2012 - year of major changes

It's hard not to look back at this year as one of the most difficult we've had to deal with. We finally decided that with both our jobs being secure, we could invest in some of the more expensive home repairs that we'd been putting off. The first was the kitchen. In addition to installing a storm door to give us more lighting and ventilation off the deck, everything inside the kitchen was white! The counters were deteriorating so we priced it out and decided to get new laminate counters and a new black granite sink, brushed nickel faucets then add in a new island for more work space and storage. We put a 50% down payment on the kitchen reno and the new door.

So we went from this....

To this... A dramatic and spectacular change! Absolutely love it!

However, between putting the money down on the new kitchen and the installation, Brendon (and 53 others at NRC, part of wide-spread layoffs in the federal gov't, especially in sciences. 20 more Winnipeg NRC'ers have been laid off since the first round of cuts.) We were not expecting this at all and there wasn't even the slightest inkling that NRC would close and sell the building?! Since we'd already paid for half of the kitchen, you may as well pay for the other half and plow through the rough parts in the budget. Brendon's termination came as a shock but he had a few weeks to get his resume in order and start looking for work. He was immediately offered a position at Boeing at $10/hour with a raise to $12/hour after he'd completed a few months of training. Neither of us was happy with that offer! Fortunately, a job opened up at HSC in Adaptive Technologies (building custom electronics for people in wheelchairs) and I happened upon it the day before the deadline to apply. He had most of the necessary skills, a polished resume, and a great dossier of previous work from NRC. It took less than 4 hours for him to be interviewed and be offered the job. He now works across the street from me, so all things considered, it's an incredibly positive change for us. Brendon has a difficult but fulfilling job giving people independence and improved quality of life. Every day is a challenge for him to come up with new ideas and adapt mp3 players, cars and Kindles to each person's abilities. The downside is the new hours - we have to drive during rush hour so it can take up to an hour and a half to get home some days, mostly due to construction and traffic volume on Nairn. The worst thing is the amount of time we waste motionless in traffic 5 days a week. Brendon used part of his severance package to buy a new car so at least we're idling in style! ;-)

The next major change was the crushing disappointment to find out that we won't be having biological children of our own. We have had a difficult time moving past this but working with Adoption Options to open our file and create our family with them has been great. We get a lot of support from friends and family, and the AO staff are wonderful to work with. Brendon and I have had a lot deep conversations about what it means to be parents, the way we'll raise our child, and our shared values. It's a discussion that few people have before they become pregnant but as difficult, emotional and uncomfortable as the discussions are, it really helps our relationship and hopefully, will make us great parents. We're at the stage where social workers will be visiting our house so we're about 3 months away from "getting in the box", which means our file can be shown to pregnant women choosing to place a child in a family. We try to remain strong for each other and hope that someday, we'll be picked as parents. In the meantime, we just try to stay positive and optimistic.



Finally, we said good-bye to Kitty on September 12. Our beloved 18 year old, deaf, toothless, clawless cat finally succumb to her kidney disease. She had stayed with us for almost 2-1/2 years longer than cats normally live with kidney disease. She was quite sick in the end and despite our best efforts, we had to make the decision to put her down. The vet came by and quietly put Kitty to sleep and days later, her ashes came home forever. It's still difficult seeing photos of her and we miss her terribly. The grief of losing her is still very real.

After 2 months without Kitty and still deeply depressed, we discussed whether or not we should get a new cat. We drove across the city to D'arcy's Arc to look at some of the rescues but were told that we'd have to come by every day to spend time with a particular cat, but could only spend time with her in a room with 20 other cats. With both of us having terrible cat allergies, we'd never know if we were allergic to that cat or one of the other 19. The first cat we played with was a deaf older pure white cat with a temper. It was too much like Kitty and too soon after saying good-bye to her to replace her like that. We drove home quite dejected and decided to swing by PetSmart to see if they had any cats from the Humane Society. They had two and we spent time alone with both Sabrina (4 month old callico) and Tommy (8 month old mixed short hair). After nearly 2 hours and very little sneezing, we picked Tommy. He's a rambunctious, hyper-active, highly destructive, very much clawed and toothed cat! He's the type of kitten who'll chase lasers and spiders and shoestrings for hours, tearing around the house at top speed crashing into walls and bouncing off furniture. He's always underfoot and we're constantly stepping over him, but to have him purring on your lap will compensate for any of the million hilarious and annoying things he does each day. He's the opposite of Kitty and a happy addition to our family. We're both allergic to him like crazy but he's so much a part of our lives now that we'll just invest in anti-histamines and Kleenex instead of returning him to the Humane Society.

And finally, leaving NRC was equally difficult for me because I won't do lab work anymore. I write grants and have had to accept that I'm not a tech, but the day after my birthday, I received a phone call from a teacher in a small town who wanted to apply to send samples to the International Space Station next year. My officemate and I worked for months on the application and it was accepted two weeks ago, so on April 5, 2013, our project (to which we are technically the scientific consultants for, but we're going to take whole credit for the work) will blast off from Dragon X launch site and go to the International Space Station for a month. We are testing whether green tea prevents DNA damage due to cosmic radiation. It's incredible to be part of science again, especially in such a huge manner.

I wonder what 2013 has in store for us.....

So how long do you have to wait?

We decided to open a file with Adoption Option and every person we've told asks us the same question "So, how long do you have to wait?" It's a question that's so common that even we asked it when we started this process. I'm not an expert on adoptions but I want to answer the most common questions we get so far.

1) How long is the waiting list?
There isn't one. Adoptions are now based on a double-match system. The biological mother fills out a form telling what traits she wants in the adoptive parents to have. She can decide based on anything, from the ethnicity, religion, financials, pets, number of other kids, geography etc. As prospective adoptive parents, we provide all this information to the adoption agency. We also fill out a list of the features we want from the mom (drug/alcohol use, ethnicity etc). The adoption agency tries to match the lists. So there is no "waiting list". It's not a matter of being patient until everyone else has a kid before you. It can be a matter of months, to a matter of years, to never. It all depends on the double-match system.

2) Where do you adopt from?
There are two agencies in Winnipeg that you can adopt locally - Adoption Options (private) and Child and Family Services (public). AO also handles some international adoptions. You can open a file with both AO and CFS simultaneously.
For international adoptions, there aren't many countries that are allowing international adoptions. Some, like Ethopia and Haiti are under political upheaval so they closed their borders until the political situation returns to normal. Other countries just closed their doors without warning. And China keeps changing their rules all the time, so for example, there's a BMI requirement now that wasn't there a few years ago. And you can only adopt kids with medical problems (heart defect, HIV, club foot, cleft palette etc). So yeah, we want local because the rules are more consistent.

3) How much is the cost?
About $12,000 all in with AO. CFS might be different because they don't have to pay for staff.
Opening the file is $550.
Weekend 2-day seminar $1100
Homestudy with the social worker $2100
Pre-placement $400
Placement $900
Review of medical history $500
Counselling for the biological mother $900
Documentation $1400
Openness agreement $200
Lawyer fees $3000-$4000
Medical history (depends on your doctor) $20-$50/person
Criminal records $80/person

4) Can you choose the baby's ethnicity?
Yes and no. We fill in an "Application II" form that lists our criteria for the biological mom. We can choose the mom's ethnicity, the amount of drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy, the age range of the baby/child we're willing to adopt, the gender, number of kids we're willing to adopt (eg. twins, siblings, singletons) etc. This is the list that helps in the double-match I explained before.

5) How much is the biological mom involved in the kid's life?
Yes and no. That's call "openness". We (biological and adoptive parents) decide and sign an Openness Agreement with the biological mom/parents detailing how often the we meet with the biological parent(s). Usually, it's 2-3x per year, around holidays and birthdays. What we've been told is that during the first year or two, there is more involvement and it typically wanes over time as the biological mom/parents move on. It's not, let me make this really clear, a joint custody agreement. We're not sharing a child and there aren't weekend visitations. Oh yeah, and the biological mom usually decides the middle name of the child.

6) How many kids are placed each year?
That depends on the year. In 2011, it was 9. In 2009, it was 27. The number of kids placed depends on the number of biological moms that complete the process. For every 100 moms that contact AO for information, only 50 will decide to come in for a meeting, 25 will complete the process to place the child with a forever family, and 2-3 will change their mind and request their child back.

7) Whoa, wait. WTF?
Aye, there's the rub. The biological mother (or father, but usually the mother) has 21 days after placing the child up for adoption to change her mind and can take their child back. On day 22, the child is yours and then you can change the baby's last name to yours and get the birth certificate changed.

8) How many parents are on the waiting list?
Again... there's no list. But what we've been told, it's about 100.

9) How long are *you* going to wait?
About 3 years.

Next steps

I read an article about allowing yourself to grieve over your infertility. The part that made me laugh (dark humour) was that infertile couples will often seek out hobbies like gardening, crafts, or exercise to get their minds off their infertility. I have an AMAZING garden full of tomatoes, peppers, and jalapenos this year. I  took up crocheting again after a 20 year hiatus and made an afghan, a sweater, and a touque. And I can run 2.5 miles now!

We met with our doctor at the Heartland Fertility Clinic about a month ago. The results normal again. So the  suspicion is that the embryo can't implant or if it does, it's rejected by my body. His recommendation was for ICSI, intra-cellular sperm injection, along with IVF. It's a more complicated and more expensive procedure than standard IVF, but if the embryo is rejected if it does implant, then we pay $12,000 for a miscarriage? Thanks but no. He tried to convince us to sign up for the procedure but it wasn't much of a sales pitch. "Well, you can. If you want. You can try. I mean, you're both still young and healthy. It might work. It could, you know.... uhh...."
Both of us got the feeling that he was eyeing our Mastercard and figuring out how many payments on his Lexus he could make from us.

We were supposed to register for counselling at the front desk (huh?), but since he'd made us wait an hour past our appointment time and the secretary had left for lunch, we left too and had lunch at Tony Roma's. The only time we go to Tony Roma's is after an appointment and disappointment at Heartland Clinic.

Knowing that pregnancy isn't in our future, we went to an information night at Adoption Options and are scheduled to have a meeting with their staff next month, followed by a 3-day information session in November. Adoption is a very complicated process and there are two "divisions": Division 1 is with provincial Child and Family Services, Division 2 is with Adoption Options. We're going to start a Division 2 file first, and if the process isn't too horrific, we might consider opening a Division 1 file later. Of course, the paperwork for both Divisions can't be shared so  we have to do things (and pay for it) twice. At any rate, the next few months will be spent putting together our file, medical checks, credit reports, background checks, criminal records checks, home visits and a lot of waiting.... waiting...waiting....

Of Porcupines and Swamp Water

The Letrozole (aka Femera) that I was taking is supposedly most effective in the second and third month. It's now the fifth month. Although it's not working (obviously), I can happily say I also don't have the horrific side effects I read about on TheBump.com. The hot flashes, night terrors, vomiting, body aches that I read about were just that... their stories. I've been fortunate that I don't get sick every month from taking those pills, but unfortunate that it didn't do anything to help get me pregnant.

I've read about acupuncture and decided after the 2nd month of Letrozole not working, to augment my hormone treatments with 3 times a week acupuncture. I found one place that came recommended from a friend with MS who swears by Dr Liu at Eastern Healing Centre. My friend doesn`t suffer fools gladly and has a BS meter much stronger than I do, so I trust her judgement. Dr Liu is a very compassionate TCM doctor and diagnosed my liver as too hot, my uterus as too cold and my spleen as lacking nourishment. Also, I have a weak pulse and my tongue "film" is sparse. Huh....

Okay, so I have to suspend all my medical education, all my beliefs in conventional medicine, all my pre-conceived notions about what is or might be our fertility problems, and put some trust in Dr Liu's techniques. For placebo effect to kick in, you have to commit mentally that *this will work*. Blue pills are more effective than red ones. Or at least, I had to convince myself (and B) "what's the worst that could happen?" That's why it's called "alternative medicine", but with 1 billion people in China and reproductive restrictions, maybe they're onto something? Besides, if it doesn't work, we're in the same child-less state that we're in now so I didn't see it as potentially harmful....

Three times a week for two and a half months, I paid Dr Liu $45 to look like this....

The living porcupine

On the upside, I did get a lot of reading done. After getting poked in 13 different locations (the qi spots for my ovaries and anxiety spots couldn't be photographed easily), I would read my Kindle for a half hour as the acupuncture "worked it's magic". Nothing more relaxing that reading a good zombie book while my toes twitched sporadically.

And then there's the pills. Little, stinky, brown mystery pills. 104 pills a day, every day for 21 days. I haven't got the foggiest clue what any of them are or what they do. Unlike the Letrozole, which gave me zero side effects, the combination of these pills left me so depressed and anxious that I spent a lot of time trying not to cry or have panic attacks or go completely bat-shit crazy on poor Brendon. They made me want to crawl in our spare room and curl up into a ball, jam my fingers in my ears and scream. And yeah, there's some irony that I was more anxious and depressed while taking herbal anti-anxiety pills. 

40 pills per envelope, 2 envelopes per day

8 pills twice daily

8 pills three times daily

Plus the tea. The stinking, rotten concoction that makes the Red River look pristine and potable. "Just" for the days leading up to and including ovulation. It's a mysterious steaming swamp water from 12 different packages of herbs and roots and probably some ground melamine and panda penis for good order. I had to mix it and drink it after breakfast each day. It made me wretch and gag each time I had to take ingest it. My office stunk so badly during those days. The instructions that came with it recommended adding as little or as much boiling water as you can chug in three gulps (because your body will fight you if you attempt a 4th gulp) and that adding honey or sugar won't help it taste any better. It burned all the way through me, and just added to the miserable feeling this whole ordeal was causing. 

But with Brendon's recent 'Work Force Adjustment' into the world of the unemployed and my Blue Cross only covering the equivalent to 9 treatments, we don't have the money to continue the acupuncture. It worked out to over $1000 a month when you factor in the cost of herbs. I told Dr Liu how the herbs were affecting me but she just said it's my body normalizing. If this is what "normal" people feel like, I think I'll stick with my abnormal self. I may be weird, but I'm happy and embrace my weirdness.

I took another month's worth of Letrozole but I'll probably stop that as well. It's a bad time for me to get pregnant, if indeed it were possible, since we don't know how long Brendon will be job hunting. And even if he finds something right away, he won't be able to take extended paternity leave and we need my full salary to keep the house. We have an appointment with Heartland Fertility Clinic in June but we're guessing the recommendation will be to move onto IVF, but at $12,000 a month, we don't have the money to even attempt 1 round. Adoption is $10,000 or more so that option is off the table as well.

Thus ends our attempt at becoming parents. Not with a baby, but with a whimper. And if I thought I felt depressed while I was on the herbs, the realization that we can't afford to do anything more that'll make us parents is even worse. 

So Long 2011!!

2011 was supposed to be the 'and baby makes 3' year. Just like in science, theory and reality don't often meet. We found out in March, after my exploratory surgery, that we're part of the rare 5% of infertile couples that have 'infertility of unknown etiology', which is the I-paid-a-lot-to-go-to-med-school way giving us a big ol' shrug o'dumb
and sending us on our merry, albeit childless, way with a referal to Heartland Clinic. We're starting the first type of fertility treatments (Letrozol, for those in the same situation) in January. *fingers crossed* *pray for us* *burn incense and chicken bones and chant to a fertility goddess for us*

Since our world wasn't being shaken up by a stork, NRC decided on a restructuring plan that saw me leave my job of 12 years as a tech at IBD and start fresh at CancerCare. When I saw who else was being "work force adjusted" into unemployment, I got the feeling that I'd be next. A feeling that was confirmed at my exit interview when the DG said "your unique skill set (government-ese for "we're not sure what you do here so therefore, you're uniquely skilled to do that thing you've been doing for a long long time") wouldn't be needed here much longer." When a position at CancerCare opened up, I applied, had a good interview, and left IBD. That was a really tough decision because B still works there, my friends are still there, I was really comfortable with my job and knew how to run magnets, my boss was AWESOME, I knew where things are and who to talk to about them - to go into a lab that doesn't have a single magnet in sight, doing weird blots and spinning disk microscopy, having to understand new acronyms (CCMB, PTMs, HER2s, BNIP, etc).... It's been 6 months of feeling completely overwhelmed and really dumb, but I'm settling in. I'm still overwhelmed and feel dumb, but at least I know where the copier paper is stored!

It wasn't even just leaving IBD that was hard, it was leaving the lab that was the hardest. Watching everyone else pipette and dilute and section, stuff I LOVED to do, and instead, going to endless meetings to discuss leverage potentials, trying to find someone competant at CIHR (a work in progress), or fighting with ResearchNet to *not* crash on the day a grant is due... Well, it's tough but it's also different, the people are great, and I really hope to be there for a long long time.

We'll see what happens in 2012! Hoping you guys have a Happy New Year's!!

Memories of 9/11...

I can't believe it's been 10 years since 9/11. I hate to sound cliched, but it really does seem like yesterday. Perhaps it's because footage of the towers collapsing, soldiers in beige being deployed, and constant reminders of "Muslim terrorists" (because no one remembers or admits that there are Christian terrorists) and ever increasing, less effective airport security. And with this weekend being the 10 year anniversary, I thought it'd be interesting to find out what people remember from *That Day*.
As remember that morning, I was eating my usual bowl of Cheerios while watching Breakfast Television on A-Channel with Jon Ljungberg broadcasting from the Pancake House at the Forks. He and the guest chef were making waffles with cinnamon apple sauce and whipped cream. I looked at my pathetic bowl of Cheerios with utter disdain. Watching Jon ruin waffles but covering his mistakes in heaps of gooey steaming apple cinnamon and whipped cream, mmmmm. I shut off the tv and ran down the 7 flights of stairs to Kathy's apartment so we could, as we always did, walk to work together... laughing and joking about wanting waffles now. We got to work, she headed upstairs to her top floor corner office, I headed to the new computer lab. My "To Do" list was to uninstall Windows XP and reinstall Windows 2000 because NRC hadn't cleared XP to be rolled out to all NRC computers yet. Once the new-old operating system was installed, I got to test out a demo of Office 2000 on these new computers!!

*As a complete aside and unrelated to 9/11, that year, my boss had come back from a conference with a 128kb mem stick. It was the size of a iPod is now and cost nearly $200USD. That's neither here nor there, but after having a high school student working with me all summer, I'm starting to realize I'm old and technology hasn't changed A LOT in 10 years. Anyways, back to my story...*

Shortly after formatting the 500Mb hard drive that cost me nearly half my annual IT budget to buy them, our Facilities Manager with the Napoleonic complex came over the PA system and said, "We are streaming the news in the Herzberg room if you would like to watch. Understandably, network access is slow."

I email Kathy with a descriptive "WTF?" email so we agree to meet downstairs. We arrived at the Herzberg room moments before the second tower was hit. It was an unreal experience to stand there, hot chocolate in hand, giggling and laughing as we always do when we're together to turn and see the tower get hit. I remember going cold instantly and just saying, "Guess that means America's at war now."
Kathy answers "Yeah, but with who?"
I recall her saying "This seems like one of those times that Bruce Willis is going to pop out any minute and save the day."
Yeah!? Where was Jeremy Irons with a German accent as authentic as Mel Gibson's brogue in "Braveheart"?
It really did seem like this was some unbelievable Hollywood movie, that people weren't really being burned alive or jumping from windows, two more planes weren't getting hijacked, the Pentagon lost a wall. (.... or did it... conspiracy theorists have loads of ideas to the contrary about the Pentagon crashes)

We just stood there for over an hour watching the news feed until the first tower fell. I couldn't handle much more so I went back to my computers, numb and cold and feeling sick. Maybe watching the progression bar of Windows installer made my world seem normal. Maybe being in a silent, windowless room by myself would make the events go away, or stop, or even realize that it's a big hoax.

As often as I could, I would try to get online for updates or go to the Herzberg room to see the latest news. I would spend the next 2 days completely obsessed with anything relating to the events of that day; staying up late, getting up early, just to find out any updates.

What about you? What are your memories?

Thoughts from our side of the city - redux

Six months ago, I blogged about my first impressions on living in Transcona. I think it's time to re-address some of the issues. Yes people still don't know where it is, no there aren't any pink flamingos, however there are some changes in this part of the city that I see as a step in the right direction.
1) Lack of coffee shops.
As previously mentioned, there aren't any coffee shops in T-cona unless you count the lone Starbucks on Regent Ave. That in itself is weird, having only 1 Starbucks store in a 10 km radius but I've also discovered that down the street from me is going to be a "gourmet coffee and tea shop" opening soon at the corner of Plessis and Grassie. The location is terrible but I'm looking forward to having somewhere to go for coffee if/when my "other side of the city" friends grace me with their presence.
2) "Downtown" Transcona.
Again, I wrote about how weird it is to hear people refer to "going downtown" meaning that they're driving 5 minutes east on Regent Ave. But our city councillor and the local Transcona Biz are trying to revive The Downtown to make it more attractive for pedestrians and patios. If Corydon is Little Italy, this would be what, little Ukraine?? Perogies instead of gelatti? Anyways, they tore down a dilapidated building before the firebugs could get to it, and are creating a green space called the "Centennial Square". Okay, so it's actually a circle, but it's such a rarity to have a green space these days that I'll skip the semantics / geometry debate. Also opening in The Downtown, a COFFEE SHOP!! This one is being run by L'Arche, a local organization that helps special needs adults find meaningful employment, so in addition to being a coffee shop, it helps people too!! Double karma points.
3) Speaking of green spaces, the new Transcona Trails.
I'm not giving any credit to Harper or Katz, but the city managed to get infrastructure money out of the feds and paved 5km of trails running the entire length of T-cona and connected it to existing trails that starts near our house. I think it's brilliant! Every time we use it or drive past it on the way to/from work, there's always people blading or biking past. It's not often that the city does something right AND promotes a healthy lifestyle but this is one of those rare examples.
4) Community Centres.
I think there are more community centres per capita in Transcona than any other part of the city. But they were all built at the same time, so they're all about 40 years old and falling apart. However, they're renovating the one nearest to us to become a Wellness Institute and are proposing to tear down an old community centre to make it into a huge YMCA. As expected, there's a small but vocal group opposing any changes to "their" centre, insisting that some paint is enough of an improvement. *sigh*