number 100-rage at the re

How terribly appropriate that my one-hundredth post on this lovely blog will be all about the very thing that brought me to the land of web-bio-blather--trying to get my girlfriend (oh and she is so much more than a girl that is a friend) pregnant.

I cannot begin to explain the fury and sadness that erupted in my heart at the doctor's office this morning. But i can describe this uncontrollable swelling of tears that merged onto the edges of my eyes in front of a resident. I got this zippy electric pulse in my cheek bones that I could not shake and then the tears mounted the little pink precipice of the tender flesh that lines my eye sockets and i blinked 100 times to try to keep them in, but to no avail.

I do not like the reproductive specialist we go to. It is not because he is a bad guy or anything like that. It is because U of M medical is a teaching network and we keep having to be asked a million questions by different residents/doctors/students before we see the "specialist". Before it did not bother me all too much, but today, oh today, it struck a nerve and let me tell you why.

The resident who came in and slammed us with all of the questions laid out the steps we need to go through now that the multitude of test results are back. The steps included:
1. we try Clomid (big surprise there)
2. if and when Clomid does not work we move onto IUI with the fresh sperm (this is where the fury set in)
3. If IUI does not work move onto more drugs/FHS shenanigans.
4. Finally, when all else fails they would suggest In Vitro.

Okay, so we had to inform aforementioned resident that because k is not sexually intimate with potential bio-dad we cannot use his fresh sperm for an IUI. Now why--why did I have to use my breath on informing someone at this professional establishment this already painful-to-me knowledge? the head doc had already explained it to us for the second time back at the very first visit--apology all wrapped up in the explanation. And now we were informing the resident about our ass-backwards health code...

Anyhow, I got pissed as you can probably tell. But what I am really pissed about is this--instead of hanging his head and telling us how sorry he is that he cannot perform a fresh (washed of course) semen IUI in his office, why can't he offer up the notion that maybe he would be willing to organize some RE folks to work to get the ass-backwards health code changed so that same-sex couples have as much decision making power as straight people to put what semen they choose into their bodies?

He did tell us that he thinks we should have our known donor start the freezing/quarantine process now so that in case step 1 (Clomid and progesterone and DIY at home with the graciously donated fresh sperm ) does not work after a few months we will be ahead of the game--the quarantine process takes 6 months--and ready to move on to step two (that is step two for queer people which makes that fresh sperm frozen sperm).

At this time we will just stick with the drugs and the fresh jiz. I am too livid about once again being told what i (or my lover) can and/or cannot do with our bodies to start investigating what the extra money slam of freezing and quarantining the sperm of potential bio-dad would cause to our already depleted bank account.

Fuck the government...essentially they are once again giving straight people a financial break. The implications of their flawed health code do more than simply demoralize me as a gay woman; they also place an unfair financial burden on me--it would be much, much cheaper to use fresh sperm for the in office IUI.

But, fuck me too. how can I even begin to bitch about the cost when I have health insurance and so many people in this country do not? So, there it is bringing my rage full circle right back to my owning blathering heart.

Oh, and just so those of you who are not familiar with Michigan politics/legal shit know, we feel that it would severely jeopardize our already precariously constructed legal documents to try to pretend that K is sexually intimate with potential bio-dad. See, if we ever do get pregnant (that is kk ever does have a kid), I will have NO-ZILCH-NONE-AT-FUCKING-ALL rights to the kid here in MI. We do not have second-parent adoption; we have a constitutional amendment voted on by the MI public that bans gay-marriage for all time; we have an extremely conservative court system.

Basically, k and I have drafted up some legal documents that when push comes to shove could mean nothing at all.

If kk had a kid and then left this planet for the spirit world and then her dad or brother wanted to go after the kid, well they could and I might lose. Or if kk does have a kid and we end up in some conservative county in this state--that i keep loving for many reasons--and the kid gets hurt and k is not with us and i take the kid to the hospital they could be like, "you need to take a seat in the waiting room. (essentially, you don't matter--you queer fuck.)"

And now, I will end this ramble. but not without first pointing out that all of the rant above is deeply connected to desiring recognition and rights from an already extensively flawed system--i do not like the institution of marriage or the "rights" that have been built into it, and I have serious issues with the representative "democratic" government in this country. I believe a system based on representation will always keep many, many people and groups of people on the fringes, invisible and oppressed. So, my rant in its entirety is me wanting just for a minute to be part of the status quo and that in and of itself makes me sad...