WARNING: Rant to follow. Also, post contains personal information. Skip it if these sorts of things irritate you or make you uncomfortable.

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Do not ever, ever do business with The Donor Source if you can help it.

Depending on how well you know me, or in what context, you may or may not know that some time ago I made the decision to donate eggs to a Seattle couple who could not otherwise conceive on their own. I donated through The Donor Source.

Unfortunately, as a complication of the donation process, I got very sick - more ill than I've ever been in my life. I had an extremely severe manifestation of Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). My ovaries swelled up to the size of softballs and filled my abdominal cavity with blood and fluid. I could not keep food down, I could not lie down due to the fluid from my abdominal cavity painfully rushing into contact with my lungs. My body distended; I looked like I was 9 months pregnant with twins. Three times they had to do an operation to draw fluid out of my abdominal cavity. I had to be hospitalized for a week - my kidneys had stopped functioning, my bowels had stopped functioning, I was severely dehydrated and malnourished, my blood pressure was extremely elevated, I was more in pain than I have ever been in my life, and I could not function. In the hospital I could not leave my bed - I had a catheter and was fed for days by I.V., most of which time is a haze in my memory due to painkillers and anti-nausea medication they kept me on.

It was nasty, but I lived through it. About a week after I had checked into the E.R., I got to go home. I was 40 lbs overweight, all of it fluid and water sitting around my various cavities that my body had not known how to process or get rid of. Over the course of a week, as my kidneys woke up, my body processed the fluid and peed it all away. After just a few weeks, my ovaries shrunk down to a normal size. Thankfully it seems that there were no lasting complications.

In retrospect, knowing more now about OHSS, I believe that the Northwest Center for Reproductive Sciences, the clinic that handled the donation, should have seen any of several warning signs during the donation process that I was at risk and perhaps proceeded differently. And when I started to go downhill after the donation, they should not have kept assuring me that I was fine, just wait a day or two more and everything would be better. I listened to them for a while because I had been brought up looking at doctors as authority figures, all-knowing, always right, never to be questioned. I kept getting more and more sick, though, and finally, after a week I was more sick than ever - could not eat, could not lie down, could not sleep, had trouble breathing, was feverish, was vomiting constantly, was visibly distended, had already had two procedures done to remove fluid from my abdomen but it kept filling with more - so I visited an E.R. near to my home, where they checked me in right away and started monitoring me and working to give me care that I desperately needed.

If you are considering IVF or Egg Donation or any other care through NWReprosci, I would advise you to proceed with some level of level caution, and to have a frank discussion with your caregivers about risks, warning signs, and about their course of action should any warning signs appear. As for me, though, what's done is done. I can't go back and change the care that NWReprosci gave me, and happily I have my health now. It's better maybe to just move on.

What does this have to do with The Donor Source? Was it their fault I got sick? No. Did they provide the care? No. Why then am I so upset with them?

Before the donation process, I and the recipient parents both met separately with a lawyer and signed contracts provided through The Donor Source dealing with many facets of the donation process such as custody, rights, responsibilities of all parties involved. A portion of those contracts specified that the recipient parents would be taking out a temporary supplementary health insurance plan on me, through The Donor Source, to deal with any complications. They would pay any deductibles required by the plan, and it would cover anything else that might go wrong. I was not to be held responsible for any costs incurred by the donation process or by any complications resulting from it.

Well, it turns out that operations to remove fluid from one's abdominal cavity are expensive. Week-long hospitalizations are expensive. All the trauma and trouble translated to a thick stack of bills.

And so far, The Donor Source has not followed through on getting them paid.

This all happened almost 11 months ago. Those bills are still not paid. Some are still sitting with the hospitals, some have gone to creditors.

These hospitals and creditors are not patient. I've spent more time than I care to recall talking to them, explaining, directing them to the The Donor Source, writing letters. I've paid some of the bills out of pocket just to get them off my back, but I can't afford to pay them all. I don't think anything has made it all the way to my credit report yet (my letters of dispute to the creditors clearly establish that I am not responsible and they need to desist) but it's hard to be sure.

Meanwhile, my contact at The Donor Source assures me again and again that it will be taken care of soon, any day really, it's just that insurance is slow. It's sitting with insurance and they'll take care of it soon. Just hold tight. I'd ask them for a contact in the insurance department to speak with, or anything, a policy number, any information about the status of the claim, and they always gave me the runaround.

Except -

Here's the tricky thing -

I managed to piece together enough information in a form The Donor Source had me fill out earlier this month to track the actual insurance policy holder down and to speak with someone there. The guy I talked to was actually quite helpful and I am finally feeling optimistic that I may see some traction soon. But I cannot tell you how surprised and upset I was to hear from him that they had not actually received any paperwork or bills for me until late in May, and they're still waiting on The Donor Source for paperwork they need to tie things up and settle the accounts.

I faxed this insurance guy all the paperwork I have, all the bills, all the records, which will hopefully help jump-start things a bit. But I was only able to do this because I cut corners, did a little detective work and found him on my own. The Donor Source was never going to help me - for the last half year they've actually been blaming the insurance people for the delays. And for almost that entire time, they hadn't even initiated things with insurance!

Almost as if to rub it in, this afternoon, after I had spoken with the insurance guy, a Donor Source rep returned my call from earlier in the day and assured me that insurance people are just slow, it's normal, everything should be taken care of any day. What a pack of lies. And all the while it's sucking up my time, my energy, stressing me out worrying about money and collectors and my credit report and my credit future.

I just want to be here and now, in the present, excited about my baby and everything to come. I don't want to keep worrying about this stuff forever - I'd like it to get resolved and all go away. This should be a time for anticipation and celebration, not for worry and trouble.

I wouldn't wish my experience or the mess afterwards on anyone else. So stay away from The Donor Source if you can; it's better that way. They are not responsible, they are not reliable, they are not trustworthy. They're bad news waiting to happen.

Apparently it's not only illegal to gamble online in WA state, it's illegal to even discuss online gamling. I could be in violation of the law with this post.

So 1984...

Sources:

• This Column May Be Illegal, in the June 15th Seattle Times
• New Washington Online Poker Law Stretches Tentacles, published June 19th on Poker News
• Internet gaming guide shut down in Washington state, published June 15th on PokerListings.com

Just three days later, and I've got my computer back!

Everything's in working order - I can now load CDs, I can power up my battery again... mmmmmmm, so nice. And all covered under warranty! (Well, under the extra 2 years of warranty that I purchased up front.) Apple told me 5-7 business days at least, but here it is, delivered to my doorstep just 3 from the day I dropped it off (a Sunday, at that), early in the morning so that I was here to receive it before I left for work - oh my, oh my, oh my. I am not used to having my expectations exceeded by the corporations with whom I choose to do business.

Kat is so, so happy.

Sadly, on the eve of June 17, 2006, my computer met a desperate end. She is now "in the shop" with the Apple Techs, who are even now attempting a brave resurrection.

Sad computer.

Sad Kat.

I guess I'm a little bit ahead of the curve - breast feeding is really starting to come into style.

". . .'Just like it's risky to smoke during pregnancy, it's risky not to breast-feed after,' said Suzanne Haynes, senior scientific adviser to the Office on Women's Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. 'The whole notion of talking about risk is new in this field, but it's the only field of public health, except perhaps physical activity, where there is never talk about the risk.'. . ."

(from today's New York Times)

"Beginning [today], Washington residents who play poker or make most other types of wagers on the Internet will be committing a Class C felony, equivalent under the law to possessing child pornography, threatening the governor or torturing an animal. . . the new law carries stiff penalties: as much as five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. . ."

(from the May 27 edition of The Seattle P-I)

I'm so glad to see that our state legislature is spending their time on such worthwhile things.

I found another page asserting that "The hypocritical
stench surrounding the online gambling law forthcoming in Washington state includes campaign donations from none other than Indian casinos for State Senator Margarita Prentice. . .".

Nice casinos. Want to make sure we gamble in person.

Jaimes and I, after much thought and consideration, are making some unconventional choices in our plans for raising our baby. I haven't written or talked much about this, because, having grown up in the Midwest, I generally seek to avoid confrontation. In their unconventionality, and because people seem to have strong opinions in general on child-rearing, I felt that our choices might spark some level of confrontation or, at the very least, disdain.

For all that, in a moment of rash abandon, I've decided to have out. Here it is, out in the open, a rough road map for the next several months and years:

• I'm working full time now, and will up until the birth, but do not plan to return to my job afterwards. When the baby is a little bigger I will start doing more massage out of my home studio, and will continue to teach some small amount of private dance lessons from our home as well.


• We're planning on a home birth.


• I plan to breastfeed exclusively (no cereals, juices, water, or other foods) for the first half-year, and to continue breastfeeding for quite some time after that.


• We are considering "elimination communication" instead of traditional potty training.


• We plan to sleep with our baby in our bed.


• We are not planning to own strollers - rather, we will get slings to carry the baby on our own bodies. We are both strong believers in the power of touch from a very young age.


• I had an ultrasound at 17 weeks, but due to some concern about the advisability of exposing the baby to ultrasound unneedlessly I will not get another one (except in the case of some unforeseen problem with the pregnancy or suspected problems in the course of fetal development). It is for this reason that we do not know the sex of our baby, and may not know until the birth.


• While we may vaccinate at some point, especially in light of Jaimes's possible world travels, we are going to hold off for the first several years.


• I am in a committed caring relationship with the father of my baby, but we are not married and have no plans to marry in the near future. It is likely that we will give the baby my last name.

Yesterday I saw An Inconvenient Truth, the global warming documentary featuring Al Gore. It was good, although for my taste it was a little heavy on the scare-side, with almost no mention of what we can or should be doing to address global warming now. I found it slightly interesting/ironic that they chose, numerous times throughout the film, to feature a shot of Gore looking all pensive and thoughtful, riding in a car. This is a documentary about the frightening effects of CO2 emissions, and here we have this recurring shot of Gore, the primary focus point, over and over again in his car.

On a related note, there was an interesting article in the NYTimes today about a small town in Indiana trying to make serious inroads in achieving energy independence: One Farm Town's Drive for Energy Independence.

The future of the organic label is looking dim.

From The New York Times today, The Way We Live Now: Mass Natural, an article on the impact that Wal-Mart's push towards "organic" may have on the industry and on the worldwide organic farm economy.

Frankly, I find it disheartening and scary that our government's definition of a single word, "organic", might have such far-reaching impact on a market that has been steadily growing over several decades and that I strongly subscribe to. And I've always found Wal-Mart's relationship with and treatment of its vendors to be decidedly abject (along with its behavior in any other number of arenas - this is why I have not shopped at Wal-Mart for over 10 years, and have no plans to step into one again any time soon). The article does bring up some interesting positive outcomes that I hadn't considered, though, among them a drop in world exposure to pesticides and other nasties that our government (and/or others) are slow to regulate or ban on their own.

Some previous information:

Compiled from The Organic Consumers Association: Campaigning for Health, Justice, and Sustainability (a great site to keep up on what's going on with the organic industry and what you can do to help safeguard it), compiled from their pages devoted to safeguarding organic standards:

ALERT: INDUSTRY SNEAK ATTACK ON ORGANIC STANDARDS - USDA ANNOUNCES BRIEF PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD
The USDA has announced a very short public comment period (ends May 12, 2006) on a proposal to amend the
National Organic Program (read the proposal here) in a manner that would weaken organic standards. The USDA's actions were requested by a very small handful of Republican members of Congress. Take action now and tell the USDA you support strong organic standards!

In late 2005, despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members and the organic
community, Republican leaders in Congress attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to
weaken the nation's organic food standards in response to pressure from large-scale food manufacturers.

This rider was voted on in conference committee. Here is a list of the members of that committee who pushed this rider through:

Sen Robert Bennett (R-UT)
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)
Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS)

"Congress voted to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system
that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years.

As passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows: Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the public based on "emergency decrees." OCA will work to reverse this rider with an "Organic Restoration Act" in Congress in 2006.

Background of the Sneak Attack
After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations, such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and members of the Organic Trade Association, have succesfully weakened organic standards by allowing Bush appointees in the USDA National Organic Program to take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will have near total control over what can go into organic foods and products.

WHAT'S AT STAKE
Organic Standards Under Fire:
Agribusiness front groups, such as the Farm Bureau, big food corporations like Kraft, biotech companies such as Monsanto, right-wing think tanks, such as the Hudson Institute, and industry-friendly government agencies have consistently tried to undermine organic standards and get the USDA to allow conventional chemical-intensive and factory farm practices on organic farms. Unless strict organic standards are maintained, consumers will lose faith in the organic label.

Federal Funding for Organics:
The current five year $220 billion US Farm Bill allocates less than $5 million annually for organic research, promotion and marketing...approximately one-hundredth of one percent. This means that Congress is using billions of our tax dollars to reward chemical-intensive, factory farm style operations, while penalizing non-chemical farmers. This, despite
the fact that organic food has been the fasting growing segment in the food marketplace for over 13 years. To move beyond using pesticides, chemicals and genetically modified seeds, conventional farmers need government subsidies and conversion programs that prioritize local and regional organic production. These misguided priorities must be reversed in the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill.

Preserving Organic Farms and Consumer Choice:
Genetically Engineered (GE) crops pose a serious pollution threat to organic food and farms. Windblown pollen from GE crops and commingling of seeds in grain elevators or transport vehicles are contaminating organic farms and seed stocks of corn, soy, cotton and canola. The OCA is calling for strict legal liability on all GE crops utilizing the "polluter pays" principle, to protect the property rights of farmers growing organic or non-GE crops. The OCA is also calling for mandatory labeling on GE foods- similar to laws already in place in Europe and other countries- so that consumers have a choice whether or not to buyGE foods.

And another NYTimes article published on May 12, 2006, eyeing Walmart's proposed organic shift: Wal-Mart Eyes Organic Foods.

Just one week ago I was worried that I hadn't felt the baby kick, and now the little critter won't stop moving!

Sometimes it makes me laugh, this sudden "blick!" in my belly, not always at the most opportune of times.

Dance, dance, dance.

I am feeling really well these days, very happy and healthy. Jaimes and I went to the midwife yesterday and heard the baby's heart beating - so fast and strong, crazy that there's this new being growing inside me!

We felt it kick for the first time just this week too. I hadn't
felt anything and was getting worried, so I found some advice online that suggested I lie down, put my feet up, and play music for my stomach - and lo and behold, with the music, there was a rhythmic thump! thump! down in the lower part of my abdomen. So already, we have a musical baby.

Very pretty, but very strange.

According to Seattle's own King5 News, Pregnancy makes women smarter.

Becoming a mother clearly changes a woman's body, but it also appears to have surprising effects on the brain, too. . ."We're seeing what we think are significant changes in information processing," said Dr. Craig Kinsley.

I haven't felt it move yet.

Oh Baby!

From Amazing Pregnancy.com's due date calculator:

You are 16 weeks into your pregnancy,
and you have 24 weeks to go.

103 days have passed since the conception,
and you are 163 days before your due date.

The Baby:
This may be the week you feel your baby move. This is sometimes called "quickening" It's been described as a "flutter" or "butterflies". Don't be too worried if you don't feel it yet. It may be as late as your 20th week before you feel those first little flutters. The lanugo hair is present, and covers your baby's head and body. Your baby is still growing and this week measures about 4.5 inches long, and weighs almost 3 ounces!

My dad is sorely behind the times.

I was telling him the other night about how great Christa has been through my pregnancy, warm and nurturing, really looking out for me. Running off right after she found out to research pregnancy nutrition, making sure I'm eating well, making sure I'm taking care of myself. He asked, "Well, has she tried to get you to stop smoking?"

Umm...

"I don't smoke any more," I responded.

"Really?" he asked, disbelief evident in his voice.

"Yes, really," I said, "I haven't smoked for over three years."

"I just thought you were hiding it from us," he said.

Thinking back, the potential landlady jerked me around the first time I interacted with her, too, so I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was on Monday night.

When I first noticed the ad for the house, I called to say I was interested in renting. She asked that I drive by and take a look to see what I thought. I did, and thought it was great! I called back right away to tell her that and to schedule an appointment to see the inside... and she said that she hadn't known how to tell me during the first conversation, but at that time she was already checking references on someone she planned to rent to.

Why did she have me waste my time following up on it and driving by if she was already planning on renting it? Not a nice thing to do.

So then a week later she called back and said the other renter had fallen through, and was I still interested ... and that's where this tale ends, and the other one begins. (I wonder what his story was, and if it was any nicer than mine.)

I have a house now. I found a new rental to share with Jaimes. It's okay, not great. But it will work for him to teach dance, for me to do massage, and for us to both live in reasonable comfort for a while.

It's not the house I wanted. There was another house, not even a block away, that I fell in love with last week. I talked to the landlady, filled out an application, and even put a deposit down. Everything was looking good.

Then, Monday night, she called me to turn me down.

Earlier in the day on Monday, she had called my current landlord, who was busy with something, and couldn't really talk at that moment. Added to that, he was slightly taken by surprise, as I haven't given any notice yet. (I'm not planning on moving out for a while, and was thinking I might keep this room for a few months concurrently. Chris has a friend getting out of the military fairly soon who wants the room, so to keep from screwing Chris and Jake on rent in the meanwhile I was strongly considering keeping it until his friend got out, or at the very least taking the initiative to find a subletter for that period. Chris and Jake want to maintain the lease even after I leave, so there was no reason to give full notice to the landlord.)

So anyway, this woman, the potential new landlady, was a little put off by that, and wanted something more. To appease her, I told her I would look up the name and number for the landlord I had before I moved to the U-District, a few years back, on Capitol Hill, and I would sort things out with the current landlord as well.

I looked up the number for the old landlord, tried to call him to warn him she might call, but got a machine and left a message.

I also talked to my current landlord and sorted things out with him, and he wanted very much to talk to her again and give her a good reference for me. He had called back on his own but hadn't been able to reach her.

This done, I called the potential landlady back, gave her the number for the old landlord, and told her that I had sorted things out with the current landlord and he wanted to speak with her again. She thanked me and we hung up.

So a few hours later, she called back again. This time, she was super-condescending. She said that if she ever wanted someone for computer work, she would hire me, but she couldn't ever imagine renting to me. Over and over again, she told me that I am young. That maybe I'll grow out of it. She hit on the "you are young" thing like 6 times.

"I'm 28!," I thought to myself. "What is her problem?" I was confused and upset - this was my dream house, and I had practically moved in in my mind, and here she was ripping me down - but I remained polite and responsive for the duration of the conversation.

She said, "Let me give you some advice. Before you give out references, you should check with people to see what they will say." I told her that I had, had she even tried calling my current landlord again? He had wanted to talk to her when he had bandwidth, and he had good things to say - but she responded that she hadn't, and she wasn't interested in doing so.

"What??? Where was all of this coming from?," I thought. "My current landlord is happy with me. My old landlord was happy with me, as far as I knew - granted I hadn't been able to speak with him directly that day, but we had a good relationship when I left Capitol Hill." She wasn't telling me anything concrete about what swung her opinion so drastically this way - for all I know, it was simply because I hadn't given notice to my current landlord.

I asked if there's any chance she would call my current landlord a second time, or reconsider, and she said no. She told me that she's going to take the house off the market for now, that the current tenants are changing their time frame a bit, and she'll just wait until May to rent it to take the pressure off herself. That was pretty much the end of the conversation.

I cried a little bit afterwards, because it was pretty hurtful.

Then I went back to looking up places and tracking down landlords, starting again at square one. What else could I do?

That same night, I visited another place which wasn't ideal, but could work. That landlady took very strongly to me, and for whatever reason, really, really wanted to rent to me specifically over others who were interested in the place. I told her I was interested, and we agreed to talk again the next day.

As an aside, that night while I was looking through places, I noticed that the landlady who turned me down had posted her house for rent again, but with the rent cut by $100/mo. Ouch. Not only does she specifically not want me, but she's so desperate to rent it out that she's dropping the price to get anyone else she can.

Ouch.

Back to the new place - I slept on everything that night, and in the morning I woke up feeling that although it could work, it wouldn't be good long term. It's on the verge of too-small as is, it would definitely be too small once the baby is born, and she was adamant about a year lease so that would lock is in for the first half-year after the birth. So when she called again I told her that while I was interested, I couldn't do it.

But she wanted me so much that she offered different lease terms that worked better for me. Enough so that yesterday I signed with her for a short term lease, just for the summer. It will be fine for that long, to get us by, and we'll have more time to find something that really works. It will also be good for her, as it will put the rental on schedule for her to find a student renter in the fall when school is starting up.

Then...

This morning...

The old landlord from Capitol Hill called me. I didn't answer the phone the first time, but he called three times - must be important? - so I went to see who it was and answered. He said that some woman had called him a few days ago and asked about me, but he didn't catch the first name and he confused me with some other girl who had also lived there, same last name but spelled a little differently. Some Janet Kruger, who had been a disaster, and had mistakenly given me a poor reference because he misunderstood who she was asking about. (I think he had just gotten my original phone message and realized the mistake.)

So everything makes a little more sense now, but I still feel really rotten about the whole thing, and about how rude this potential landlady was on Monday.

He asked me if I'd like him to call her and explain. I said yes. Because, even though it won't make a difference now, part of me hopes she hears from him and feels a little twinge of guilt for being so rude. Nasty woman.

Really, everything conspiring the way it did, I think the universe was trying to tell me that this was not the place to be. Better trouble now than after the lease is signed, you know? But it's not what I wanted to hear.

As you have probably noted from the tone of this post, I am still worrying the wound a bit. I liked that house. I was hurt at how she treated me.

Oh well, life goes on. So must I.

Anyways, I have a different house now. And it's not a perfect house, not exactly everything we were hoping for, but it's good, and it will serve us well for five months.

Pirates are the new ninjas. Remember when ninjas were all in? Now they're out. It's pirates all the way these days.

How come it took me so long to catch on?