Eh? What's that, sonny?

I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself. I can barely hear a bloody thing.  It's weird, like being underwater and no matter how much you yawn or gurn or grimace or blow your nose or suck a boiled sweet, they just won't clear.

When I was in the midst of my battle with infertility in the late 1990s, I was an active member on a message board called ONNA.  The board was mainly for women who were having difficulty getting pregnant and the name was an acronym for Oh No Not Again, which is what you said when your period (or as we called it on the board 'Aunt Flo'  - a name I still use) arrived.

I suffer from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (which is worth a post in its own right at some point) and, according to fellow sufferers on the board, one of the lesser-known symptoms is that of increased ear wax production.  Great.  As if the weight gain and excessive hair isn't enough.  It's something to do with having too much testosterone, although how that triggers too much ear wax is beyond my ken.  But it seems I am now turning into a lumpen man-woman with a beard, hairy feet and repulsive waxy ears.  Mmmm, sexy!

My right ear suddenly went dead about 3 weeks ago.  I put it down to the minor cold I had at the time, and have been waiting for it to clear ever since, but it hasn't.  'Could be ear wax', I thought.  I've had my ears syringed once in the past, about 12 years ago, and while the procedure was actually quite painful - the force of the water needed to flush out a solid lump of stuff as it hits your eardrum will make you wince - the relief is immediate.  So a couple of days ago I went to the chemist to get some drops.  In the bath last night I decided to use them.

It says on the label 'tip head onto one side and drop 3-6 drops of the liquid into the ear'.  Quite how you can measure 3-6 drops when you can't see what you're doing is anyone's guess, so I just squeezed the bottle three times.  The ear canal filled and it was like I was underwater.  You have to hold your head like that for a few minutes while it does its thang.  I could hear some slight fizzing and felt a little bubbling.  'Ooh, this might be working!', I told myself.  Tipped head over to other side, did the same with my left ear.  Same result.

The label says 'wash out with warm water'.  I was in the bath already so just lay back and put my head under the water and slooshed it about a bit.  Sat up. Riddled outside of ears a bit to get the liquid out.  Water came out.  Hearing worse than when I got in.  So I checked the instructions again and it said something like 'as the hardened ear wax starts to soften it will expand, causing a feeling of fullness in the ears' etc.  In other words, 'you're going to be deafer than you were for a few days'.

Arse.

I'm going out tonight for the first time in months to see Jimmy Carr perform and I WON'T BE ABLE TO HEAR A BLOODY THING!!  Some may say that's not a bad thing, but I quite like him and a whole bunch of us are going out to celebrate a friend's birthday and I WON'T BE ABLE TO HEAR A BLOODY THING!! Yes, I know I'm shouting but it's the only way I'm ABLE TO HEAR A BLOODY THING!!

I'm such an idiot - I should have left the ear drops until after this but I didn't think that it would make it worse before it made it better.  And it's really weird not being able to hear much outside of your own head - the noise of eating is astonishing, and it's bizarre to hear your own voice as if you're speaking through a pillow.  But the novelty has worn off and I'm fed up with it now.

Perhaps I should ask TLH to fashion me some ear trumpets like the picture above.

No kids at Christmas

Let's cut to the chase here - I'm infertile. I've been pregnant 3 times - once naturally with my first husband, and twice with medical help with my second husband. Two of the babies were flushed down the toilet, one was cut out and disposed of as just so much medical waste, along with one of my fallopian tubes (in other words, two miscarriages and one ectopic). I went through 3 rounds of IVF with two frozen embryo transfers in between. Thousands of pounds were spent with nothing to show for it except a three inch long scar above my pubic bone (to go with my collection of other scars from medical procedures - it's a bit like my own personal crazy paving...).

We don't really know why I'm barren although Polycystic Ovarian Disease plays a part - erratic menstrual cycle, weight gain, hirsuteness - I know, I know, I'm an irresistible sex kitten, don't all rush at once. Funny thing is, I never wanted kids when I was growing up, and would get irritated when quizzed about this at my annual visits to the family planning clinic - "oh, you're young, you'll change your mind". I was convinced I never would. The first pregnancy, in 1991, was accidental but I was surprised to find it not unwelcome. The husband at the time, though, was devastated and couldn't talk to me for at least a day while he 'processed the information'. Tosser. It was all about how it would affect him, never mind me. Imagine my surprise when, 9 years later, he happily became a daddy with his second wife - but that's for an entire other post.

Unfortunately I lost that baby at the same time as my father died (aged 55, criminally young, of a heart attack) - I miscarried at work and flushed it down the toilet. I knew what it was as soon as I saw the unusual lump and decided there was no point in trying to retrieve it as I couldn't see what purpose that would serve. So it went the way of dead goldfish since time immemorial.

Husband No. 1 and I split in 1993 and I married Husband No. 2 in 1996. Now, this man - I knew within my very soul - would be a perfect father, much more so than No. 1 ever could have been. We tried for a year. Nothing. Started IVF - got pregnant first time which ended in miscarriage. Second IVF failed. Third IVF resulted in an ectopic pregnancy in 2000. We stopped the medical procedures after all that. I couldn't deal with the emotional ups and downs not to mention the stratopheric costs anymore.

My realistic self reverted as soon as it could to my pre-wanting-kids state which was, frankly, the mindset I had had for the previous 36 years anyway. No biggie. Except it was. It really was. Sometimes. It - the childlessness - would lie in wait and ambush me at weird, unexpected times. I was walking through a local park, for instance, and decided to sit on a bench without really thinking that it was next to a very active adventure playground. That was full, FULL of kids. You'd think that, as soon as I'd realised this, I would get up and walk on but, oh no, something made me stay there and get more and more miserable, mourning my missing children, until in the end I was crying and had to have a stern word with myself about not allowing such rampant self-pity to sabotage me.

Over the years the sorrow has waned until I don't notice it anymore. Except sometimes. What I find now is there's stuff that happens that I would SO love to do but that would only work if I had kids. For instance, school nativity plays. I have friends with kids and have 2 nieces and a nephew but I have never once been invited along to any of their school things. Ditto school sports days. And christmas pantomimes. The same as parents, I love to see the kids faces and take pleasure in their achievements but the parents never seem to appreciate this. I have been collecting my friend's youngest - an 8 year old girl, smart as a whip, funny as anything but dyslexic beyond belief - from school, and I've loved doing it - I can almost pretend she's mine.

But, I'll tell you this, Christmas is not really a lot of fun if you don't have kids. What also doesn't help, as far as I'm concerned, is having a husband who loves the whole idea of a traditional Christmas (but obviously without the kid aspect) but won't consider spending it on a tropical beach anywhere - which is my idea of the perfect Christmas! Every year I say to him, "please, please, please, at some point in our lives, can we please spend Christmas one year somewhere hot?" He always laughs and never replies. Oh, look, I'm going to finish this posting now because I'm just ranting really. I doubt if anyone's ever going to read this anyway and I don't want to come over as being a miserable fucker but I need to find something positive to post about...

Maybe next year.