So as I’ve been reading about fertility treatments and medication and also undergoing some of these myself, I was curious to understand… what the heck are you supposed to do with your meds if you do not need all of them? Are you supposed to donate them, give them to your clinic for patients who cannot easily afford… sell them on a black market….?! For your FYI in case you have never learned anything about American healthcare or infertility…. but this is actually a BUSINESS. Insurance companies, hospitals, doctors are profiting off of your diseases, every 15-min appointment, your inability to conceive naturally. Once you’ve been trying to conceive for over a year and have failed, you’re basically deemed “infertile” regardless of your age, and the ‘ka-ching!’ goes off at every single nearby fertility clinic around you. Billions of dollars are spent on healthcare here in the US every single year with pretty terrible outcomes, and I’m sure millions and millions are spent on allowing families to expand. For a basic IVF medication package, assuming you have zero coverage through your health insurance, the approximate sticker price for one IVF stimulation cycle is $8,900 USD. This number is assuming you don’t require extra meds because your follicles take longer on average to mature. If that number is not terrifying and absolutely absurd to you, you need to leave right now and stop reading this post because frankly, you are out of your mind, and I want nothing to do with you.

So I did look up what you’re supposed to do if you have leftover meds (and, inevitably, you WILL have leftover medications). It is illegal (yes, illegal) to give your meds to someone whose name is NOT on the prescription. It is illegal to try to sell these drugs to a friend or via Craiglist or some black market. It is illegal for pretty much anyone else to use your drugs that is not you. When I think about that, I realize… wow, this system is so unbelievably fucked up. You spend tens of thousands of dollars on trying to conceive, and you cannot even legally give your drugs to someone else who may be in financial need (or need, because some of these drugs have actually had a shortage, or try to recoup some of the insane dollars that were spent on this entire effort? And when someone else may run out of their drugs, be given last minute notice by their doctor that they need to continue medication for a drug they no longer have enough of that has also run OUT at their local pharmacy, they’re technically breaking the LAW if they accept it from someone who wants to give it to them nearby?????

The only people winning in these situations… are the doctors, the clinics, and the health insurance providers. It’s such a sad and infuriating process.

A book that I had on my reading list for last year that I’ve pushed into this year is Lori Gottlieb’s “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.” I’ve already started reading it and am pretty hooked. It IS a bit self indulgent, so I thought it would be like a “guilty pleasure read” for me to begin the new year with. Lori Gottlieb is a real-life therapist who, encountering her own life’s troubles, decides herself to see a therapist, so you get an interesting view from two different perspectives: how a therapist sees and treats her patients, and how as a therapist, a therapist can receive treatment. Part of a therapist’s training, as you can probably imagine, is to get therapy in order to increase understanding and empathy on both the parts of the therapist and the patient, but she provides an interesting perspective on how therapy can not only affect and shape the patient, but also the therapist herself.

As someone who had been in therapy for about two years, I can say that it was definitely helpful, but a lot of the burden of responsibility really sits on the patient’s shoulders, and not everyone who thinks about therapy or even seeks therapy thinks about that. During that time, I managed to distance myself from my dysfunctional emotions around my parents and my family a lot more, which was helpful for me to develop into a more independently minded human. I also was able to break free of some of the thought processes my mom had instilled in me which, frankly, are just not productive and good when you want to actually have real relationships with people that are not transactional (e.g. I no longer feel compelled to immediately give a gift back to someone when someone else unexpectedly gives me a gift. I no longer feel like I need to immediately treat someone to a meal just because they may have paid for me yesterday. Life is not about “quid pro quo” the way my mom seems to think it is. I also do not “expect” anything in return when I do kind, generous things for people I care about. That definitely generated some resentment in previous friend encounters that I didn’t quite understand at the time, but in retrospect, I realize I was being a dangerous mini of my mother). Some people erroneously believe that the therapist should just “fix” all the patients’ problems and lead them directly into their epiphany sooner rather than later, but that’s not really how therapy works. In Gottlieb’s words:

“What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in the ways they normally choose not to. A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it’s up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, “Oh, isn’t that interesting! Now what?” instead of turning away.”

….

“Insight is the booby prize of therapy” is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don’t change when you’re out in the world, the insight — and the therapy — is worthless. Insight allows you to ask yourself, Is this something that’s being done to me or am I doing it to myself? The answer gives you choices, but it’s up to you to make them.”

But I do wonder, based on this, how many people actually use therapy as a “crutch” for life, and instead of taking action on the insights they may be learning in therapy, do absolutely nothing differently while holding that insight in their hands when leaving to go out into the world? I have a friend who may fall into this bucket. She’s been in therapy for years, but if anything, I only see her life outlook seeming to regress, and she seems to examine things less deeply than she once did.

Therapy is a balance of expressing compassion, empathy, and also confrontation. That’s why, when your friend says the exact same thing your therapist does, you may lash out and get defensive, but when your therapist does it, you end up holding your tongue and actually… THINKING about it.

Before this year began, Chris said that he wanted to have more probiotics easily available in the house, and the best and tastiest way for us to do that would be to have kimchi available at all times. I thought yogurt would be a decent option, but despite Chris being Indian, yogurt… is not really something he eats regularly unless it’s via raita with a savory dish. He doesn’t just eat yogurt for breakfast or mix it with fruit or granola. So he decided on his always-on kimchi fix.

Well, that ‘always on’ fix ended up really being “always on” because we ended up spending WAY more time at home than we originally thought we would this past year. At the beginning of the pandemic, we stopped by Hmart and picked up a big tub of kimchi. Apparently, there were kimchi shortages everywhere as everyone loaded up on staples… yes, even in the Asian community. And we’ve been eating it little by little, refreshing each time we were near a Korean or Japanese store that sold it. Today, I finally used it to make kimchi jigae, or kimchi stew. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to make it at home.

I’d previously made it with pork bones and ribs, so it was a lot richer, but I’d say that even with just chicken stock and some added silken tofu, it really sings together. It’s one of my favorite stews of all time, and it’s way simpler and easier to make than it looks. This needs to be on repeat at home now on.

Around this time last year, we were in Indonesia, enjoying (or suffering through) the extreme humidity, eating delicious exotic fruit and trying new foods every day, breathing in fresh, crisp air and wandering through a beautiful paradise. Every year we’ve been together that I can look back on, we’ve done something super fun somewhere else at this time of year. And this year, when I think of the mini “breaks” I’ve had with Christmas and New Year’s…. I feel…. completely unrefreshed and replenished. It was not a real “break.” It was simply time away from a computer, time away from work email and Slack.

It feels like just another week, another month, another day… with not much light at the end of the tunnel. I have no idea when I will go home to see my family again. I have no idea when we will get on a plane again. I don’t know when I will be able to see Chris’s parents or relatives again. Will I ever get to meet my colleagues in real life? Will I get to leave the country this year? When will I be able to stop wearing a mask outside my apartment everywhere? There are so many things I am not sure about, and I’m trying to keep them all under control and not think too much about the things out of my control now.