Uppercase Woman

Dental Pain, out of the office

So my place of employment has had to change our health plan yet again to avoid the ridiculous increase that our current plan was going to charge this year (40% for christ’s sake). Today was open enrollment.

So I saunter over to the cafeteria, and fill out all my forms. My husband, a freelancer, has his own medical insurance, but he does share my dental insurance. So I guess seeing his name is what confused the woman taking the forms, when she glanced at it and said, “Are your dependant children adopted?”

Now, why they need to know that, I can’t imagine, but jesus fucking christ, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut by an entire angry football team.

Somehow, I managed to squeak out, “I don’t have any children.” She cheerily said, “Oh, sorry!”

What I should have said was, “Listen you weasely little bitch, look carefully at the form before asking dumb ass questions, because I’m stuck half-way through my first IVF torture, and feeling rather hormonal, and could easily—really, really easily—rip your head right off your neck. So watch it, nasty lady!”

Yeah, that would have felt good.

.................................................................

I was glad to hear from so many South Beach devotees. However, when I went to the website today and decided to get the “free diet profile” I got a bit alarmed. Now, I expect whenever I fill out one of those on-line forms to a) get spammed after, and b) get asked if I want to receive lots of free “email newsletters,” so I always use a rarely used email address.

What surprised me, however, was being presented the option of receiving either “Daily Sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ” or “Scripture Snippets (or something like that)” from the folks at South Beach.

First off, I’m not so sure that Jesus would be down with “Scripture Snippets” in the first place, and frankly, I’m not so down with Jesus. So what’s the deal? Is it like Wal-Mart, a big industry run by psycho right-wingers? Not that all Christians are right-wingers, my favorite author Anne Lamott being a great example, but I’m not comfortable buying into anything like that.

I tried to research it on Google and got nothing connecting either the author or the book to Christianity. So maybe it’s just the folks at the website. But I’m not comfortable with that, not at all.

So, the reason I’ve been thinking about the low-carb thing is because of the PCO, so maybe I should look at the PCOS diet instead. I guess I’ll be hitting the bookstore this weekend, and making a decision (course, if I got my hand on the SBD book for say, free, or used at a bookstore, I’d be happy to do it. I just don’t wanna give them my money).

Sigh. Dieting sucks. Maybe I won’t do it at all.

Hot off the Presses

Many of us already have expressed our dismay about the 20/20 adoption special. So I was especially pleased to see Jon Stewart of the Daily Show (on Comedy Central every night at 11) call attention to it last night. He dissed ABC as something “found on the bottom of your shoe” and said that Barbara Walter’s face was all pulled back and tight from the “g-forces caused by her rapid descent into HELL!”

It was fabulous. And, by the way, if you read the link above, Barbara Walters is receiving all those emails we’ve sent. She talks about 20/20’s “overzealous promotion” and hopes to clear up any “misunderstandings.” Lots of luck, honey.

____________________________________________________

When I moved from the Midwest to a big East Coast city, I continued a long habit of watching the local evening news. It was awful. Apparently, every day in this city, a child dies in a fire, and they report it. Someone is shot or hit by a car, and they report it, complete with that street level shot of the lone shoe on the road.

It was depressing. I couldn’t stand it. I cut my viewing down to once a week, and watched the Simpsons at 11pm instead. My disillusionment went even further when I became friendly with a guy at the local dog park who was a producer for one of the local news shows, and he told me that famous “shoe shot” was totally faked, they carried a bunch of shoes in the van—children’s and adults—for hit-and-runs and gun shot victims.

Then a couple of years ago my husband and I went to see “Bowling for Columbine,” Michael Moore's movie about the America’s relationship with guns. It was fascinating. Apparently, Canada has just as many guns per capita as the US, but something like 1% of the murder rate.

One of the theories he discussed was the media, particularly the news, feeding into our fear. He showed ten minutes of news clips all saying things like “Household products can kill your children!” and “Is your basement safe?” to “Teach your child what to do during an abduction” and worse. No wonder we’re always shooting people! We’re fucking terrified!

So now, I live in world where I get my news from NPR and The New York Times, and of course, I have now replaced my local news at 11pm with the fab Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He’s actually oddly informative, seems to have politics close to mine (psycho liberal) and makes me laugh my ass off. The best way to end the day.

______________________________________________________

So what does an infertility goddess do when there is nothing TO do (except pop the daily birth control pill)? Consider crash diets!

I have worked on my food addiction issues for over six years. I’ve had massive amounts of help. I’ve seen nutritionists, two of them, and gone to Weight Watchers. I’ve sought help in support groups.

And I’m still fat.

I got down to an all time low about four years ago, then went back up about 50lbs, lost 35 of that again, and thanks to six months of various fertility drugs, am back up again. While I don’t, technically, approve of dieting, I want to shake some of this crap off my hips before my frozen embryo transfer.

So I’m thinking about trying the new trendy thing, (no—not Atkins!) The South Beach diet. Since I have polycystic ovaries, trying a lower carb diet isn’t insane, and TSBD does allow nominal whole grain carbs back in after the initial two week “induction phase.” So it doesn’t sound totally insane to me, but I could be kidding myself.

All I know, is that “I lost 15 pounds in two weeks!” sounds really awesome. I know that most of that is fluid, but since I’m carrying around a crazy amount of fluid thanks to the drugs, that’s fine by me.

Soon I’ll be regaling all with my new birth control pill and carbohydrate withdrawal ramblings. I’m sure you are all looking forward to it!

Tears Under Everything

I had to steal this quote from Karen's comment section yesterday... it's by one of my fav authors, Anne Lamott, from her amazing book "Traveling Mercies." By the way, congrats Karen on the seven eggs!

"So I've been on the lookout for something wonderful to happen, because of this story I heard recently: Carolyn Myss, the medical intuitive who writes and lectures about why people don't heal, flew to Russia a few years ago to give some lectures. Everything that could go wrong did-flights were canceled or overbooked, connections missed, her reserved room at the hotel given to someone else. She kept trying to be a good sport, but finally, two mornings later, on the train to her conference on healing, she began to whine at the man sitting beside her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far.

It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said-gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."

I've read her book twice, and have found it so unbelievably helpful and wonderful each time, even though she is a firm believer in Jesus, who I'm not terribly fond of. Somehow, her belief is gentle and even she's kinda shocked by it, so it's not pushy or offensive in any way.

Reading that quote brought tears to my eyes, as has almost everything today. I'm not sure what's going on, if it's just my period or starting on birth control pills or what, but I am a big weepy mess today. But not in a bad way, not really. I'm generally content, just feel like bawling.

Maybe some chocolate will help. Nothing soothes the menstral beast like chocolate.

Surrender

I’m kind of feeling quiet, you know, relaxed. It’s weird. But I think I know why. Warning: this next part is sad.

I went to a meeting Wednesday night, and the topic was grief. The speaker was talking about her son, who has been struggling with addiction to heroin, and how she’s had to let go of him over and over again and each time brings a new spate of grieving.

I was thinking about infertility, and how there are thousands of moments of sharp and intense grief throughout the process. But I realized the largest thing I’m grieving is the child I’d pictured in my head two years ago when my husband and I decided to start trying.

I could see her, (because I knew she was a girl). We started trying in spring, but we wouldn’t get pregnant until mid summer I figured, so she’d be a late winter baby. I’d be able to deliver her at the birthing center, and that would be wonderful. She would have her dad’s dark curly hair, and she’d be born with a mass of it. She would have blue eyes, since both her father and I do, and they would be light like her father’s but ridiculously huge and framed with dark lashes like mine.

She would be beautiful. I could hear her laughing in my heart. She is what I have been mourning, under everything, every negative home pregnancy test, every new revelation from the doctor, every new painful procedure. I have been weeping, silently, over this magical little girl.

So in my morning meditation yesterday, I let her appear fully in my mind, and I turned her over the current vision of a loving god I have in my head right now—a beautiful woman, serene as the Virgin Mary, clearly a mother to all. I let her take the little girl and walk away from me. Yes, to be even more maudlin, I pictured the little girl waving goodbye the way babies do, just opening and closing her hand. I wept, I sobbed, and I feel somewhat relieved now.

It’s not a real little girl, I’m mourning, of course, it’s expectation. I wrote the other day about nostalgia, how I was nostalgic for the early part of trying to conceive when I thought it was merely an issue of raising up my hips and timing. The nostalgia was connected to this phase of mourning—I’m sad that it wasn’t easy, that I’m no longer the confident and carefree woman who believed I needed birth control to not get pregnant. I’m mourning that loss of innocence, that loss of hope. I even mourn the woman who felt uncomfortable during her annual pelvic exam.

I guess there is some part of me that has refused to accept that this is my life. There is a part of me that really, really wants to believe that the doctors are wrong, we’re both just fine, we’ll get pregnant on our own. I needed to let go of that too.

This is my life. This is my body. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible.

Thanks go to Dawn for her beautiful writing about her adoption surrender. I wouldn’t have been able to let go of my little girl without it.

___________________________________________________

On a more cheerful note, or perhaps it’s the reason for my melancholy, Monday is my 36th birthday. I’m having a fabulous dinner out with lots of friends at one of those Japanese places that cook the food in front of you where I can eat lots of sushi since I’m not pregnant. My husband is buying me the shoes of my choosing (not terribly exciting since I only wear Merrell’s), and my best friend got me tickets to the opera (which I love). I’m also planning to enjoy a movie or two, continuing from last weekend’s theme of vengeance. Last weekend it was Walking Tall (highly reminiscent of my favorite bad movie of all time, Roadhouse with Patrick Swaze) and The Punisher. This weekend it’s Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Man of Fire. Yeah!

Keep Hope Alive

“Every day, a little apocalypse” –David Byrne

Thanks, David. That’s it exactly.

________________________________________________

So this morning I had a follow up blood work/ultrasound appointment. Sadly, the tech was The Cunt, so I didn’t listen to anything she said, but she did manage to hurt me. While doing an abdominal ultrasound. How is that even possible? She shoved the damn thing so painfully hard into my stomach I couldn’t breathe. When I complained, she said in her bizarre and falsely sunny voice, “Sorry! But I have to get it!” The unwritten subtext I hear is all about my weight (I am a little sensitive about that right now, I know), especially after she asks me to “Lift up your tummy so I can get in there!” Cunt. Mean, nasty, painful bitch.

Ah. I feel better.

__________________________________________________

Thanks so much, everyone, for the kind words yesterday. It’s amazing how much writing about this stuff can help. I am feeling a tad bit better today—obviously, since I didn’t kill The Cunt this morning. Yesterday I would have slapped the ultrasonic gizmo out of her hand and whacked her over the head with the monitor.

I’m also feeling a little better because I spoke with an IVF nurse yesterday and she woke up the Hope Addict. During my last conversation with my doctor following the egg retrieval (the one at 1:00am), he’d suggested doing a mock cycle next month to ‘iron out any rough edges before the actual frozen embryo transfer.’ I dismissed it out of hand, because at that point I couldn’t see taking drugs for no reason. After thinking about it, I wondered if I was too quick to dismiss it, so I called the nurse to ask about it. She told me that most people don’t bother, and that the doctor was probably just trying to help me feel like I was doing something. I asked if the drugs would help with the over stimulation, and she said no.

Then she went on to tell me that if my ovaries do calm down, and I have no cysts on my cycle day two ultrasound and my blood work is clear, it’s possible that they CAN do the frozen embryo transfer next cycle. I realize it’s highly unlikely, but honestly, I welcomed that old bitch Hope back with open arms, cause it’s better than how I felt yesterday. That’s for sure.

____________________________________________________________

Just because it’s so much fun, I thought I’d post some of my new favorite search terms that have landed folks at my site (one of the most fun things about blogging!).

1. Fat Ho. Oh yes, ladies and gentleman, this term brings you to my site. This makes me insanely happy.

2. Foreign Object Penetration (and foreign object penetration into uterus). Insert Beevis and Butthead chortles here: he he. He he. He he.

3. Why should birth control be allowed in schools? Just 'cause, alright?

4. Lysteria Control. Uh, ok.

5. Beached Whale. Ah—so appropriate, yet so odd.

Lastly, there are a lot of searches involving a variety of terms regarding “implantation spotting” “spotting and IVF” and “early pregnancy spotting” and “early pregnancy symptoms.”

When I see those, I have the strangest reaction: nostalgia. I feel nostalgic for the days when I conducted those internet searches. Back when I was so, so sure that this was the month! This time it would work!

I also feel such a pang of sadness for those women. In my experience, the vast majority of the time one wonders if this is implantation spotting, it’s not, it’s just one’s period, coming to slam one’s hopeful ass to the curb. I hope I’m wrong: I hope for every single searcher that they’re right, it IS implantation, and it’s twins, and they’ll have a great happy, healthy pregnancy, and the kids will become rock stars and make millions of dollars. I really, really do.

But if they end up here—bitter, bloated, frustrated—we’ll all be waiting to help.

Today Is Not A Good Day

I don’t know why, but it all has suddenly hit me: everything about this IVF cycle has slammed into my heart hard and I am floundering.

I feel betrayed by my body; that it couldn’t even do IVF right. It had to overreact to the drugs so I ended up hyper stimulated. It had to have a progesterone surge following my HCG shot so that a fresh embryo transfer was impossible. It had to gain a zillion pounds so that I can’t even bear to look at myself, and none of my clothes fit—and those clothes are already big as it is. I’m so angry with my body I literally wish that I could walk on out of it—just drop it by the side of the road and move on.

I feel betrayed by my doctor because the communication has been so unclear and each time I speak with someone at the office I get more bad news. I am disgusted with the nurses and their bad New Jersey accents and their dismissive way of giving me information and acting annoyed that I react to that information. I feel angry and betrayed that no one told me how horrendously painful the egg retrieval could be so that I woke up alone and scared and hurting so, so badly. I feel angry that they gave me nothing to help with the pain at the doctor’s office, and I had to endure an awful 45-minute car trip home until my husband could go to the pharmacy and fill a prescription.

I am overwhelmed by emptiness—and empty heart with nothing left to give, and an empty womb that aches. When I feel this way, every single thing causes me to react with anger—customers walking into my store and wanting help drain me so badly that I want to hurt them. My husband trying to talk to me about anything—anything at all from bills to IVF to what to do this weekend—fills me a hot burning anger that terrifies me. I feel like running headlong into a wall, or walking in front of a bus, or cutting off my hand, just to see what would happen. It’s not suicidal, exactly; it’s more like creating a different pain just to be distracted from this one.

When I get this way, it’s usually because I have rejected all the nurturing offered me and become alarming self-sufficient. This time, I think it’s actually because my life is just too much to bear right now. I feel weak—weak from the hormones and weak from the emotional blasts. Plus I feel weak compared to getupgrrl or Julie or Julia, or any of the other fabulous bloggers I've gotten to know, who have all been through so much more, and survived.

My old sponsor told me that I needed to turn to God when I feel this way—that the only thing that will fill my emptiness is a power greater than myself. But there is the biggest betrayal of all. God has totally abandoned me, as far as I can tell. God is all around me, in the bright eyes of my neighbor’s baby or my big beautiful dog, but God is keeping a suspicious distance from me. I’ve been kicked to the curb and am lying there bleeding.

Jesus, I sound crazy. Truth is, I’m probably more hormonal than anything else. I’m sure I’m having the mother of all PMS’s, courtesy of injectibles and 35 fucking follicles. I know I’ll get through this, since I always manage to get through everything.

It’s just really fucking hard.

_________________________________________________________________________

I’ve come to the realization that I can’t go to Washington, DC this weekend for March For Women’s Lives. As important as the issues are to me, and as much as I want to have my voice heard, I am too vulnerable, sad, and angry to be surrounded by beautiful women all fighting for the right to terminate their pregnancies when they need to. Right now, I need to feel safe and loved, and I don’t think I will feel much of that in that crowd. I cannot afford the anger right now. I really can’t.

So those of you going, please, yell extra loudly with me in mind. I’m there with you in spirit, even if I can’t bear to bring my flesh.

Babies On Ice

Ok, so this may horrify everyone, but once I got the idea in my head, I couldn’t get it out.

For the last few days, since my massive egg retrieval, my husband and I have been wandering around in a daze. At one point, he wandered over to me and squinted and said, “We could have 17 children!” To our friends we’ve been joking about our “babies on ice” and that naturally reminded me of the Vanilla Ice song…so I re-wrote the lyrics based on the frozen embryo perspective (for the original lyrics, click here).

Ice, Ice Babies

Yo, IVF, Let’s kick it!

Ice, Ice Babies (dum dum dum dum dee dee dum dum)
Ice, Ice Babies (dum dum dum dum dee dee dum dum)

All right, stop stimulates and listen
Babies on ice a new invention
Cryogenics holding them tightly
Cold air flowing daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo- I think so
Turn off the lights and they’ll glow
To the extreme they rock the freezer like a vandal
Light up the lab and wax the techs like a candle.

Careful, thaw with a rush that booms
But don’t kill their brains like a poisonous mushroom
Transplant, when my lining is ready
Anything less then 8mm is a felony
Love it don’t leave it, implant right away
You best hit the bull’s eye so the we can play
If there’s a problem, progesterone will solve it
Hook into my uterus while my DJ revolves it

Ice, Ice Babies
Ice, Ice Babies
Ice, Ice Babies
Ice, Ice Babies

Yo man—don’t get out of there! Word to me, I’m your mother.

The Waiting Game

Well, yesterday I was still writhing in agony and clutching my belly all day, so I called one of the IVF nurses to see if this was normal. She said, oh yes, it is, cause you had so many, many eggs. It will take me at least a week or so to get back to normal, she said, and I’ll be even more normal after I get my period. Oh joy.

Then I said, yes, then next cycle I can do my frozen embryo transfer. She says, oh no, you have to wait two cycles. I’m like, what? She says, when you have OHSS, you have to wait two cycles. I say, no one told me I have OHSS. She said anytime you have over 30 eggs you have OHSS. I’m getting pretty angry, one could say, and I’m like, why is this the first time I’m hearing about this? She says, I don’t know.

So she transfers me to the front desk and I leave a message for the doctor to call me back. Which he does at 1:00 AM.

Now, I love that my doc is that dedicated, and thank god I’m off the Tylenol 3’s so that I was moderately coherent when he called. It turns out I have over stimulated ovaries, but NOT Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (just like I have polycystic ovaries but not Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). Apparently, if you can still breathe normally, you don’t have OHSS. Gonzo ovaries that are too big to fit on an ultrasound screen don’t count. Whatever.

The upshot is, I can do a frozen embryo transfer next cycle, if I really wanted to but it’s not advised. Meaning it probably wouldn’t work. Apparently, my ovaries will continue to have a party next month from the drugs from this cycle. So things won’t be quite right down there yet. But two cycles from now, they will.

Oy. I think the worst word ever invented in the English language is WAIT. I don’t want to wait. I’ve been waiting two years for this fucking bundle of joy. I’m tired of waiting. I want to exhale, damn it! I’m tired of holding in hope, postponing joy, being happy for every pregnant woman around me while I’m secretly drowning in agony WAITING.

I don’t want to fucking wait anymore!!!!

That being said, the good news is, perhaps I can get my fat ass back on Weight Watchers or something similar and try to shed a few of these IVF pounds. The combination of drugs, water retention, and the healing powers of chocolate have added a lot a poundage to these child-bearing hips, and I’d really like to get back to my “summer” weight. Taking six weeks off drugs, relaxing, maybe getting back to regular exercise (when I’m not carrying around ovaries the size of basketballs).

Wouldn’t it be deeply ironic if I got pregnant waiting? Oh wait—that’s the stupid Hope Addict talking. Meet me at my place at 10, I’m gonna kill that bitch.

35/27/17

Why didn't anyone tell me how much it was going to hurt?

By the time I got to the doctor's office yesterday for my egg retrieval, my ovaries were so large and putting so much pressure on my abdomen that I couldn't sit comfortably. When I went back for a pre-retrieval ultrasound, they were so large they wouldn't fit onto the screen. The Slavic tech (my doc hires the weirdest folks) said "I veel very sorry for the vone who had to measure all you vollicles." Yeah, but no one's feeling sorry for me for carrying them around!

They took me back to an area of the office I hadn't been to before, and it suddenly hit me (as I saw everyone walking around in those paper suits you usually only see in movies) SHIT! I'm getting surgery! They shoved me into a room, told me to take off all my clothes except my bra and my socks (sheesh) and put little blue booties on my feet and a puffy marshmallow hat to cover my hair, and a large paper dress to put on (kudos to them for actually having one large enough to cover my big old body).

There was much ado about rooms, so they sat me down in one with a blanket and told me to wait. I tried to pray, to ask for peace, but I was scared to death and found it hard to find any sort of spiritual presence in that place. It was blue and cold, and I felt very alone. Off in the distance, I heard a male voice say "We got 14!" and a woman exclaiming in delight.

Eventually, someone came in to put in an IV, but she was totally incompetent and just succeeded in hurting me repeatedly. She finally gave up in disgust and said the anesthesiologist would have to do it. My hand hurt for a long time after she left, and it distracted me for a bit.

Finally, they took me into the right room, and the anesthesiologist was there (she'd called me the night before and told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight--not even chewing gum! I was like, who eats chewing gum after midnight?). She got the IV in and soon enough the cool fluid crept into my veins. There was much fussing about positioning me, and they strapped my legs down, and laid me back and I was gone.

After wild dreams I can't remember, a voice told me to wake up. I remember sliding off the seat, strong arms guiding me, and they led me to a bed next door. I then heard someone say, "How many did we get? 35" and I said, "Did they say 35?" I drifted for a minute or two until I became aware of the stabbing pain in my abdomen.

I told the nurse and she came back with a script for Tylenol 3. Normally, as a recovering person, I would have turned it down, but the pain was so excruciating I didn't. A little while later, they told me to change, and that they'd call my husband back to get me. I got dressed and waited.

My husband was so stressed that my best friend came out to be with him while I was in surgery. Thank god she was there, because I couldn't comfort him in his worry. All I could do was try to swallow my own fear. Apparently, hunger got the best of them and they were just returning from eating when I got out. For a few minutes, I sat in the lobby, feeling very sorry for myself. They showed up before it could get too bad.

The drive home was awful. We live about 40 minutes from the clinic, and every bump in the road was agony. Once home, my husband filled the script and after taking a pill I managed to fall asleep for a few hours--after vomiting, or attempting to, several times.

By the late afternoon, I was able to get downstairs. I took the Tylenol 3 throughout the day, watched TV and drifted. By 11, I was able to go up to bed.

This morning, I woke up feeling much better. The pressure is less, although I still feel it, and the pain and cramping much better. I will hopefully be able to get the Tylenol 3 out of the house by tomorrow (but I'm reluctant to let it go yet today).

I feel ok, now, about not doing the embryo transfer later this week. Truthfully, I am not a welcoming home to an embryo right now. I am full of pain and uncomfortable. I'm also still on the verge of OHSS, and OHSS gets worse if you're pregnant. I will have a chance to heal, relax, and by my next cycle create a safe and loving home for my little embryos.

And I have a lot of them. 35 eggs were collected (holy fucking shit), 27 were good, and 17 fertilized. I'm hoping, some time soon, to feel like this was worth it. Because in all honesty, right now, I can't imagine doing it again. My hat is off to those women who've gone through multiple IVF attempts. You are all stronger than I am.

31

I’m back from my weekend booty shaking, although it was somewhat subdued to the fact that I feel like absolute crap thanks to the stupid fertility drugs and my giant ovaries. Plus, my hip decided to throw itself out again, so I was a lumpy, whiny little bitch wandering around the inner harbor of Baltimore very, very uncomfortable.

The good news is, however, in my bloated and painful wanderings, I visited the incomparably fabulous American Visionary Museum. This museum features works by the disenfranchised--the disabled, the old, the crazy. While some of the work was unimpressive, the stories about each artist blew me away. There were beautiful charcoal drawings by a young man with autism, embroideries chronicling the saga of a young Jewish woman during the holocaust, whole families built out of cardboard boxes, and much more. I was nearly in tears through the whole exhibit.

I did end up in tears in the gift shop. I was looking for a print by a particular artist, but instead came across a pair of Goody Goody Baby Shoes. I picked them up, because my friend’s baby wears them, and was shocked to discover that they had little pictures of trains on them. I immediately burst into tears, showed them to my best friend (who was with me, thank god) and ran out of the store.

My husband, you see, LOVES trains. In the last few years, he has rekindled his childhood love of trains and begun to photograph every train he sees. He’s an avid train watcher, and has amassed thousands of photos of freight engines from all over the city we live in, plus everywhere we travel (no model trains though—that would mean d-i-v-o-r-c-e). So those shoes were too much for my gonal-f, repronex, and cetrodide riddled brain.

I can’t wait for this to be over.

And it almost is. After my Saturday ultrasound, it was decided that I would wait to trigger until Sunday night at midnight, and then my egg retrieval would be Tuesday (tomorrow). I’m completely terrified, because so much is still left to go wrong, but I’m kind of excited to see what they harvest down there.

Cause I have—count ‘em—31 follicles.

That’s right. Thirty-fucking-one.

I’m shocked—and so is everyone else. My ovaries are behaving like they’re only 21 years old—bad ovaries! I realize that I am polycystic (without being PCOS—just have poly cystic ovaries, but no syndrome to blame my big flabby belly on), so we might not have that many good eggs, but still. Sheesh.

Oddly enough, I feel kinda guilty about this flush of follies. I know so many women that are classified as poor-responders (shitty fucking title if I’ve ever heard one), not to mention those that can’t ovulate at all, that I feel like I’ve somehow stolen all of their eggs, and that’s why I have so many.

I’m also terrified that I’m up for OHSS (ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome). I’m already really uncomfortable—my soccer ball looking ovaries are nearing soccer ball size, and taking up a lot of room in my abdomen. I know that can get worse, too, if you’re pregnant. Well, this is a worry for another day.

I’ll try to post tomorrow night and let ya’ll know how many we collected. Wish me luck!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just got off the phone with the IVF nurse. Apparently, my progesterone level is too high to do the embryo transfer this cycle. They’ll freeze the embryos and implant them next cycle.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The Race is On

So I’m lying in bed last night, not really sleeping, and it occurred to me that the IVF cycle is like racing with hurdles. You know—you begin the race having made the decision to proceed with IVF. So the gun goes off, and the announcer says:

“Well, Jim, it appears she’s in for the long haul. Here comes the first hurdle—getting her period so she can begin injectibles—whoop—she sails right over that one!

Here comes the next hurdle—will she respond to the medications—look at her go! She’s flying right over that one! She’d better slow down to keep it up for the whole race. Let’s drop her Gonal-F dose one amp a day.

And she’s gearing up for the next jump…can she do it will…will the 6546514687 follicles she has actually become mature enough to be harvested during the egg retrieval?

Well, let’s cut to a quick commercial, and then it’s back to the race!”

Hurdles left to jump are: mature enough follies before LH level gets too high; eggs being viable; sperm being viable; eggs fertilizing; eggs dividing into little embryos; embryos being viable; embryos surviving transfer; embryos deciding to stick around in the uterus for a while; embryos becoming fetuses; fetuses deciding to stay around a while; then, hopefully, someday, the hurdles of parenting will begin.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been running two fucking years and my legs are way past tired.

____________________________________________________________________________

To keep with the sports analogies (an odd choice, for me, I abhor sports of all kinds), my abdomen is currently sporting two small but lovely soccer balls, right near where my ovaries are.

At this morning’s dildocam session (a cuntless one—yeah!), I saw my follicles for the first time clearly. They are all compacted together, and really do look like soccer balls. The tech was like, “Sheesh, you should be a donor with all these follicles!” As I was getting dressed, I saw she’s left the measurements for my elusive left ovary up on the screen. I had one at 16mm, and then 11 between 11 and 13mm. That’s right. 11. On one ovary.

Now, I do know the likelihood of all those follies maturing, all those eggs being accessible/viable etc isn’t all that great, but it does look like I could have enough for both a fresh transfer and at least one frozen embryo transfer. Here’s hoping.

And speaking of hope, my Hope Addict is all kinds of out of control right now. Seriously. She is whacked out on optimism juice, and she is filling my head with all kinds of bad thoughts.

Like yesterday, when I was trying to buy some giant bloat-covering clothing, I suddenly found myself in the maternity section. I swear to Holy Hellboy (saw that movie this weekend—loved it! The things that could be done with a big red man with a tail…mmmm!), that I did not walk into that section of my own accord. Not that it mattered—all the maternity clothes were for skinny women. Where the hell do fat pregnant ladies get their clothes? See? There she is again, just when I’m thinking about maternity clothes I’m thinking I’d better hop onto Google and find out where to get some fat preggers close. That sneaky bitch!

Fortunately, there are things that help keep that witch in check. One of my buddies I met on line is losing one of the twins she conceived through IVF. My heart is breaking for her. What a difficult loss to grieve, when the other twin is still there. Here’s to the idea that Twin One will become Twin Two’s angel and keep it safe for the whole term of her pregnancy.

____________________________________________________________________________

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m off to shake my booty this weekend (barring egg retrieval being on Saturday) so I probably won’t have a chance to post. Will ya miss me? I know I’m going crazy without hearing from Julie this last week!

And Here We go...

I'm totally freaking out!!!!

Ok, just got off the phone with the nurse. She suggested I do the third medicine, cetrotide (which slows down the production of the LH hormone) ASAP cause my LH was 12. So I made my poor husband totally panic to run the meds down to me at work. I have to take it again in the am, and hopefully this will keep the LH from continuing to rise.

I asked her if she had any idea when the retrieval was going to be, and it could be as soon as Sat, but more likely Sunday! Which means I will shake my booty all night long at the convention on Saturday night, then leave Baltimore at dawn to go get a retrieval on Easter Sunday (please insert rising from the dead jokes here). Sheesh!

Here's the cool part: IF the eggs are viable, IF they fertilize, etc the ET would be on Wednesday. My beta would be twelve days later on April 26...which happens to be my birthday.

Now, you don't think god would be such an asshole that I'd get a negative beta on my birthday, do you?

Yeah, me too.

I’m really fired up.

Yesterday I received this article about the wider implications of the new federal law regarding feticide. Read it, and then come on back. Note this, in particular: the law does NOT make it a federal crime to attack a pregnant woman--just her fetus.

So I guess we shouldn’t be shocked, then, when we discover that similar laws are being used against pregnant women, particularly those that suffer from mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction. Now, this absolutely infuriates me. Because I’m in recovery, I’ve known many women who only got sober because of their pregnancies. They all received treatment—and went on to delivery normal, healthy babies. These babies have grown into normal, healthy children with wonderful recovering mothers.

What scares me the most is the judge’s refusal to allow these women to get treatment. Some astronomical number—like 80%--of people in jail are there because of either being caught with drugs, selling drugs (usually to support some sort of habit) or committing a crime to get money to buy more drugs.

And prison isn’t working. Trust me, you can get drugs in jail. If you’re lucky, you can also get one meeting a month. Maybe some counseling. But what you can’t get in jail is treatment. So instead of providing addicts an opportunity to get help, all they get is more and more addicted.

But I digress. The fact is, what’s next? Will I be prosecuted for eating sushi while pregnant if I contract a parasite? Or get Lysteria from blue cheese dressing? Will I be taken away, still bleeding from delivery, my child wrenched out of my arms, in handcuffs?

This has to stop. Like Julia, I’m planning to be in Washington, DC on April 25 for the march. I hope I’ll see you there.

___________________________________________________________________________________

On a totally different note, I’d like to discuss the power of protein. I’ve done a little research (you know, on Google) and read several reports of eating increased protein while doing IVF stimulation. They’re mostly anecdotal, but very interesting.

Since starting injectibles, I’ve had a great deal of nausea, and the only things appealing to me are carbs—and lots of them (course, this can be true on any given day). Yesterday, you may have noticed, I was having a very bad day. This was magically cured last night when I ate a slab of meat roughly the size of Rhode Island. It turned out, I was cranky cause I was hungry—hungry for meat, apparently. I apologize to my vegetarian readers—perhaps a pound or two of tofu would have done the same thing.

So this morning I ignored the nausea and started the day with a healthy breakfast of eggs, sausage, and French toast (ok, egg beaters, lite sausage, and whole grain French toast—it really was healthy). I feel much better. I haven’t had even the inkling of an urge to smash a customer’s face into the glass display cases.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Just a brief update on the follicle party going on in my ovaries: I had another appointment this morning with The Cunt, and both the amazing power of steak and the fact that I had so many follicles to measure kept conversation to a minimum. I could actually see them on the monitor—wowza. I have at least six between 10 and 14mm on the right, and at least that many in my “inaccessible” left ovary. I suspect I’ll be starting the third injectible medication today and I have appointments every morning for the next three days. Yee ha! I guess retrieval will be next week sometime. Hopefully I’ll know soon.

Beached Whale Syndrome

The Bloat has arrived.

I woke up this morning, on day six of injectible IVF drugs, and I got dressed for work in a nice comfy shirt I wear all the time and it was tight. Ok, not really tight, but my lower abdomen was definitely distended. While this is an expected side effect of the drugs, it still sucks major league ass. I already feel crappy enough about my body without the arrival of twenty pounds of water retention blowing up my gut so I look like a beached whale.

I have hot plans this weekend, and those plans do not include having a whale-sized belly. I’m off to a convention for sober young people (I’m old at 35, but I love ‘em). This involves lots of hanging out, dancing all night long, and watching guys try to pick up my tall, beautiful, skinny best friend. While I don’t want to be picked up (although, occasionally, it’s still nice to be asked), I do want to be able to shake my booty (one of my very favorite things to do) without feeling awkward and ugly.

Apparently, the bloat is all comprised of some sort of strange emotion juice, as I’m also cranky and irritable; the idea of actually helping the customers of the shop I manage made me want to put their head through a glass display case. I needed a nap after walking a block and a half to get lunch. I should, I suppose, be grateful that I could even eat lunch, after three days of nausea so bad during the day that the only thing I could keep down was Good N’ Plenty’s. Do you know how hard those are to find?

I’m amazed how quickly my mood can change. A co-worker told me that she was putting in her notice and I wanted so badly to cry and five seconds later I’m in the smashing-glass-display-cases-with-customers-head kind of mood. My husband will be driving me to work and I’ll run from sweet to pissed off to weepy to laughing in .02 seconds. You should hear how he burns rubber after I get out of the car!

This is not fun. Why did I think it would be fun? Have I not read the postings of lots and lots of women who have suffered through this already? Did I think I’d be exempt?

As I’ve said before during this process, this better be one cute ass baby when it gets here.

She's a big fat HO

The Cunt, it turns out, is a big fat silly ho who knows nothing. Yeah! I'm fine! Tons of follicles! Why, it's a follicle party down there! All is well.

Penetration and Poetry

Number of times I’ve been penetrated by a foreign object since Thursday:

3 Blood Levels Taken
3 Dildocam Ultrasounds
10 Acupuncture Needles (4 with electrical hookups!)
4 Repronex Injections
4 Gonal-F Injections
1 Sex with my husband (although he’s neither foreign or an object, but you get my drift)

TOTAL: 25

I’m beginning to wonder if that Ms. Magazine article was right. I feel like a weepy, nauseous pincushion.

____________________________________________________________________________

So at this morning’s dilcocam/vampire session, I was stuck with the ultrasound technician I refer to fondly as (sensitive readers, cover your eyes!) The Cunt. She is a deeply angry woman, which I respect, but she covers it up with a pathological and creepy faux cheerfulness. She also knows everything, and contradicts everything you say so she can show you how she knows everything.

Today she asked me about my medications, correcting me throughout: “Repronex in the evenings starting Thursday,” I say. “One vial?” she says. “Yes,” I say. “Every night?” “Yes, yes, yes.” “So that’s one Thursday, one Friday…” etc, etc. Then we do the same thing with the Gonal-F. The worst thing is, she’s holding my freaking chart in her hand.

After we were done, she tells me that my left ovary isn’t accessible. She says this reproachfully, like I’ve deliberately moved it so she can’t see. This has been an on/off issue throughout my infertility struggle. Apparently, my left ovary is very, very shy and hides behind my uterus, particularly when The Cunt is the technician. The other technician poked my stomach once and made it appear just fine, so I’m not too worried.

But then she went on to tell me that I have one follicle. Now, to the IVF patient, that might as well be a death knell. That reeks of ‘cancelled cycle’ and lots of other nasty things. But the thing is, the IVF nurse I spoke to on Saturday actually dropped my Gonal-F dose because I had A LOT of follicles. So what the fuck? Today I’m just not going to worry about it and wait to hear from the IVF nurse. I’m only four days into injectibles, so lots could change in the next week.

Of course, that’s if the IVF nurse is still speaking to me. When she called me last week about starting the injectibles, she said I should give the Repronex in the “fleshy part of my buttocks.” I thought for a second and said, “Um, isn’t this supposed to be an intramuscular injection?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, the needle is only an inch and a half long, and frankly, you’re gonna need more than that if you want to reach the muscle in my big ass.” She said, “Uh…” I said, “How’s about the tops of my thighs?” She said, “Uh, ok.” I tell you, I wanted to give my big fat ass a hug after that.

____________________________________________________________________________________

So this weekend I went over to visit my neighbor’s baby. I hadn’t seen her in a whole week, and she has developed two really cool things: two top teeth, and penchant for hip-hop.

This baby, I shit you not, actually sticks out her one-year-old booty and puts a hand up in the air the minute she hears Ludacris or Eminem. I don’t believe there is a single thing cuter or funnier on the planet.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Wish me luck. Tonight I’m giving a reading of my poetry and creative non-fiction for the first time in a while. I’m excited, and think that three or four people might actually show up. I’m thinking of reading my “two crimes” blog entry as well. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Gratuitous Use of Cute Dog Photos

Cute (the big one's mine, the little one his best friend)

Scary, but funny. No animals were harmed during this picture (in fact, the top one is from a year later)

FDA and White Trash

Dear FDA:

As a woman currently undergoing treatment for fertility problems, I ask you please to consider speeding the release of the new “pen-style” injection method for the medication Gonal-F. This new system will make the medication considerable easier to self-administer.

While you’re at it, I’d be happy to connect you with someone who would be glad to smash the kneecaps of the idiot that invented the current glass ampule system. Once they are writing in agony, I recommend they be given pain medication that can only be taken once they snap the incredibly fragile necks of several ampules of sterile water which then has to be sucked up in a syringe (tiny glass fragments and all) and mixed with several ampules of the pain medication. Once they finally do that, I recommend that the medication be given intramuscularly, and cause burning stinging pain while given, and leave giant hot welts.

Please let me know if you think this would help.

Sincerely,

The Girl at Wasted Birth Control

____________________________________________________________________________________

This has been one of those weeks that make me glad it’s Friday. Between the agony of waiting for news yesterday and the endlessly cloudy days, I need a break. Thankfully, it’s the weekend, and new movies are out for my edification.

My husband and I can only be described as movie whores. We see at least one a week, and there have been weeks we’ve seen three. We like them all—art house films (a fav this year was The Cooler), epics (it took three months, but we finally broke down and saw The Last Samurai), and absolute crap (my fav, Underworld--give me vampires any day). We’ve considered becoming reviewers, but since we have little in the way of discerning taste, we might not be terribly informative.

At least once a weekend, we go out to the suburbs (where the movie theaters are so much nicer than the city) and eat at some horrendous chain restaurant (I have an inordinate fondness for Cracker Barrel) and watch a terrible movie. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can even add in a trip to Target. Fortunately, we can blame all of this on genetics.

I’m half white trash, as is my husband. My father lives in the Southwest in a trailer, smokes three packs a day, and is a stand-on-the-corner-of-my-property-with-a-shotgun republican. My husband’s grandmother worked most of her life in an underwear factory, although his father managed to escape and become a rather well known investment banker and money pundit, and his mother is European. My mother has a PhD, as did her father. My grandmother got her master’s degree by the time she was 20 in 1926. My uncle is a lawyer. My half sisters both had children really young and live in houses with cars up on blocks in the front lawn.

All of this adds up to two individuals, both writers, who own about a million books (we really do) but go to an average of two movies a week. It will be so interesting to see what this genetic mix creates in our offspring: a talk-show-host lawyer? A doctor who moonlights as a stripper? Any suggestions?

I'm a big psycho freak

Nothing is wrong with me. I'm just fine. I don't know what was in the brain of the ultrasound tech; maybe she was having a bad day. I got more and more nervous as the day went on because the callback came late. Turns out, the reason the nurse called so late is that the IVF nurses always call after 4pm; those plain ol' IUI/general nurses call by 2pm (unless your beta is negative), so all that fear was for nothing. Sigh of relief.

So then I got to get all nervous/anxious about giving myself the first injection. Whew! I lived through it, but it was a dramatic ordeal. The good news is, I've completely lost the ability to feel comfortable injecting myself. Chalk one up to recovery!

Hope Gasps For Breath

This morning I went in for cycle day two blood work and ultrasound. HA1 reared her ugly head long enough for me to joke about getting a beta, just in case, and the technician went ahead and checked it off.

During my ultrasound, always a blast during your period, the tech did Doppler (who knew I had weather down there?). Apparently they use this to check the blood flow of the uterus and abdomen (why would they wait until IVF to make sure the uterus isn’t a dried up old raisin not getting enough blood flow?). This particular tech is the one I like (and not the falsely sunny bitch I usually get), and is pretty chatty and willing to tell you what she sees.

So when she asked me “Did you have a baby?” during the Doppler, I got worried. “Uh, no,” I replied, “Everything look all right?” She said, “Well, the nurse will call you later.”

She said something else after, something about how the nurse will tell me when to start medications, but all I heard was the lack of an answer to my question. So already, I’m completely, utterly prepared for it to be terrible news; not only is this IVF cycle cancelled, but I will never, never be able to have my own child.

I say this not just with utter pessimism (die hope die), but because so far, with the exception of the HSG, every single test or procedure has revealed only bad news. First sperm assessment, bad. First cycle tracked by ultrasound with no meds, bad. IUI procedure shows that sperm doesn’t wash well. Etc, etc, etc.

I wasn’t prepared for an extra test today (which I guess is good, I didn’t worry in advance), so I didn’t have my shields up.

Now I’m just scared. Really, really scared.

So I went to church. Before I came to work, I stopped in the Cathedral across the street to light a candle to the Virgin Mary, who is currently subbing as my higher power. So I put my dollar in the poor box, and picked a candle, and lit it. It doesn’t go on, except for an occasional, anemic flicker. So I hit the button repeatedly until I get a nice steady light. Already spooked, I sit in the pew across from the candles and try to meditate, but then a janitor flicks on the floor buffer (they are always cleaning when I go there), and my candle goes out.

So I begin to cry (I do have my period, you know, and I haven’t had any chocolate today). I’m crying over the child I’ve decided I’m never having. I’m crying cause I feel sorry for myself, and for my husband, who for once is full of relentless optimism (as he dropped me off at the Cathedral, he said, “I just know you’ll be pregnant in a month. I’m 1000% sure!” This from a man who believes the end of the world is coming and we deserve it). I thought of my friend Judy who died a few months ago from breast cancer, leaving her sixteen year old daughter, and how much worse they have it than I do, and cried about how pathetic I am.

Often after I cry I feel better. Not today. Today I just feel heavy with sadness. Of course, all of this will probably change when I hear from the nurse this afternoon. By the end of the day, I expect to be in a full on panic about my first injection. I know this current sadness isn’t real. I expect it could be cured by chocolate; I’d better go get some. Perhaps HA2 can be coaxed back into life.

By the way, after the janitor shut off the floor buffer, my candle went back to a steady light. Hope is still here, just gasping for breath.