness, the records I kept! You should see my iCal from 2009 and 2010. It looks like the work of an insane person. I thought about posting a screenshot, but I went all out. If you haven’t witnessed the diary of woman furiously charting her cycles, all the while going through fertility treatments, you will not like what you see. Let’s put it this way: on top of the concise (driven by desperation) information involved, there are many, many creative ways a woman can describe cervical mucus. (Too much? My apologies but be thankful I didn’t post an image of my iCal.)

I used to pass pregnant women on the street and feel anger toward them, complete strangers. I’d see women pregnant with their third child and sometimes, on a bad day, curse them for overpopulating the world. How dare they have THREE! Yet, I’d have had three if I could. But when you’re having trouble getting pregnant, you don’t think rationally all the time.

I held onto so much sorrow and that turned into anger pretty quickly. Maybe it was a survival mechanism. I don’t know. But if I let the sorrow consume me, like it did directly after the miscarriage, I don’t think I would have made it out alive. (Not to sound dramatic again, but that sorrow is inexplicable.)

The constant googling in the middle of the night, searching new terms, finding new ways to blame myself for failing at the ONE basic thing I was SUPPOSED to be able to do as a woman. The thing I ironically worked so hard trying to avoid in my 20s. I locked myself away and went temporarily mad.

After the miscarriage, in a fit of despair, I broke down in front of my primary care physician who immediately gave me the name of a shrink as well as some medication to help me feel a little better, just until I got back up again. I took the meds for a while, which made matters worse because I started to blame them for my inability to get pregnant. I went off the meds immediately.

I spent months hating myself, loathing myself for failing. I hated myself even more when I dealt with my emotions in such a childish manner. Each time I had a less than positive thought about another friend getting pregnant, I would add it to the pile of self-loathing.

I pushed away an entire group of friends because of my infertility. My inner turmoil took over completely. My inability to talk to people candidly about what I was going through was new to me as, up until that point, I’d been very open.

Who was I becoming? Why was I so full of anger? Was I a horrible person on top of being broken?

Thing is, had I just told them the truth, had I simply said, “You know something? I am REALLY fucked up right now. I am sad and sometimes very angry. Please try and understand and help me. It’s really not about you at all.” maybe we’d still be friends. Instead, I avoided them like my dog does when she gets beat up at the dog park. But the only person beating me up was me.

Not that any of that matters now. I torched the living shit out of that bridge.

If you can relate to any of this, you’re not alone. You may feel alone, but I sat in that waiting room for countless hours, watching hundreds of couples come and go through those fancy elevator doors. There are so many of us, too many of us. So why are we often too ashamed to admit we’re having trouble getting pregnant? Why don’t we talk about it more often?

Unexplained Secondary Infertility

I have some regrets. Both Toby and I do. Since we already had one healthy baby, we have since wondered if we spent too much time trying for number two at the expense of our first child. Was I too selfish? I can’t get that time back with him. And we have some sorrow linked to that. It wasn’t just OUR life I put on hold. And that thought gives me chills sometimes.

Thing is, I only wanted to have another child for Em. I wanted him to have a sibling. So I’m hoping one day when they’re older and thankful for having one another, I can forgive myself.

There’s another level to all of this, one I still feel uncomfortable writing about. With secondary infertility, you don’t often know where you fit in. Your inability to get pregnant and/or successfully carry a baby to term is very real, it’s painful and horrible and tragic and awful. But! We DO have one child already. So we often feel unfair discussing it at all as there are others with none. So, many of us keep even quieter. That silence is why secondary infertility is often misrepresented. They don’t actually know how many couples suffer from it as many feel bad discussing it at all.

Looking Back

The clarity I have now because of what I went through during that time is pretty great. I am different. I have changed in many ways. Some good, some bad. But I do like myself a great deal more now than I did before. And I know so much about the female reproductive cycle! I could go on and on about hormones and sometimes I do when talking to girlfriends (and someone should probably just tell me to shut up at that point). I’m no longer afraid of needles! So, there’s that as well.

But more importantly, I am not nearly as cynical as I used to be. I try and forgive easily, and I realize that many people are suffering one way or another, fighting a difficult and personal battle. I try and remember that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt (and maybe an unsolicited hug or two).

Lastly (for today!), I want to reassure you that when you’re in it, there is no such thing as a “wrong” thought. You are not a horrible person for having even the ugliest thought imaginable. You are a human being, one going through something very difficult. You are a woman. You are not broken. You are not alone. Find your people. Ask questions. Know you’re not alone—and that you’ll be OK.

Don’t be silent. Because the loneliness you experience from infertility can be all-consuming. Please speak up. I really wish I had sooner.

One last thing, and forgive me for the language: If someone should ask you why you’re going through all this trouble when there are SO MANY unwanted children in the world, and that you should just adopt instead; OR, if someone suggests that since you can’t get pregnant “naturally” there’s probably a reason for that, tell them Michele said, “Fuck Off.” (Sorry for the language, dad. But I held that one in too many times before now.)

(This might be the most boring post I’ve ever written. But I wanted to put it out there on the off chance another person is suffering as well.)

I was 30 and living in San Francisco when I first wrote about it. I wrote about the razor rash on my legs. At the time I thought it was from not ever changing my razors due to my neurosis about sharps in landfills. That wasn’t the case.

I moved back East and it persisted, sometimes it got worse, sometimes better. But it never fully went away. I wrote about it again.

I’ve been to at least a dozen doctors over the years. I’ve seen gynecologists, fertility specialists, primary care physicians, allergists, dermatologists, endocrinologists. I even asked a psychologist about it. The best I got was a prescription strength steroidal cream from a dermatologist. That helped, but it still didn’t go away.

Not one doctor had an answer for me. No one even seemed to care. I became more miserable and they wrote my misery off as razor rash or dry skin.

I decided I’d probably live this way forever.

But then last six months things have become much, much worse. The rash and hives have spread. They’ve moved onto my thighs and hips. And have finally reached my stomach and arms. Living a comfortable life was becoming increasingly more difficult. I’d wake up at night with blood on my shins from scratching. In the evening the rash was always worse. The removal of a pair of socks or pants seemed to trigger it. Taking off my bra made my chest itch. I stopped wearing shorts or skirts.

There was no relief. I tried every over-the-counter cream I could find. I gave up soap. I used certain detergents, none at all. I stopped taking hot showers, would go a few days without one. I stopped shaving. Started using natural ingredients only. Nothing got rid of the itch. I began to think maybe I was making it all up, that it was all in my head; maybe this was the first step into complete madness.

Desperate, I asked Twitter for new dermatologist recommendations because the woman I’d been going to for years wasn’t helping. On top of that she has a two-month waiting period. It didn’t even seem as if she listened to me anymore.

Missy came to my rescue. She suggested I see her dermatologist. This doctor had answered a lingering skin question for her. I got an appointment for the following week. This time I’d go in and beg for help. I wouldn’t leave without some sort of answer, even if it was just a plan.

On Monday, a 7-year long question MAY have been answered. After running a test on my back, the dermatologist diagnosed me with Dermatographic Urticaria, or chronic urticaria. She said there’s no way of knowing how or why I developed it. Usually there’s an event that jumpstarts it. A person might be bitten by a lot of mosquitoes all at once, triggering an intense histamine response. That response is remembered and the body begins creating its own hives. It could have started from stress. No one knows.

Here’s the bitch: the more I scratch, the more my body releases histamine creating a terrible cycle. The more hives, the more scratching; the more histamine, the more itching. Repeat until I’m covered in hives.

There are some days I look like a leper.

She prescribed me a super strong allergy medication, which will turn me into a zombie. I have two kids. One is a baby. Turning into a zombie, unable to stay awake, is not an option for me.

When I got home that evening, I had the biggest outbreak I’ve had in a while. I scratched myself raw. My mother was visiting and asked me to stop and I couldn’t. We covered my legs in ice and I took a Benadryl. It helped. About 30 minutes after the itching stopped, I had a piece of dark chocolate. My legs broke out immediately. I took a picture.

That’s when I realized that I’d had chocolate right before the initial outbreak. Could this be a food thing too? And, if so, could I find a cure without using medication?

So I researched. I discovered there’s low histamine diet where one avoids foods containing high amounts of histamine. You can’t avoid the chemical entirely, but avoiding foods containing higher amounts can help. Here’s the list.

The surprising thing is, several of the items on that list have given me allergic reactions in the past—more common allergic reactions. (At age 26 I went into anaphylactic shock after eating shitty shellfish. I have had an epi pen ever since.) Cinnamon is on that list, as is red wine, cheese, chocolate and bleached flours. Most processed foods trigger high histamine responses. And preservatives are the devil. All of those items, except for cheese, have given me problems in the past. (During my allergy screening, cinnamon and lobster were my two highest offenders.) What’s more fascinating to me is that the longer shellfish and seafood has been sitting around, the worse the histamine response. This explains why fresh seafood and shellfish doesn’t give me any problems. Weird, right?

I am entering day three of this diet and my itch is gone. I have no new bumps (the old ones are still healing) and there haven’t been any hives at all. Not one.

So, I’m going to follow this diet for at least a month to see if it does indeed help. I need to go for at least that long to make sure this isn’t still a hormonal issue, which is what I thought was the case in the past. One thing is for sure, this has gotten much worse the older I get and seems to progress with every pregnancy.

This diet hasn’t been easy! I don’t eat red meat and I enjoy seafood a great deal. So the list of what I can eat has become really, really small. Even soy products are a no-no for now. And I eat a great deal of soy. And giving up chocolate might be impossible, but at least I can cut back on everything and sneak some treats in from time to time. That is, if this works. If not, I’m back to square one.