Semen Lost at Sea...

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Depression & Time-management

How does one deal with depression every day? I feel bad for my wife, she feels depressed alot & I often don't know how to deal. I do my best to console her, but I feel cheap saying that "It will all work out" and all of the other lines that I dish out (But really do believe), all of the time.

Being the primary breadwinner of the family, and a Cancer who tends to have his mind in the clouds, fantasizing (er, correction: visualizing & manifesting) I tend to get caught up in career-oriented stuff. I have a problem of spending too much time on the computer (chronically speaking). In addition to my need to focus on career-searches, business & social networking, working on the website, reading the news & studying up on various topics of interest, I guess it's all really addicting. My wife is right that I'm a work-a-holic, kinda. I tend to get distracted easily. See, right now, my main goal is to expand my business network and try to find my way into a higher paying job (or any job as of last week). I am accused of not spending enough time with my wife, or researching adoption, or exploring/interacting with others on an intra-weekly basis in the infertile blogosphere. It's a tough job. (Sorry, just had to throw in a Bush-quote :)) I guess it's a matter of balance - something I struggle with daily (ONLY when I have alot on my mind that I'd like to accomplish). Other times, I enjoy reading together in bed, watching TV/Movies together, exercise together, etc.

Am I so wrong... Maybe it's just the man's role in the relationship to be driven to succeed. So my sperm is slow & wobbly - as the predominantly positive person, I KNOW things will work out fine, we just have to visualize the results we want and stop being so negative (please forgive me - this is my internal dialogue and I would never voice these words to any infertile, being that the voicing these words are known as breaking one of the many commandments of infertility). The reality is that I just don't worry about these things too often. Maybe I should. The problem for me is that I get distracted easily and forget to get back to things when inertia runs out. Like Native American adoption - I was so gung-ho on the process, but when we learned that my wife's grandmother didn't have the name of the relative that was part of the Cherokee bloodline, and that further research (which I'm not sure either of us knows what to do) would be a big effort, things just petered out. I'm still immensely interested, but I need information.

I guess part of my struggle is finding the balance. Another part of my issue on the computer is that I need to do more prioritizing, less procrastination of the important stuff, save the interesting stuff for last, and when I'm working on something, I have to learn how to drop something in the middle and pick it up again later on. That's a biggie for me. I have a very hard time picking up where I left off. The ideal thing for me is to work straight through on something. Interruptions suck, but they do happen.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Infertile Water

The other day I stopped at the local university where I graduated a few years back and stopped by this relatively new office in one of the engineering buildings that housed a new organization on campus, EPRI. The guy in the office was nice enough to chat with me for a while and gave me a copy of some of the recent research abstracts(since I've lately become alot more interested in environmental science & sustainability, in additional to my interests in learning a little about everything).

Anyway, when I got in the car and started reading some of the summaries, one paper caught my attention. I don't have it in front of me, but basically it referred to a study that was done in the year 2000 where it was known that in the Springtime there were increased levels of some toxic herbicides from local farms flowing into the local rivers - and this water was then used to supply some of our public water (after treatment, of course). But, before the time of this study, the municipal water treatment plant didn't treat these chemicals, and most importantly, I don't think the public was informed at all!

I just find it amazing that the local chemi-farms are able to use toxic chemicals on their land that run-off into local streams & rivers, and ultimately into our tap water. Back in the year 2000 & before I drank tap water regularly, having heard from a number of sources that it was safe.

Anyway, my point is that I've (& the public) is regularly exposed to all sorts of hazardous chemicals, and maybe this is a major factor in my infertility issues (low sperm motility). There are probably other issues as well involving everyday poisins. I recently gave a speech to my local toastmasters club informing my audience of some of the everyday poisins that we liberally apply to our body including chlorine from swimming pools, petro-based makeup products, hair products, perfumes, and all sorts of toxic ingredients in our typical american processed foods.

The thing is that the city water treatment plant knew that it was pumping certain levels of herbicides (i.e. atrazine) and other toxic chemicals into our water supply for YEARS, and this may be a reason why my wife and I are having problems having children. We're both chemically sensitive. Maybe regular 'breeders' have higher tolerances. Maybe the whole idea is BS, I don't know. I do know that many of these toxic substances have a cumulative effect in the body since the body may not be designed to remove some of these synthetic toxins naturally (w/o chelation therapy or something). My dentist recently told me that it would probably be a huge help to remove the mercury fillings from my mouth, stating that the amount of mercury in someone's mouth typically contains enough toxic substance where if the same amount was discovered in a local lake, etc., then the EPA would shut down access to the lake (or something like that).

I'm outraged that companies, and government agencies don't do a good enough job letting the public know that we are being poisoned, and that this is probably affecting my fertility (and other health issues). I guess it's no wonder that illness, cancer, and a variety of other diseases run rampant in this world - a chemical veil is over our eyes.

Enough ranting for now - goodnight!