Curve balls and forks in the road....

It all began 2 weekends ago as I thought I was dying in a Lupron induced coma. (Turns out that I appeared to just have the flu again.) I was checking my work email and I had an email from someone who's email address I didn't recognize. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I always get excited when I have a LEGITIMATE email from someone that I'm not sure who they are. I'm not talking about those emails from Njaba Huba from Nigeria who wants me to put his inheritance in my bank account and he will pay me a couple thousand in return. I'm talking, actual emails addressed to me, from a random "stranger".  Thoughts started going through my  mind about what this person might want. Maybe I won some prestigious award! Maybe a long lost friend has tracked me down just to say hi. But then again, maybe it's just an angry student's parent wanting to know why their kid has a 20% average on their homework. After 20 different scenarios flashed through my mind, I decided that the easiest way to know what the email was about would be to read it. Turns out, it was from someone I did know, but not very well. It was the lady that was the assistant principal at Key when I was a student teacher there. She is currently an assistant principal in Warren Township at one of their middle schools. She was wanting to tell me about a 6th grade teaching position they had available in their intermediate school and wanted to know if I would be interested.

I wrote her back, mostly just to humor myself as I laid on the couch with my flu chills, only to find out that I would be making more money, have better benefits, and the job would be starting April 4th........
Let's review:
More money= Great!
Better benefits=Great!
Starting April 4th= UGHHHHHHHH, that would mean I would not be coming back to my class after Spring Break.
Now, I've been making many tough decisions over this past year with all of our fun infertility dilemmas, but this one seemed to win the award for toughest decision of the year. I'll make this long story short now for you, after talking it over with Travis, and my mother, and some friends, I decided to go ahead and interview. I'll now save you the rest of the drama and let you know that I got the job. So now I had to decide, do I take it?!?!?!?!?!?! After many internal debates with my self I decided that this was something I was going to do for myself. Telling the kids that I wouldn't be back after Spring Break was going to be awful, but taking this job, I felt, was going to be a very positive thing. So you're probably scratching your head right now saying, "but isn't this blog supposed to be about her fertility journey? I don't really care about all of Dana's personal drama..." Well, yes, you are correct. Here is where the fertility journey jumps in.

As many of you know, we had started on our IVF cycle. I went in last Monday for baseline ultrasound and blood work and my Estrogen level came back 166 and they needed it to be less than 50. So instead of starting the other meds like I was supposed to, I continued on the Lupron and was told to come back Friday for a recheck. I left the office kind of bummed, but not disheartened. I figured that Friday would come and everything would be good and we would continue. As I was driving from the dr to work though, it hit me. If we were pushing back starting the meds, then that would mean we would have to push back retrieval and transfer dates, which would mean it probably wasn't going to fall perfectly during my Spring Break anymore, which would mean I would have to take days off of work at my new school within probably the first week of work. This is where the fork in the road comes in.
Do I say, "Sorry new boss. I know it's my first day of work but I'm going to be needing 4 days off so I can get knocked up."   OR
Do we just cancel this cycle and push everything back to June?

My gut instinct told me to push it back to June. This way we would have 2 months to play with if levels didn't turn out how we wanted them. I didn't have to stress about taking time off work at a new job. I didn't have to stress about only taking 2 days off work after the transfer (I was really hoping for at least a week of really no activity). June just seemed more logical. I talked it over with Travis, and he agreed. So that is what we decided to do.

So it's been a couple of weeks of hard choices and decisions. I have never been one that likes to work under pressure or make the tough decisions. I always leave that to someone else. But apparently God is trying to show me that I can make these choices even as scary as it may be. I just keep praying that he's helping me make the RIGHT choices.

I'm going to end today with one last small story. I have a student in my class, that I've had the last 2 years since we are multi-age, that has made me work for my money. He was bounced around from school to school to school because of behavior and mom would just move his school each year. I vowed to myself last year that I would win this kid over. I can't tell you how many times he told me last year that I "got on his nerves" and he "didn't care". But I never gave up on this kid. Everyday I would tell him how I knew he was going to be successful and help him see success in himself. I figured this kid would rejoice when he found out I was leaving. As I was facebook stalking some of my students, (yes, I do this. It is a great way to keep up on outside of school drama that is going on so I can make sure it doesn't come into the classroom) I saw that he had posted yesterday morning, which was my last day with them,

"okay up getting readying for kool but we going to miss u ms. jones i really do like her we going to miss her for every we never seen a teacher like ms jones she like a amazing teacher

i love u miss jones"

Please excuse the grammatical errors... I'm sure his teacher taught him better then that!

So I guess I did make some sort of impact during my time at Key. Hopefully I can have the same impact on a student at my new school who needs it just as much. That would make postponing the IVF worth it.