Life Updates: Lawsuits, Autoimmune Disorders & IVF

First of all, how is it already September?! That means next it will be October, which basically means the year is over.

How?

I feel like I blinked and 2024 just passed me by. But then I also think about all that’s happened since the last time I updated you all, and it somehow feels like an eternity at the same time. 

My last fertility update post was at the end of February. 

When I re-read it I’m like, “whoa….who is that girl?” Even though that was only 6 months ago. 

Actually, I think of that girl with a little envy in some ways. I wrote that post on such a high, after taking a blissful 3 months away from fertility treatments at our sanctuary in Nicaragua. 

That girl was full of puppy cuddles, warm water waves, and floating on a liferaft of hope that I’d be pregnant in no time. 

Reality check: six months later, and my womb is empty as ever, just have a whole lot more hormones coursing through my veins, instead. 

Little did that girl know that just a week after writing that post, her whole world would get turned upside down. 

She didn’t know that the next three months would be hell. 

She sure as hell didn’t think she would be sitting in bed at night Googling how to check herself into a mental institution, because she was actually scared of herself for the first time. 

No, that girl was just bobbing on her liferaft of hope with the perfect amount of optimism and blissful ignorance needed to get through the emotional rollercoaster that is family planning. 

So, what the hell happened a week after my last post? 

Let’s get into it. 

Life updates: Lawsuits, Autoimmune Disorders & IVF

We sold our house in October of 2023, and put all of our stuff into a storage until in Florida with the plan of doing short term rentals around the country in hopes of finding a place we’d actually want to move to. 

The first stop was Sedona, Arizona. 

The second stop was Lake Tahoe, California. 

But then our plan came to a screeching halt, because a house came on the market back in Florida that we just couldn’t pass up. 

My wife and I were interested in starting a business, and the market in this particular part of Florida was perfect for it. 

So, we put an offer on the house….and we got it!

It seemed serendipitous….the address of the house was our freaking wedding anniversary for god’s sake. 

Plus, we’d already paid for the rentals in Sedona and Lake Tahoe, but the owner of the house we were planning to buy actually wanted to keep living in the house after he sold it. He wanted to rent it back from us for the exact period of time we planned to be renting in Sedona and Lake Tahoe. 

C’mon….what sounds more perfect than that?

When we left Nicaragua, we had a plan to first go back to Florida and re-configure our packing for the next 6 months in Sedona and Lake Tahoe. 

Oh yeah, we also had a 6 week Europe trip planned in between the two. Partly for work (I was teaching a retreat), but also for play. 

We then planned on flying from Florida to Arizona, and having our car shipped out to meet us not long after we arrived. That way we wouldn’t have to pay for a rental for months on end, and we could just drive to California from Arizona. 

That was the plan. 

But you know what they say….

If you want to make god laugh, make plans. 

Or something like that. 

We only had about 5 days in Florida before jetting off to our West Coast adventure. And after only 3 days of being there, a bomb went off. 

I was driving to the storage unit, while Alix was back in the Airbnb working, when I saw a text pop up from her. 

“I just got fired.” 

It was one of those moments where I wanted to simultaneously poop my pants, and also laugh inappropriately. 

But instead I composed myself, as I continued to fly down the freeway, thinking of how to respond in a way that could be the strength for the both of us. 

She continues to rapidfire text me some more details. None of which I can respond to, because I’m driving, and yes, I’m responsible like that. Texting and driving is dumb, okay. 

A few minutes later, she called. 

When I answered, all I could hear were sobs. I had that same feeling in my stomach that you get when you do a big drop on a rollercoaster. But I did my best to access that deep part of my belly that felt like it was about to fall out my butt, and give it a little clench. 

I have to be strong for the both of us. 

Look, I’m not going to tell Alix’s story for her. Although I do hope she’ll let me ghostwrite her book someday. Do you think she’ll hire me?

What I will say is this. 

My wife is a perfectionist high achiever who has been climbing the corporate ladder since before she even graduated from college. 

I know, I know…we couldn’t be more different. 

She’s a top performer in her job to the point that she reached executive level in her 30s at one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world. 

Not only has she never been laid off before, but she’s never so much as really been criticized at work before. She was used to raving performance reviews, and regular healthy promotions with glowing feedback on top. 

That being said, you can imagine how a lot of her identity and worth was wrapped up in her job. She took pride in providing for our family, because yes, she’s the breadwinner between us. 

Plus, she’s a woman with a plan. A vision. 

And that vision has very specific financial planning and steps that will allow her to retire in her 40s. A lofty goal, of course. But that’s just one of the many commonalities we do have. We both like to get a little crazy with our dreams…..and actually achieve them. 

Getting laid off was not part of the plan. 

Even if the reason “wasn’t performance related, and wouldn’t impact her record,” as they insisted….she knew it would still leave a stain on her prestigious reputation. 

And that, quite frankly, might as well have been death (in her eyes). 

Luckily for her, I’m a solution oriented kinda girl. When a crisis strikes, I stay as sturdy as a hundred year old willow tree in a tornado. I’d like to thank over a decade of entrepreneurship for that skill. 

I picked up the pieces when I got home, and told her what we were going to do next. 

We’d cancel our flights (save the money!), and drive across the country, instead. We had plenty of points to cover the hotels in between long driving days, and gas was super cheap in that part of the country. 

That way we’d not only save on the flights, but also on the cost of shipping the car. And, we’d have several days on end to process what the fuck just happened. And where the fuck we were going to go next. 

Lawsuits

So how the hell do lawsuits come into play? Well, I can’t go into explicit detail, because….well, the legal system is a sneaky bitch like that. 

But what I can say is that the first lawsuit had to do with discrimination (yayyy, being gay is so fun sometimes) with an insurance company, and with her previous company. 

Luckily, the insurance company was resolved outside of court, which helped us to make back some of the tens of thousands of dollars we’d spent on fertility treatments so far. 

And as her old company, well, she decided not to pursue it. To take the severance package with nothing but a middle finger, and move on. 

The third lawsuit came about about a month or so later. 

Remember that house we had a down payment on? The one that we were a little freaked out about paying for on just one salary.

Yeah, that one. 

We wanted out of it, but we didn’t know how to get out of it without losing our escrow deposit of over $100k. 

Without boring you with the details, by some stroke of luck the sellers breached their contract in a way that allowed us to get out of it and get our escrow payment back. 

There was just a threat of a lawsuit (like them suing us) for a hot minute there, before they finally conceded, and the whole thing just went away. 

Thank god. 

Oh yeah, did I mention we also had to kiss that business dream goodbye around this time, too? You know, the one that we’d already invested a non-refundable $20k into. 

Yeah, that one. 

It felt like too big of a risk to pursue it with the instability of just one income. Plus, getting the business loan for it would be damn near impossible with my entrepreneur paychecks. 

Regardless of the size of my income, banks don’t love giving big chunks of change to people who don’t have a guaranteed paycheck. You know….like my wife did. 

Needless to say, we were back at square one. 

We no longer had a house. 

Also, we no longer had a new business. 

We no longer had a plan.

All we did know was that we needed to cut our Europe trip in half to make sure that we stretched her severance as far as it would go. 

And just like that, another part of the plan bit the dust.

Autoimmune Disorders

We settled into our rental in Sedona for 3 months, and drove down to Phoenix every week for fertility appointments with a doctor I’d met virtually a few months prior. 

The clinic was okay. Nothing was worse than my Florida clinic experience. But also nothing has been better than my Reno clinic experience. 

It was somewhere in between. 

Our fertility plan, at the time, was for me to keep doing IUIs in hopes of getting pregnant. I planned to do one more non-medicated IUI, before starting medicated cycles. 

In the meantime, Alix was going to to an egg retrieval. 

Initially, we wanted her to do this for our second child, because we thought that we’d start with IVF by the time we got baby #2 given my age. She could get her eggs out the same time I’m trying to get pregnant, and then we’d keep those embryos on ice until we were ready. 

Another laughable plan. 

After 2 years of trying, and no baby #1, it started to become clear that we might need those embryos sooner than later. And if none of the 3 IUI cycles worked, then I’d start with IVF. 

I was really hesitant about IVF, because of how sensitive I am to synthetic hormones. I already experience pretty intense depression, and with hormonal intervention, I get suicidal. So, it’s not really something I like to mess around with. 

We thought that Alix providing the eggs would help to relieve me of some of the medicated load. Plus, then she would be more biologically involved in the whole thing. 

So, she started the beginning phases of the egg retrieval process, and…..she got sick. Like really sick. 

They also started her on the first round of meds without updating her labs (told you this clinic was nothing to write home about). So by the time she got her labs back, and some of the numbers were off, it wasn’t entirely clear if it was her or the meds. 

Fertility clinics are businesses. Remember that. 

Which is why they wanted her to push through, and keep going through the process. Probably because our next bill was going to be $14k, and they didn’t want to miss out on that chunk of change. 

Luckily, I’ve had my fair share of douchebag medical professionals try to push me around into doing things I’m not comfortable with under the guise that “they know best,” because of white-coast syndrome. 

One thing about me is that I don’t take shit. 

I know I seem like a soft spoken, peaceful yogi. But the truth is, when it comes to advocating for yourself or others in a medical setting, I turn into a fire breathing dragon. 

And, no, I don’t feel bad about it. 

Despite their efforts to bully her into continuing, I demanded more labs and and found an endocrinologist for a second opinion. 

Thank the lord the endocrinologist is actually an earth angel (because yes, there are good doctors in the world, I swear), and had a diagnosis for her in no time. 

Alix has not one, but two, autoimmune disorders. One of which she’ll need to take medication for. 

For life. 

Again, I’m not going to tell Alix’s story with the specifics of what they are. But what I will say is that, because they’re related to hormones it would’ve made it extremely dangerous if she had continued to do the egg retrieval. 

Just a little reminder that if something doesn’t feel right to you, you can always say no to doctors. They’re not the boss of you, okay?

With her conditions there was a chance she’d never be able to do the retrieval. And even if she did, the outcome would likely be dismal. 

In case you’re wondering, no, my poor wife was still not yet employed. 

So yes, she was still dealing with the identity crisis of getting laid off, while also grappling with the fact that she was now going to be on lifelong medication, needed a major diet shift, and couldn’t biologically contribute to creating our children anymore. 

It was quite the juggling act trying to be the strong one for my wife through the loss of her job and health crisis, while I’m also managing one negative pregnancy after another and the wild ride of hormonal fluctuations that come with fertility treatments. 

Fun time, right.

IVF

At this point in time, I’d done 2 IUI cycles. Neither of them worked. I was on my third one, which was medicated, but knew in my gut it wasn’t going to work either. 

This meant that we could continue doing IUIs until we were blue in the face, and hope for the best……or (gulp) switch to IVF. 

The catch being that I’d have to do all of it- egg retrieval, embryo transfer, and carry. 

The whole shabang.

I was nervous. 

I was resentful. 

Also, I was resistant. 

I didn’t want to do it, honestly. And I didn’t know if I would. 

Just to bring you back to the concrete nature of time- we’re in May, okay. Anyone who’s been here for a while with me knows that May are….hard. 

It’s the month my best friend died. 

It’s the month my boyfriend almost killed me. 

And this year, it was the month of a due date that never came to be from one of my angel babies. 

I don’t know if it was the combination of the usual darkness that comes with May, the family crisis I was going through (that’s another story I’ll share more about one day when I’m ready), and the hormones I was on for IUI….

or if it would’ve happened from the hormones alone. 

All I know is that depression hit me so fast and so deep, I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me by a semi truck, but didn’t even care enough to feel the pain. 

I’d lay in bed crying, staring at the wall for hours on end, not even realizing it until Alix would come in and start rubbing my feet, asking me if I was okay. 

I felt paralyzed. Like I could feel all of the pain the world has ever contained, and yet somehow nothing at all. 

I was everything. 

And I was nothing. 

I didn’t want to be here anymore. 

Not long after my third failed pregnancy attempt in Arizona, I stayed up late one night looking for mental institutions near me through blurry, tear-filled eyes. 

As irrational as my mind had become, I was still there enough to know that I needed help in a real way. 

That being said, I felt trapped between wanting to save my own life and wanting to save money in a time of crisis. Something I think a lot of people run into when it comes to treating mental health. Even if it’s just about paying for one therapy session. 

In the end, I opted not to check myself into a facility. Instead, I found a psychiatrist who specialized in fertility patients that was able to get me in right away. 

I was terrified to see someone that would likely send me off with a prescription in hand. 

I’d never taken medication for my mental health before. Like, not even when I had crippling PTSD, anxiety, and night terrors after my abusive relationship. 

Despite how normalized the discussion of mental health has become, the medical treatment of it is still quite stigmatized. Especially within the wellness world that I lived in…..but that’s another post for another day. 

After two hours with the psych, I did leave with a prescription gripped in my sweaty palm. 

I put it on the counter when I got home, and told Alix I didn’t know yet if I wanted to take it. 

“Okay, whatever you want honey. I’m going to go get it filled just in case. And if you don’t want it, then no worries,” she replied. 

“K,” was all I managed to get out as my chest squeezed tighter at the thought of it. 

The prescription traveled around with us to multiple Airbnbs over the course of the next month, until I finally took the first pill. 

I plan on sharing more detail about my experience so far with antidepressants in the future, so what I’ll say now is this:

They saved my life. And for that, I’m grateful. 

Fuck the stigma. 

I took the first pill about 3 days before I started stims for IVF. Because, yes, I’d agreed to do it in the end. 

By this time, we were in Tahoe, back at the clinic we loved the most. 

I felt like I was home. 

Alix still didn’t have a job yet, which meant we had to pay a $15k egg retrieval bill out of pocket all the while inching closer to the day that the severance payout would be gone. 

Our plan was blown to smithereens. 

God, or whoever, must have been full-on belly laughing at that point. 

But we made it through. 

By the end of June, I had a successful retrieval. Alix signed a job offer just a few days before we left for Europe, and we ended up having the best travel we’ve had together yet. 

No, we still didn’t have a house. 

We no longer had a plan. 

We didn’t have a baby, or even an idea of when one might be on the way. 

But we had each other. 

We had our health back. 

And we had that little liferaft of hope somehow keeping us afloat after the storm. 

What a year it’s been. 

I can’t wait to tell our kids about this one day. Cradling them, tickling their bellies and re-telling the crazy stories of all that had to happen in order for them to find us. 

One day it will all make sense. 

One day it will all be worth it. 

I just have to keep trusting that, because if I don’t, then…..

What's the point?

xx, 

K