Post Cycle Anxiety Disorder?

Is there such a thing as ‘post cycle anxiety disorder?’ If there isn’t already then I have just coined a name for what is probably a common condition.

Five spectacularly unsuccessful IVF cycles down and some strange things have been happening. I feel different to what I did before, and here was me priding myself on my ‘superior’ knowledge of self. I am at a loss to really describe the situation with any clarity.  

 I have become vague, worse than what usually occurs a few days in on a stimulation cocktail of FSH injections and Synarel nasal spray. I am word searching all the time. I speak and not only the words but the entire topic goes completely from my mind. A mind as empty as my womb. What is happening? I have seriously been wondering if I had some kind of breakdown or if I am heading straight from IVF to Alzheimers.  

Sure, I live with depression, but this is something else. I have a sense of panic in most things I do, even the most simple of tasks. Feelings of being overwhelmed when deciding what to cook for dinner, which lane to drive in, and which supermarket register to line up at. Actually, I feel a complete loss at most things these days. 

It is easy to blame IVF for everything. I know I do blame IVF for most things. Here at the Lifeslurper Spa Resort it has become a favourite comment; borrowing from the old ‘letters to the editors’ featured in newspapers of yore, before the days of online comments when it was popular to include the line; “…of course, I blames the government” somewhere in the body of the letter. Here we say; “I blames the IVF!” as a response to any event such as when the tea bag supply runs low, or when a light globe blows. It is quite convenient to have a handy scapegoat ready. 

Yet something more seems to be amiss. 

The first few days post another poor Egg Pick Up three weeks ago, were a tearful blur. Beyond that, things have been more even keeled emotionally as the last of all those artificial hormones leave me in my original state.. Yet I feel so completely lost, and not in depression for a change. My concentration is broken, my focus lost, little unimportant decisions seem to cause undue grief. 

Over a highly sensitive lifetime, my body has found various means to release the emotions I am not recognising. Hence an adult life strewn with ulcers, migraine, allergy, infection, and more. There have been enough hospital admissions to suggest that it was not just all ‘in my head’. Since mid way through the IVF medications, my scalp has been on fire. Without a hairdresser appointment in months, and my refusal to use soaps and shampoos, all the usual suspects are immediately removed from the list. I have continued itch and irritation. In finally getting myself along to seek medical advice this week, finally tired of my old belief that it will all be better “tomorrow”, the doctor declares; “Shingles! Well at least it would be if it was elsewhere as well.” So it is the same old story, having to wait to see what develops. This is something I am quite used to; My mind and body don’t get along. One is reading the other’s messages incorrectly. 

Throughout IVF I have yearned to have some kind of occupation or career. Not only do I want to have purpose, make some funds, and put to use some of that education I fought to have into some good use – I actually want to have achievement. I have a newly developed all-consuming desire to be able to do something I am good at. While my life hasn’t been a story replete in fabulous successes, I always took pride in my work and suffered from a certain level of perfectionism – then came ART. IVF has meant failure heaped upon bloody costly hormonal failure. A long time ago being told I did not have the ability to do certain things was perceived by myself as a challenge. Not so any more. IVF has robbed the last vestige of my already fractured self-confidence. It has also seen a ‘young’ forty something come out the other end feeling aged beyond her years. I put my mental age at something nearing 60 these days. Even my once limber mind has grown flabby. Motivation and sticking power is at an all time low. 

We entered IVF knowing I would want to resume a career at some stage. That stage has come a little bit sooner than expected. I used to be able to work – despite major depression – mostly without detection. While my dealings with others in the office situation were often the source of my own stress I could manage, until a few years ago when my career reached it’s climax and abrupt end. Even now it is too difficult for me to discuss, so trust me. It was bad. I do believe this was the final straw, my confidence to work with others – especially the more difficult type of person (eg. Those who do the ‘no speaks’ or refuse to do their work) is completely shattered. I do not have the emotional resources to do the work it took me years to learn. 

Work used to be everything, and now I don’t have that. Wobbles is a great compensation though. Too bad he came along after those work situations blew up in my face. There was a long recovery after the spectacular failure of my working life. I can’t see myself being able to go back to my own profession anytime soon. And to make matters even more complicated, do I want to repeat the many soul destroying jobs of my youth; fast food delivery; change room attendant; discount store cashier and various others. I am too old to want to return to working as a general dog’s body, even though I have often been that very thing in more senior positions. The Bank of Wobbles has lead to atrophy; I no longer have that very basic need to keep a roof over my own head. That is done for me, and I feel increasingly guilty and selfish about that situation.

Now I find myself out of date and possibly out of useful skills. How many people earn a living without working with others, preferably from the ‘safety’ of their own home? It sounds lazy, I know – but it is all I can manage. While I do manage to leave the house sometimes, it is getting more difficult. While I might have felt a useless waste of space in so many ways before, add scores of unsuccessful IVF into the mix and those feelings grow exponentially. For a while I consoled myself with the idea that this ‘time out’ to make a baby would be the most important contribution I could make to the world. Now I am searching with an increasingly frantic effort for a way to relate to my society, to be and so something useful. 

Is it selfish to want to ‘own’ something? To have something that is yours, that you can undertake with great confidence and skill? That primeval need is now gathering a mob mentality in my brain, the noise is deafening. I don’t know if this is coincidentally where I find myself at this time in my life, or if too many reproductive failures have forced this panic. Did negative dealings with fertility specialists and unpleasant relations with fertility clinics hark back too closely to the bullying and psychological damage of earlier days? Have I become completely unhinged? One thing is certain. This total sense of urgency will not assist me in finding a solid plan from which to move forward. 

For about a year now this blog has been the tool to help me make some sense of the process of undergoing ART treatments. I started blogging after three IVF cycles brought growing levels of uncertainty. I needed to record my thoughts and maybe make contact with others in similar situations. It seemed like a valid thing for me to do. For a time it made a nice little bubble, protecting me from the harshness of the outside world and the realities of ART. The feedback was encouraging. Finally there was someway to put my own wretched experiences into something that might have meaning for others. This week that almost was my undoing. 

In doing this largely anonymous blog I have felt a certain liberation. I did not censor my thoughts as I blogged. In fact, I have barely edited, instead preferring to keep this as raw and honest as I have found the experience of being labelled infertile. By that same token, I decided to leave the comments section open to all. I did not want to pre-approve comments left by others, for they too should be as open and direct as required. When the first of ‘Nats’ comments arrived I went into damage control, trying to think of what it was I might have said that would result in such a response. I asked for more details. Then came the response that really hurt; that comments I had left on an infertility forum had been insensitive at the least, and that others agreed. It took a good 36 hours, much time spent searching back through my own forum postings, and a lot of forum support to realise there was no case to answer for. I had never left messages for a former cancer patient. It was either a very unhappy real forum member, or one rather unwell person willing to go to great lengths to leave me distressed. 

Ironically, this happened at a time when I was questioning myself over issues of envy and other deadly sins. Months back I heard that one of my many nephews and wife were to have a baby. I was alarmed that they had made that step, more so than I had been when they had married at such a young age. “Argghhh!” I had thought, my family are breeding yet another generation of religious zealots – for a couple of my siblings belong to a fundamentalist Christian group some call a “church” (others call it a “cult”). Suddenly two young people who had previously not been allowed to mix with the opposite sex were married. Next thing they were having a baby. I thought ahead to the religious teachings that child would know from birth and worse. It is a long long story. Many attempts were made to ‘save’ Lifeslurper for the twenty years following the age of seven or so. All of that has long since been worked through in many hours of therapy. Point is, I wondered if envy was at the heart of my depressed thoughts about this baby. Was it simply my infertility doing the thinking for me? 

The same day ‘Nats’ made her second and final blog comment, I got word that after a very long labour, my nephew’s baby had been delivered. The parents had known for a short while that the baby was no longer alive. The baby was delivered at 22 weeks. Their beliefs dictate that no one offer them sympathy, that they did not see the baby (or the photos), nor attend the burial. I am struck by the awful realisation that a number of reasons; age, religion, grief mean this baby that never got to be is simply going to be denied. Somehow, I find that sadder than the life he/she was going to be born in. My guilt over my earlier thoughts is compounded, as if my silent views could have somehow have harmed the baby directly. 

I accept others will be having babies while I can’t. Nor do I have anything against those who strive and succeed. It is just that I am so tired of not knowing where to start, or what to do. Time is marching on, and IVF has served as constant reminder of that very fact. All I see changing about my own self if my face as it concedes to time. I so want to believe there can be more than this.