Me and my ruptured ear drum

I've gotten lots of questions about this so here's the information that I can share about my experience with it.

1. It sucks, a lot. Not because I'm in pain. I actually only have pain in the ear if it is infected. Currently, it is not. It sucks because I have lost over half of my hearing until it is repaired.

2. I can't hear people clearly when there is more than 1 person talking. It really makes family gatherings / work / anything involving people difficult. Restaurants are very difficult for me because I can't follow conversations right now. The theme park will be impossible unless the ear is repaired before then.

3. When it is repaired, the doctor is going to graft skin over the damaged ear drum to replace what is missing. This should restore most if not all of my hearing. however, it will involve at least a week off of work and lots and lots of antibiotics to keep the ear from getting infected and causing the graft to fail. In this case, failure is really bad and puts me below square 1 on the ear.

4. I now turn the TV up really loud because overall, I am now missing a measured 50% of my total hearing.

5. I now can ignore my husband by turning a deaf ear to him. I tell him it's revenge for all of the years of selective hearing I've dealt with from him.

6. I also have tinitus in the ear constantly. So my ear is ringing constantly and it can be distracting when it gets very loud.

7. If it isn't fixed before Disney, the good news is that it won't affect my ability to fly. Since I have no ear drum, there is no worry about the pressure equalizing.

So that is the story of my ear, my need for surgery, and the biggest reason we are currently on a break. Though Disney is a very close second.

ICLW

Welcome to my little home on the internet. I'm April. I've been happily married to P for almost 4 years. I have an 11 year old step-daughter, The Young'un. I have 2 dogs, Indy - a lab mix and Bruno - a bloodhound / shar pei / shepard mix. Both are large, overly friendly, and my furry babies who really are convinced they are little tea cup poodles, not 80+ and 50+lb dogs.

We began our journey to having a child on our wedding night. We suffered a miscarriage of our only pregnancy in January of 2008. In December of 2009, I started clomid. We did 4 unsuccessful rounds of clomid. June of 2010 brought the RE and me kicking the doctor in the head during my HSG. December of 2010 brought P's first semen analysis and bad news with the results. After the first SA, P never scheduled a follow-up visit. He's not fond of the thought of fertility treatments and is being a bit of an ostritch about it at this point.

Currently, we are on a break. I have a ruptured ear drum that will require surgery to repair and we're off to Disney World in July so we have opted to hold off until after both of these events occur. I am still researching options and keeping an open mind about what path to walk down to pursue a child. He is slowly getting to that point as well.

Thanks for stopping by and happy ICLW!

Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed.: An Open Letter to PETA

And Keiko still says it more eloquently than I ever could. Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed.: An Open Letter to PETA

WTF PETA?

Okay, two posts in day, but after reading Keiko's post about how PETA is "celebrating" NIAW by offering a free vasectomy? I have to ask W.T.F.? Why should these fucks (Please, excuse the language, but this post is going to be full of it .) at PETA who could care less about humans offer a free vasectomy? To save the humans from overcrowding animals? Why not offer free spay / neuter services for dogs and cats like the ASPCA? Why not help with re-homing animals who are strays or abandoned? No, in the eyes of PETA, the best way to help animals is to honor National Infertility Awareness Week by giving a man a free vasectomy. And you know what's worse? Someone somewhere will think this is a fucking brilliant idea and will tout it as them doing their part to help save the environment and animals from the evil humas. Fuck, but this pisses me off.

Disney

Or how I'm spending my summer vacation. The young'un's dance school was chosen to get to dance one day at the Ma.gic King.dom this summer. This is a huge deal and is what we are doing for vacation this year. However, I haven't been on Dis.ney property in 20 years and I know a lot has changed since then. Any advice? I also have questions and I'm hoping someone out there in internet land will have answers. Our agency essentially told us that they did not book the dining plan. And that we couldn't have the dining plan because one day would be tied up with dancing. It turns out that I'm a bit of a researcher and I've since found that actually, it doesn't matter if we can't make plans for one day that we can use these things at any time in any order, as long as they are used before we leave on the last day of the trip. Would Disney let us add this on our own at all? Also, what are the really cool things we shouldn't miss? Since we're at about 4 months out, I'm now going into hyper planning mode because we finally found out the day we're dancing so we can now make plans. I'd of preferred to know this in December, but that wasn't quite how it worked so now I'm scrambling and hoping against hope that some kind souls here on the interwebs can help. So please kind people of the interweb, please help a frantci Disney fan who really wants to make the most out of her vacation in case it's another 20 years before we get there next.