Anger management and deep breathing

Three days ago day I walked out of a depressing staff meeting (is there any other kind?) and just had this hopeless angry wave of emotion come on me.  Outta nowhere.  And then I was angry and sad about being angry and sad and these vicious cycles just continue to momentarily fuck me up. But then I get back up...

Well, one close friend at work who knows why I get the way I get, and who is ultra-religious, tried to school me a bit.  She's not religious in the judgey fire and brimstone way, screaming SIN at unsuspecting heathens like me.  Instead, she is deeply troubled by my lack of faith. And pointed to my right hand:

I know I have never experienced what you've been through, I only know what my aunt went through (insert story of a woman who lost five million pregnancies and had a natural miracle birth in her forties).  Those rings make you angry.  You carry this anger because you haven't been able to achieve what you want to achieve and I think you need to stop wearing them.  I see how you look when you're upset, and you start twisting them and staring at them.

I took a very deep breath:

The rings aren't about achievement L. They're about grief.  They aren't just pregnancies.  They're babies.  My babies don't have graves, I have nowhere to honor them.  They don't exist to anyone but me.  I can't go to a cemetery and mourn them.  The finger on my right hand is all I've got.

She didn't have a response. It's ok.  We hugged and I think I did a fairly decent job of schooling her right back.


Then, at an out of town conference yesterday, another coworker walks up and says, "I saw you talking to L and looking so upset, I want to talk to you when we leave this conference and make sure you're ok."

Breathe.

Oh, it's ok.  I was just having a bad day.

About two hours after that, ANOTHER colleague walks up to me at said conference.  This one has the exhausted glow of a woman who has had two babies in the span of time that I've lost 7.  Her babies are 5 and 2.

Are you ever going to have another?  You'd have such an easy age-gap compared to mine - mine are always arguing about sharing toys.

Breathe.

Not sure.  Maybe.  Who knows.

Finally, yesterday was day 7 of my embryo development.  I hadn't received a report and was absolutely convinced this game was over before it started.  Because a few days ago I got a message that one embryo was biopsied at day 5, but I had nothing on the other ones, other than two were potentially arresting.


I emailed my IVF coordinator:  I'm checking to see if there's bad news because I haven't received any follow-up report from the lab....

Ten minutes later comes the report from the lab:  Five embryos have been biopsied and are frozen.  PGS report will come from my genetic counselor in 2-3 weeks.


BREATHE.