Am I There Yet?

I have a secret. Not even Dawg knows. I'm seeing an acupuncturist. She's Chinese, and a specialist in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and studied in both China and France. This woman is a stone-cold trip. She is utterly unsmiling, and often scolds me like a disobedient child, but I trust her more than any doctor I've seen in France thus far. She believes in what she does 100%, and, as her patient, she requires that you respect both her, and the medicine. But unlike other doctors here, she doesn't have a God complex. She understands that healing and health, is primarily rooted in the actions of the patient, and the doctor is merely a guide.

I met with her for the first time last week for a consultation. Her office is at La Defense, a ginenormous complex of offices and shops just on the periphery of Paris. I found her building (a ugly concrete high-rise) with surprisingly little trouble, and went up to the 16th floor. At first, I thought I'd gotten the floor wrong because the elevator opened onto dark, drab hallway that had an abandoned air. But I found the light switch (I forgot that in France, most common lights in buildings are on a timer) and found her door at the end of the hall. She opened the door, in a calm, low voice, told me that I was too early and that, sorry, she didn't have a waiting room, and that I must go back downstairs and wait for 10 minutes. Her voice doesn't leave room for argument or questions, so, I did as she said.

When I came back, she ushered me into her office with a very correct, though not partiularly welcoming, gesture. The office was really an apartment. An ordinary apartment with thin walls, cheap parquet floors, and, probably three rooms (at least, I saw three doors, one was probably a bathroom). Her desk faces her office door, and there is one small folding chair facing her desk. When I entered the room, she moved the chair an additional half-foot away from her desk, saying it would be more comfortable, then told me to sit down. Again, I have to reiterate, all the things she's saying sounds polite enough on paper, but the tone in which she says it is nothing short of a quiet command. I find it both discomfiting and reassuring. Discomfiting because, well, commanding your patients about isn't really polite. Reassuring because she sounds so in control and competent that you instantly want to hand her all your problems and let her deal with them. She sounds like no matter what the problem is, she'll know exactly what to do.

There are no pictures on her desk, no real decorations in the room except a book on Feng Shui. Other than her desk, there's just an examining table, and a stainless steel tray with needles, cotton balls, astringent, etc. The room is spotless. Not even the tiniest dust bunny hiding in the corner. I know, because I looked.

She spent an hour with me at the consultation, which was about a half hour more than I spent with the RE and cost 50 euros less. She asked me all kinds of questions about my gynecological history: how old I was when I first began menstruating; how long do my periods last, before, during and after I was on the Pill; did I get pain with my periods, and if so, how bad and for how many days; do my period end cleanly or trickle off; do I get clots, etc. She took my pulse (I was allowed to bring my chair closer for that) and looked at my tongue, and grilled me on my eating and drinking habits: did I eat spicy foods? Salty? Sugary? How much alcohol? Coffee? Tea? What type of tea? It was such an odd, structured interview. If I remembered something after I'd answered the question, and started to speak while she was still writing, she'd say calmly, but sternly, I'm writing. Please do not speak while I'm writing. Then she'd finish writing, she'd look up and say calmly, I'm listening. And one thing I notice about her is that whenever I speak, or she speaks to me, she looks at me. I like that.

She had asked me to bring the results of the various tests that I've had over the past 6 months, and she reviewed them in front of me, and asked me to make copies. Then, she asked me to describe my character, my work. And when I was done, she gave me a look as if she knew me very well. It was a look that bordered on approving. Then came the advice.

She told me that my nutrition was terrible. That I must not eat spicy foods (damn!) or add spices like pepper or piment to my food. That I must stop drinking alcohol, coffee and tea. Though apparently I can drink a little green tea because that is a "light" tea, but no black tea. No refined sugar is allowed. And, here was the thing that surprised me the most: No dairy. None. No milk, yogurt, or cheese. (This upset me because I had just filled our refrigerator with about 12 cartons of yogurt, and a half gallon of milk.) Eggs are okay, but no more than 4 per week. The happy news was that she encouraged me to eat lots and lots of brown rice with vegetables. Yay! Rice! This is my favorite food.

She recommended weekly treatments for at least 3 months, and said that while she made no promises because one never knows, but she thought that she could help me get pregnant. Each week I have to bring in a chart showing what I've eaten at every meal.

All that talking and listening had exhausted me (the consultation was entirely in French) and so I asked only a few questions, then left, with her calmly telling me to be respectful of her neighbors as I left when I almost hit the someone's doorbell mistaking it for a light switch in that dark hall. Yeah, uh, okay lady.

I was undecided about whether to go back to her. On one hand, she seemed so harsh; but on the other hand, she seemed so competent. In the end, I decided that I needed a competent doctor, not a diplomat, and decided to continue treatment. I've felt more peaceful and hopeful with her than I have with any other doctor. And she doesn't want to pump me full of synthetic hormones, or harvest my ovaries. Compared to all that, dealing a rigid manner once a week is easy! Just keeping my eyes on the prize.

Anyway, that was last week. Today was my first real session.

We immediately started off on the wrong foot because my feet were dirty. I love to walk everywhere, and on my way to her office, I walked through the Tuileries, which got my feet and shoes all dusty. I tried to wipe it off before I went into her office, but that stuff is tenacious and, in the end, I figured she'd barely notice it. Wrong. When I walked in, she looked me over from head to toe, and then gasped like I'd smacked her when she saw my feet. And then she had a fit. A well-modulated, low-voiced fit, but a fit nonethless. She told me I should respect the doctor's office, and I should always be all clean when I come to a doctor. This was terrible! Incroyable! I tried to explain to her (my french stumbling as usual when I feel pressured) about the walk, but she said, You can walk tomorrow! You can walk this weekend! You should not walk before a doctor's appointment! Incroyable! Never has anyone come into this office with such dirty feet! And on and on she went, and I was getting angry, and frustrated too, beccause I could not respond as I would like to, and it wasn't like I was crawling with lice or something. Just as I was thinking about where I could find another Chinese acupuncturist in Paris (which is not as easy as one might think), she said, I put needles in your feet, needles will push this dirt into your body, which will defeat the whole purpose of acupuncture! You can't put this dirt in your body! And so the penny dropped. I apologized and told her that I hadn't thought about that, and that in the future I would be entirely clean at my appointments. She calmed down and said grudgingly that if I wanted to walk before appointments, then I should wear socks.

So, I undressed down to my underwear and lay down on the table. As she took my pulse, she told me that she is a very serious person (no shit, lady), and that she cannot be light about what she does. I guess that was some kind of explanation or apology for the fit.

I lay on the table while she moved around, getting the needles and whatnot in order. There was a brief moment when I thought, what am I doing here letting myself be yelled at, however quietly, by a Chinese lady in French? Why am I getting needles stuck into me? Who says this is a good idea? What if something happens to me, like a have an asthma attack and die, and no one knows where to find me? What if terrorists strike the building and I get crushed in the rubble? Only T, my infertility buddy, knows where I am. Dawg wouldn't begin to know where to look, and he doesn't know T. All of this went through my mind in about 5 seconds, then it was over.

The insertion of the needles was sometimes completely painless, other times I felt a slight sting. When she first approached me with the needles, I closed my eyes, but she told me that I had to keep them open, and that there would be time for closing my eyes later. She pressed on my chest in two locations and asked me which place felt the most sensitive, and then (I think, I couldn't really tell), after wiping the area with antiseptic, she placed the needle in that spot. She did this for each part of my body - pressure, question, wipe, needle. One went in my chest, another in my stomach, another at the top of my pubic area. Several went into my legs, one in my ankle and one in my foot. Sometimes I couldn't tell whether one place was more sensitive than another, but I did the best I could. She probably used about 15 needles. I thought I'd feel like a human pincushion, but I didn't. Once the needles were in, I couldn't really feel them at all.

When she was finished, she told me to close my eyes, to rest for 20 minutes, but not to fall asleep, and to only open my eyes at her instruction. Oh, I was not to move. At all. Then she covered me with a gauzy, light sheet, and left the room. It was the perfect temperature in the room. She had a little air conditioner on, but the gauzy covering was enough for me. I was perfectly comfortable and relaxed. I started to meditate a little, but then a mosquito bite on my arm started to itch, so I had to concentrate on not itching. Then, I remembered that I hadn't turned my cell phone off, and I started to get nervous, figuring that if that my "espionage" theme ring started shrieking during Treatment, she'd come jam the needles in my throat for my lack of respect. So, I spent sometime worrying about that and sending mental messages to Dawg to not call me. But after awhile I relaxed since there was nothing I could do anyway. At one point, she came in the room and put more needles in or took some out, I don't know which. And then, before I knew it, the 20 minutes were over.

She removed all the needles, and asked me how I felt. I told her the truth - I felt relaxed and refreshed. I don't know whether it was the acupuncture, or the fact that I was relieved it was over, or the fact that I had a peaceful moment in a cool room on a hot afternoon. Whatever. I felt really good.

We sat down and I gave her the copies of my test results, and my food chart. She read it very carefully. Then she told me that the foods I was eating were generally not bad, but that I should not have eaten sausages while I was in Germany last weekend. She said - You know sausages have spices! I told you not to eat spices! Why would I eat spices after she told me not to? I already have a quick pulse, which is not good, spicy foods just make it worse! I hastened to tell her that I didn't add any spices to my sausage, just ate them plain and they weren't that spicy. I also explained that I was with my parents-in-law in Germany for a birthday party last weekend and sausages were what were served, so I had to eat them. She said that she understood that difficulty of the situation, but that eating is my responsiblity just as correct acupunture was hers. She said I must obey this diet whether I'm in Germany, China, USA or Spain! Surely they must have vegetables in Germany? I must eat those instead of sausage. Okay, okay. No more sausage, then.

She, again, grudgingly told me that it was good that I ate a lot of fish and brown rice this week. And she said my tongue looked good, which was a sign of a good diet. The main thing she would have me change is to eat more balanced meals. I should take three meals a day - the most important is lunch, the second most important is dinner, the least important is breakfast - and make sure that they are balanced. She didn't like, for example, that one day I had 2 bananas for breakfast, some prunes and walnuts for lunch, and then fish, rice and vegetables for dinner. Too unbalanced. I should eat a little more for lunch and breakfast or a little less for dinner. So now I have to figure out how to balance my meals better. This is not easy since I can't eat any dairy for breakfast. (And she said that while I could eat eggs, I should only have them in the afternoon.) Plus, I like eating my most substantial meal with Dawg, not all alone in the middle of the afternoon. Sigh.

She did repeat, though, that while she didn't make any promises, if she followed her instructions, I might get pregnant soon after following treatment. There might have been a little twinkle in her eye then, but maybe I just put it there because it would have been appropriate.

So, voila. My first experience with a Chinese acupuncturist. I wanted to write all this down because when I do have a baby, I want to remember exactly the lengths I went to to have one. Nevermind all the invasive tests -- baby, I gave up dairy for you. And my beloved spices. And my daily glass(es) of wine, for heaven's sake. Never say you weren't wanted, chile.

Of course, after I wrote that last post, Dawg called to apologize. He admitted that he just feels sad and stressed about the whole thing and doesn't know what to do. He said that he appreciated how proactive I've been about this. I told him that after the surgery next week (oh yeah, I'm having a lap done) we won't do anything for the rest of the summer.

Now I feel guilty about what I wrote before and may delete part of it. We'll see.

Edit: I did edit part of that last post.

I am exhausted. I feel like every emotion I've ever had is jostling for space inside my heart, spilling out into my veins. Dawg and I are fighting. I just read a book called In the Time of Our Singing, whose every other page laid me bare, and whose ending finished me. I'm listening to a reconstruction of Mahler's "10th Symphony". A symphony that was so unfinished, it never really existed. The reconstruction is so gorgeous that it is almost painful to hear -- certainly not the right thing to listen to in my emotional state. As Dawg would say, I'm near the water today.

First, Dawg. The frustration of TTC is really getting to us. He is convinced that I'm unduly obessesed with the medical side of TTC and that we should hold back. I disagree. True, for someone who likes to sit back and wait for things to happen, I can see how I would seem obsessed. And yes, it's a drag that I've been undergoing tests since January but still don't know what, if anything, is wrong. (Dawg likes to point this out as if having undergone them was purposeless.) But it gives me peace of mind to know that, so far, we haven't found anything physically wrong, and to know that in some small way, we're moving forward. Every single thing I have done to get a baby, from using themometers to track my basal body temperature to using ovulation predictor kits, he has complained about. He likes to do nothing except sit back and hope. (I bet Dawg was hard to toilet-train. I can imagine him, three years old, sitting in a shitty diaper with a big smile, perfectly happy in his knowledge that someone will come along and change it for him eventually. Drives me up a fucking wall.)

I am especially frustrated because he says he would do anything for a baby. When he was doing his job search, he said that having a baby was far, far more important to him than finding a good job. His voice even broke when he said this. Every time I get my period, he is so devastated that I dread telling him. And yet...if he wants a baby so damn bad, why does he object to the things that might help us to get one? No, these tests haven't revealed a problem, but they might have. No, using OPKs haven't gotten us a baby yet, but at least we know we're timing it correctly, for whatever that's worth. Yes, he gave up smoking, but he still drinks A LOT of wine. Yesterday, I suggested that he cut back a little (not even in the context of TTC, but in terms of improved diet), and he got all stony on me. No. You do what you want but I'm still going to drink wine.

You're probably thinking: you guys just need to relax, have some crazy drunken sex, and bang! You'll have you a baby. Well. Let me just say that if we had to rely solely on spontaneous, wild drunken sex to get us a baby, chances are I'll go into menopause first. As much as I'd like it to, the "relax and it'll happen" approach ain't gonna work for us. And Dawg knows it.

I hate these disagreements because it makes me wonder how we're ever going to raise a child together.

Anyway. I barely have the energy to write about this wonderful book, In the Time of Our Singing. But I must describe it a little bit. It is about mixed-race family growing up in the 60's: children of a black Philadelphia woman, and a German Jewish scientist. Just like me and Dawg, they tried to build a nest that was beyond the reach of race. Man, that book shows how pervasive and fucked up the issue of race is in the U.S. Fucked. Up. The issue of race - not even the color of one's skin, but just the classification alone - can split loving families as well as a blunt axe. The story broke my heart, but I loved it. I have so much more to say about it, but I just can't put it into words right now. It needs its own entry.

What I need is for someone to come wipe me off the floor. I'm beat.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy. You were such a great father to me, and as I grow older, I realize just how great you were. Tough, wise, principled, loving, and yes, sometimes downright crazy and frightening. But I know how much you loved me, and what you were protecting me from. The price you paid (and I paid) for your toughness was high, but the cost of leniency would have been far higher. You wanted to leave nothing to chance.

So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Daddy. I have a lovely life. One you would have been so proud of. And so much of it is due to you and your relentless principles, your frightening love.

Thanks again Dad. I miss you.

You know, I really miss smoking.

I'm sitting here trying to write, and (as I usually feel when I'm on the right track) I am bursting with nervous adrenaline. Back in the day, when I was at the firm, I'd light up a cigarette, and instantly transcend into this wonderful, peaceful place where my flittering ideas settled down in their proper order, and my brain calmly translated them into written words. Now, all I can do is wander nervously about the apartment, then when inspiration strikes, run back to my computer and type a sentence. Or a fragment of a sentence.

The other temptation is to eat, which was my unoriginal strategy after I quit smoking last year, but 20 stubborn lbs. later, I realize that that, too, is a bad idea.

Nor is alcohol a good idea. Especially at 9:45 in the morning, as it is now. Last week, I succumbed and had a glass of wine around 3pm, telling myself that french people have wine all the time for lunch and I was just taking a late one. To my horror, that actually worked pretty well. Words flowed like silk. But I don't want to become a writer at the expense of my liver. And being a recovering alcoholic would suck because then I'd have to give up social drinking. No cigarettes or wine? Please. I might as well be dead. Or pregnant, ha-ha.

So, what do I do with all this energy? Dawg's at work, so sex isn't an option. And even if he were, it wouldn't really be helpful. The good thing about smoking, drinking and eating is that you can write and do these things at the same time. Sex, not so much. Dawg might get annoyed.

Just for the record, it is now shortly more than 3 hours after I wrote that earlier dark post, and after talking to my friend Lilly (who is 8 months pregnant) I now feel perfectly cheerful and optimistic. All the demons have fled (or, more likely, are sleeping very quietly) and I feel prone to trill, like Maria von Trapp or someone: "Who could feel down on a gorgeous day such as this?!"

Can anyone say "whacked-out emotional yo-yo?"

So that feeling of calm didn't last long. I'm so tired of this. My mood changes about hundred times a day, and it is exhausting. Why can't I just stay in the good place? I try. I really do. Whenever negative or impatient thoughts start welling up, I start listing all the wonderful things in my life, of which there are many. (Today is a gorgeous, perfect day; I am in good mental and physical health, I have a very loving husband and family, no serious financial worries, I am free to do the type of work that interests me, have great friends, etc.) Other times, I just think: "Trust in God. Trust in God", over and over until I feel calm. Still other times, I say more elaborate prayers that start out okay but end up nothing more than shameless begging, either to get pregnant soon, or for some faith and patience. Recently, I've tried to pray for other people when I'm feeling sorry for myself. I know quite a few people who are going through tough times right now, so I say some prayers for them.

None of my peace-making tactics seem to last for very long. A day or two at most. Part of the problem, I think, is that I'm writing. This means that I'm alone with my thoughts all day long. It's hard to sustain an inpenetrable wall between wedding book thoughts and will-we-ever-get-pregnant thoughts for long stretches of time. I can concentrate for awhile but sooner or later, the thoughts come drifting through the cracks in the wall, like motes of dust. Only they are a thousand times heavier than dust. When I try to push them away, sometimes I feel as if I'm pushing against boulders.

I hate it. I want to feel normal and free again. All this thinking can't be good for our situation, and I really, really don't want to, but I can't help it. Somebody help me.

I am scaring myself with how calm I'm feeling about TTC these past few days. Eerily calm. Eeeerily calm and full of peace. I'm just not worried.

I'll take that for as long as it lasts.