Filed under: Uncategorized
We did IUIs the weekend of May 23rd and May 24th and on June 7th, two days before Taylor’s birthday, when I was two days late, I took two pregnancy tests, about an hour apart from each other. They were both positive. (Yes, the previous post, dated June 9th, was a bit of a lie, since I was not ready to disclose my pregnancy at that time, but not entirely a lie – I was, after those IUIs, very much tired and wanting to take a break, and very well may have had the IUIs not been successful.)
On Saturday, Feburary 13th, at 6:27am, after 40 weeks of a very easy pregnancy, and 49 hours of labour, Clara was born. She weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce and according to everyone we know, looks just like her father.
Her story is here.
Filed under: You are wanted
A couple of weeks ago, when I was standing in the kitchen making dinner, I mentioned to my husband that if things didn’t work out at the clinic this month, that I was thinking about taking a break. I didn’t realize how hard all of this has been on me, physically, mentally and emotionally until I blogged about it last week. It was only then that I realized how tired I am.
So I’m taking a break, from everything. From the clinic, from writing on here, from talking about it, from thinking about it. It seems like every month it’s an endless cycle of repetition, and as I said to a friend of mine the other week, I’m starting to bore myself.
I don’t want to be told I haven’t tried hard enough, that I’ve giving up, that I can do this, that I’m stronger than I think I am.
It’s nothing that I haven’t told myself before and yet, at some point, somethings got to give.
I keep waiting for what I assume to be the inevitable and when I find myself thinking about the opposite, I put a stop to those thoughts, mostly because I don’t think that I can handle the disappointment again, for the what? The 20th time? Is that right? Has it been that long? Last month marked two years that I’ve been off the pill but I don’t think we really began to think about trying until late in the summer. But yeah, two years minus four months is approximately 21 months. Of course, during the first 12 months, the expectation was a lot less than it is now. I’d read all the articles that said that it could take a woman up to a year to get pregnant after being on the pill. I wasn’t worried about it then, I thought it was normal, that I just needed to get to that year mark and then everything would fall into place. Of course, back then, I didn’t know about the endo so a lot of that waiting and that disappointment was in vain – because it wasn’t going to happen, not then.
There was a lot of arguing a couple of weeks ago – the weekend we went for the IUIs and I was told by my husband that it’s like living with two different people lately. For two weeks of the month, I’m fine – I’m optimisitic and excited and willing to think that it’s going to happen, sooner than later. Then, I flip and there’s two weeks when I’m testy and irritable and I snap easily and just not a very nice person in general. It’s hard, because in the beginning, I would claim that I spent two weeks of the month aware of our situation, which amounted to half my waking life. The other two weeks, I’d mostly forget about it.
That’s changed in the past few months, with the endo being treated and the IUIs. It’s a full time job now, it’s all consuming. I get my period, which lasts for four days or so (day one to day four of my cycle), I go on the fertility drugs from day three to day seven, I’m in the clinic on day 10, and usually there every day after that until about day 14 or so, unless I get a day off which sometimes happens. Around day 15 I get my HCG shot, I trigger and then we IUI. That particular week is hell as I try and coordinate my appointments at the clinic with my work schedule while trying not to let myself get stressed about it. I’m exhausted that week, I don’t get enough sleep, I eat poorly and exercise less. Days 16 straight through to about day 28, I count each and every day. I wait. I never forget that I am waiting. And then we begin again, counting days, marking things on my calendar. I’ve even taken to counting weeks ahead to make sure any plans we have to travel don’t interfere with when I need to be at the clinic. It’s all the counting that I do these days. Day one, day two, day three. IUI (day 14) plus the two week wait (14 days) and that’s when I will either get my period or I can go in for a test. A friend of mine asked me last week if I could remember when last month she had her period because she’d lost track and I had to laugh. I spend enough time tracking my own cycle, when someone else gets her period is the last thing on my mind.
The best days of the month for me are day eight and nine. I’m not on my period, I’ve finished my Serophene, I have my days 10 to 15 appointments booked. I know that I’m not pregnant, I’m prepared for the next two to three weeks. At that point, there’s nothing more for me to do, it’s out of my control. Good days, eight and nine.
My husband made a comment to a doctor once about what he saw as side effects from the Serophene. He observed that I was cranky and irritable while taking the drugs. I argued that it wasn’t the drugs making me cranky and irritable, it was the whole process. This stupid treatment that I’m losing faith in with every passing month, so much so that if things don’t work out, I’m not sure I want to go back next week. I’m tired from all the appointments and the needles and the ultrasounds and being told that this SHOULD work. I’m tired of spending almost $600 each month for nothing. I’m tired of constantly being on edge, of trying to balance my work life with my fertility treatment and not being able to be upfront about it and get the support that I need. Maybe the Serophene does affect my hormones, just like how my period affects my mood even days before it finally arrives. But I think all the appointments and all the poking and the prodding and the amount of wrong information I receive at the clinic has just as much of an impact on my mental and emotional state as the physical things. In some ways, more so.
I’ve been trying harder these past two weeks to not think about the fact that I am waiting, so that it doesn’t affect my mood and how I deal with people, my husband especially. I like to think that I’ve been better, that I’ve been less stressed, that it’s not obvious that I am counting days even when I am. I am trying to smile more and laugh more and be that happy person that I used to be before I began my treatment last year. I miss my happy-go-lucky self.
It’s really, really hard, but I’m trying, I am. I get that I’ve been up and I’ve been down, I’ve been all over the place and that it’s making it hard to live with me. I see it, when I push too much and he finally flares and then we argue and I’m left drained. It’s not a good way to be. I’m trying really hard, because more than anything, I want us to be able to survive this and for all of this to be worth it.
We went to the clinic on the weekend for another round of IUI. This is our third time doing IUI, and our last chance before Dr. E wants to sit down again with us and reevaluate our plans. Is it enough to say that I don’t want to have that meeting with her, that I want things to work out this month around? Is it enough to cling to the idea that the first IUI we did likely didn’t work because of the endometrosis, and that the second one probably didn’t work because I was still recovering from the laparoscopy AND the follicle that we were chasing was potentially too big and overmature and therefore not viable?
Is it enough to say that I NEED this to work, because I don’t know how much more of this I can take?
Last week when I went to the clinic for my day 10 appointment I had two follicles showing – one was a 1.0 and the other 1.6. I was told to take the next day off, and went back on Thursday for my day 12 appointment. The 1.6 was a 1.9 and the 1.0 was a 1.3. Let’s give it one more day, Dr. G suggested. When I expressed my concern about waiting, and explained what happened the month before, he read through my chart and we spent at least fifteen minutes or so talking about my treatment and the things that I’ve done and tried. He’s one of the more conservative doctors, Dr. G explained, and he doesn’t like forcing HCG shots on women to trigger ovulation when there’s a chance she’ll do it on her own. He wanted to wait, he said, to give my body the chance to do it’s thing. When I said that I was worried the 1.9 would have a crazy growth spurt and grow to 2.3 or 2.4 overnight (which is what happened last month) he said that he didn’t think it would because the growth rate this month was normal but even if it DID he said it wouldn’t worry him. His rule of thumb is that anything between 1.5 and 2.5 is of a viable size so we had a bit of wiggle room. I decided to listen to him.
On Friday the 1.9 had become a 2.1, a nice, round size and the 1.3 had gotten to 1.6. This time around, waiting worked out for us – if I had triggered the day before, we would have only had the 1.9 to chase after but because we waited the extra day, the 1.3 grew enough to be in the running. Instead of chasing one egg, we were now after two. And Dr. E has said before to us that we’d want to reconsider IUI if we only had one egg so to go in for the IUI on Saturday and Sunday with two potentials was promising.
Dr. G did both IUIs this weekend, and after the first one he sat and talked to us for a good fifteen minutes or so, while I laid on the examination bed, covered in my paper sheet and crossed my fingers. He answered questions that we had about count and motility and egg production and odds and percentages. He explained what the next step of the process would involve (injections), and talked a bit about how IVF works and the success rate with it (only 30-35% – would you spend $10K on something with only a 35% chance of paying off?). When he left, we both felt so much more clear on our next steps and what we would and wouldn’t do. On the Sunday, after Dr. G did my IUI, he patted me on the arm as he left and even though it wasn’t much, even though it was probably something that he did without thinking, it made the whole process seem a little less clinical.
I’m hopeful this month. Everything is as it should be, there’s no reason for it NOT too work. I was rested and relaxed for all my appointments this month, I smiled and chatted with all the technicians and all the nurses and the doctors. I didn’t tell anyone off. I’ve kept my work stress at a bare minimum, not getting worked up about the crazy amount of work that needs to get done, or the staff that aren’t cooperating with me to give me the things I need to get things done. I’m doing as much as I can, adopting an I’m-Just-One-Person attitude and if stuff doesn’t get done, then at least it’s not getting done for a reason and that reason’s not me.
I’ve got another post coming – about the effect that this is having on me mentally and emotionally but I’ll save it for another day. For now, I’m going to just sit and wait and hope that the next 14 days go by quickly.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep it together when I’m in and out of the clinic as frequently as I am and as exhausted as I’ve been the past week. Friday morning (day 13) at the clinic was not a good scene and I lost it with everyone – the nurse, the doctor and my husband who I meanly told to stop talking at one point because I was ready to lose it officially.
We took a risk waiting on Thursday, waiting to see if that second follicle (the 1.6) would catch up to the 2.0, therefore giving us two follicles to go after with the IUIs this weekend. On Friday morning, the 1.6 was still a 1.6 and the 2.0 had grown to a 2.4. The doctors have said before that the ideal range is 1.8 to 2.2 or so (maybe they said 2.3) so I took the news of the 2.4 very badly. There was, of course, the underlying current of blame that if I had been worried on Thursday that the 2.0 would grow too big, that I shouldn’t have deferred to the doctor who had my chart and I should have insisted that I got the shot Thursday and had the IUIs Friday and Saturday rather than Saturday and Sunday, which I’ve done.
If my only screw up in this process is deferring to the doctor who should be the expert in this type of thing, then whatever. I’m so over this being about me and my poorly functioning body. What frustrated me the most about Friday was when I asked the doctor if he had a medical explanation to explain why the 2.4 could have had the crazy growth spurt that it did, and he had nothing. And maybe there isn’t an explanation but doesn’t leave me feeling that hopeful about the doctors that are treating me. I guess I just can’t believe that with all the advancement they’ve made in the fertility world, an egg’s unusual growth activity is still a mystery to them..
We debated whether or not to do the IUIs this weekend and went ahead with them despite the fact that the odds aren’t really in our favor with the follicle being the size it is and the second one not being big enough. I went in for my first IUI yesterday morning and the second one this morning – they said that you can continue with normal activity after an IUI – but I did that last IUI and this time around, I’m being cautious (perhaps without reason). Yesterday, other than a quick stop at Home Depot to pick up some soil and compost for the garden I took a two hour nap after having some lunch and I’ve just had a late breakfast and will probably sleep for a couple of hours before I get up and go into work. (Working on a Sunday afternoon/evening sucks almost as bad as working until 3am on a Saturday night – thank god this time next week will be in Florida and I’ll be far, far away from the clinic and the stirrups and the constant needles). I’d hoped to go for a run this afternoon but being as tired as I am, and having just had the IUI, I’ll forgive myself for not going.
The male Dr. E (who did both my IUIs this weekend) confirmed this morning that I had ovulated that nice big egg and he seemed to think it was a fantastic size so maybe all hope is not lost, but I have to say that this is probably the month when I’m not being overly optimistic. I know I need to think positive, but I’m running on empty right now and I just want to NOT think about it for the next two weeks. That might be kind of hard to do when all I have going on after we leave for Florida Thursday evening is really sitting on a beach and doing some snorkelling.
And I should also mention – this morning, B, the lovely bloodwork tech, told me she was crossing everything she had that the next time she saw me it would be for a pregnancy test that would turn out to be positive. I know it’s their job to be positive and keep their patients motivated but she sounded so sincere when she said what she did. She’s one of the good ones at the clinic – she remembers my name without having to look at the little card that I have to show each time and last week, she commented on how great my skin looked (she has seen how severe my eczema can be when she pulls up my sleeve).
I had two other thoughts this morning while I was at the clinic – the first, was when I was looking at the wall of baby photos next to the reception desk where I was paying for the IUIs and all I could think about was how desperately I wanted to have a photo on that well with the rest of them. The second was when I was in the stirrups and having the IUI done – I was suddenly aware of just how many strangers have seen my vagina in the past six months – and how it doesn’t bother me (anymore) in the slightest to be amongst strangers, naked from the waist down.
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings this week were my Day 10 and 11 appointments and both mornings the ultrasound tech that I saw was M, who has been one of my favorites since I began treatment. On Tuesday morning I was reminded why I like her so much as I laid on the bed and chatted away with her – and when I told her about what had happened at the clinic last month, she was appropriately shocked at the negligence of the ultrasound technician who misentered my data into the computer and caused the big mix-up. M was more than just appropriately shocked though – she went one step further and pulled up my results from last month to take a look and see what happened, as if trying to see for herself how something like that could have occurred.
That never should have happened, she said to me, looking up from the screen.
I know, right? I said and she sighed heavily.
M went on to tell me how frustrating it is to work with people that don’t do their jobs properly – techs that don’t take their time and rush through as many patients as they can, as if it’s some big competition to see who can see the most patients in the morning. And I shouldn’t get her started on the nurses, who don’t bother reading the notes that the techs will sometimes make to a patient’s file so when they’re in there discussing your results, they maybe don’t have all the information that they could. I was floored as I laid there and listen to her, because everything that I’ve been complaining about the past few cycles was all being validated by someone that actually worked there. Before, it was always the staff deferring the blame and somehow turning it back onto me, what I had done or hadn’t done properly. But not M. And then she mentioned how frustrating it was that the techs were processing patients much faster than the nurses and doctors could manage and they couldn’t keep up. Apparently, theres five techs that do ultrasounds and it takes a few minutes to process each patient. From there, those patients are all sent out to the waiting room where there’s usually two, sometimes three nurses who see the women before the doctor gets to them. And from there, there’s just ONE doctor who has anywhere from five to fifteen women waiting to see him or her. See how that works? It’s a funnel system.
Before I left the ultrasound room, M told me she was going to speak to her supervisor (T, who I have dealt with before and I really, really like) because she wanted to share with her what had happened to me the month before and to just be honest with her about how much time she had spent with me that morning. When I left, M said that she hoped that she would see me the next morning, because she wanted to see me through this cyce if she could.
This time, when I left the room and was near tears, it wasn’t because I’d been treated roughly, or scolded for not doing something properly – it was because I was actually being heard for once and that I felt like I was important. I stuck around the waiting room as long as I could, waiting to see a nurse and then the doctor, but after 15minutes I grew tired of waiting and asked the girl at the desk how many other women were ahead of me in the queue. When I heard that there were at least eight women ahead of me and that it’d be at least a 30 minute wait I said thanks but no thanks and left. I was planning on coming back the next day, regardless of what the nurse and doctor told me and I knew at day 10, there’d be no chance of anything happening.
When I went back the next day (yesterday, Day 11), I was once again assigned to M and as soon as I got in the room we started chatting like we were best friends. She seemed really happy to see me and I was ECSTATIC when I realized she was behind the door waiting for me. Yesterday I had three follicles developing, a 1.8 and two 1.3s and M told me this even before I left the room which I’ve been told the techs aren’t supposed to do.
This morning when I went in, it wasn’t M that was waiting behind the door for me but another ultrasound tech who I had bitched at last week on my Day 3 about how rough the techs always were and you betcha she remembered me and at first I worried that she would hold a grudge and that this ultrasound would be the worst ever but oddly enough, I must have gotten through to her because not only was she as gentle as she could be, she actually talked to me during the ultrasound – and not just about what she would be doing but about other things – like Abba (playing on the radio) and the type of music that her son listened too, and what I did for a living.
I was working from home today so I had the time to sit in the waiting room and waited to see the nurse and then the doctor. The doctor went through my results with me, sat longer than she probably needed to, told me that I was doing a great job with those follices (like I have a say in how they develop but hey, I’ll take the praise) and she said also that my lining was also doing nicely – it was at a thickness that pleased her apparently. The larger follicle was at 2.0 and one of the smaller ones was at 1.6 – the third one seemed to be stuck at 1.3 but she wasn’t too upset about it because she was much more interested in the two bigger ones. She recommended that we wait another day and give the 1.6 a chance to catch up, therefore increasing our odds this month and I was all like, whatever you think is best – I was just happy there were two follicles chugging along and not just the one (or none) that there’s been the past couple of months.
The plan for the next few days is for me to go back in tomorrow for my HCG shot and then we’ll go ahead with the IUIs on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. It’s been a crazy week of being at the clinic for 7:30 every morning – and then working 10 hour days since I’m in my MOST busy time of the year (and going away next week for two weeks) but there’s a certain relief that I’m feeling knowing that both IUIs will happen during the weekend and not during the week, when I would have been forced to reschedule a number of committments I have tomorrow morning.
So that’s where we’re at. I’m feeling much better about being at the clinic this week, and I know that’s in large part because of M and the care she took and the time she spent with me. But even the two doctors that I’ve seen this week have been very friendly and very attentive. I don’t know if my complaining has finally paid off and honestly, I hate being that “nightmare patient” that everyone dreads having to deal with but if the service that I – and other women – are getting is improving because someone is finally speaking up and raising hell than you know what? I’m more than happen to keep on being that person.
It’s so very hard, waiting.
Watching the clock, counting the days, wondering and waiting and wondering some more.
Two weeks of waiting feels like an eternity.
I found myself wishing that my period would show up early, just so I wouldn’t have to wait anymore. At least then, I would know and would no longer be waiting. No longer wondering.
It’s impossible for me to not to think about it; not thinking about it is not an option. Because I do think about it, all the time. For what feels like every minute of every hour of every day. Perhaps not actively thinking about it, but it’s still there.
The first signs of my period arrived on Friday evening, on Saturday it was progressing and the first full day of my cycle arrived on Sunday. I was back at the clinic for my Day 3 appointment this morning.
On Saturday morning, after getting home from the gym I laid on our bed and stared out the window at the morning sky beyond. It’s not self-pity that consumes me when I lay still like that, not wanting to talk to even my husband who will see me lying there and lay down next to me, his arm around my waist. It’s not self-pity; it’s this complete and total feeling of sadness that swallows me whole. I have yet to shed tears when my period has arrived, but sometimes I wish that I would – maybe breaking down and crying physically would get it out of my system a lot more effectively then staring out the window.
I know that I’m a lot stronger, emotionally and mentally, than a lot of other women that are going through what I am. I don’t burst into tears when I see a pregnant woman, I don’t have to avoid gatherings with friends or family if I know there’s going to be a baby present. Being around babies doesn’t bother me. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine came over with her baby so that I could take some photos for her. A few days later, when another friend of mine saw the photos, they asked if it wasn’t hard for me to spend the time with the baby, taking photo after photo. It didn’t bother me, I said. Not at all, why would it?
The opposite is true when I’m around my friend’s new baby, this sweet little bundle that nestles into me and sleeps against my chest, making those sweet little puff noises when she breathes while she sleeps. I’m not sad when I’m around her because I’m reminded of how much I want what I want and why I’m going through what I’m going through. It keeps me going, helps me to get up again and again for those god-forsaken early morning appointments.
Dr. E warned me that nothing might happen this cycle; it would have been too soon after my surgery. It’s why we weren’t more aggressive, we tried naturally and didn’t spend the money on an IUI. The big fuck up at the clinic didn’t help matters much either; when they screwed up and scrambled to make the most of an opportunity whose window was rapidly slamming shut. The odds were against us this month.
I know all this and yet, still I hoped. Found myself looking for signs that didn’t exist. I’ve read about some women who are waiting and they can’t stop squeezing their breasts to see if they’re tender – and then they squeeze them so much, they BECOME tender. How confusing is that? Are they tender because the woman is pregnant? Or tender because she can’t stop squeezing them? I somehow manage to keep my hands off my breasts but I look for other signs. Last week I was utterly exhausted for four days in a row. And off I went, wondering was I fatigued because of why I hoped or was I just tired for other reasons? Tired from life in general?
Turns out it was just life wearing me down.
I’m still trying to be positive, and mostly I am. As soon as my period finishes and I get swept up into going for my days 10-15/16 appointments, I’ll be enthusiastically charting the growth of the follicles and when there’s more than two, I’ll start teasing my husband about the idea of twins. If there’s three follicles, watch out, then it’s triplets for sure. You betcha. I’ll go for the IUIs with a smile on my face, I won’t expect nothing less than success.
But for now? For these past few days and the next few to come? With my period ramping up, and the cramping so bad that I want to cry, even when I’m at the gym in a class filled with people and my pride won’t let me put down my weights and go back home to bed which is really where I want to be? For these next few days, when I’m on fertility drugs because my ovaries need to be transformed into a follicle-producing factory instead of doing their own thing and I’m taking painkillers daily to deal with the cramping?
These are the few days of the month that I keep for me. That I allow myself to be less than myself, when I don’t apologize for not being myself. I can be sullen and withdrawn at the clinic when the tech argues with me and the nurse is disorganized and the doctor says one thing and does another. I don’t want to be rude and yet when I am, too bad. Fucking deal. Welcome to my world, I said to the nurse this morning when we realized that I was going to miss my bus downtown because I’d already missed the last train and that I would be late for work. Again.
These are the days that I let myself be, more than anything, sad. So much so that it consumes me and I run endlessly on the treadmill or read the same page of my book three, sometimes four times over. I will stop in the middle of a weight class and stare, unseeingly ahead. Or I stare out the window, at the morning sky.
I had said at one point that I might go public eventually with this blog if only for it to perhaps be of some help to other woman going through similiar experiences as myself. And that got me started thinking , if I had the idea to do that, then it would stand to reason that some other women would have the same thinking. So I went looking for infertility blogs this weekend, and while I didn’t neccessarily hit the motherload, I did find a number of blogs that I spent a lot of time this weekend reading. In fact, by yesterday afternoon, I was so tired of the subject of infertility and insemination and in-vitro that my head was ready to explode.
Extreme information overload.
But all the reading I did this weekend gave me so many new perspectives and I feel differently this morning as I sit here and write this. I remember before how lonely I felt sitting in the clinic, waiting for bloodwork and ultrasounds and the nurse/doctor combination. I felt alone because no one else I knew has been going through what I’m going through, not to this extent, and so no one could truly understand what all this has been like for me. Not even my husband gets it fully, because as much as he’s been there through a lot of this, so much of this stuff hasn’t been happening to him. It’s been happening to me.
But after reading everything that I read – that feeling of aloneness has disappeared. There are other women out there, bitching about getting up at 7am to go to the clinic and complaining about the ultrasound wand and the technicians (who I’ve since learned are commonly referred to in this world as ‘wand monkeys’). They talk about IUI with the same familiarity that I have, and the HCG shots. They get what it means to count days and to plan your life around when you may or may not be at the clinic. There’s general consensus across the board that having sex with your husband because you have to is far less enjoyable then having sex with him because you want to.
They understand only to full well how difficult the two week wait is after you’ve ovulated and have tried and are waiting for either your period to come or for it to be soon enough to go to the clinic to have a pregnancy test done. How ENDLESS those two weeks are, when you have to proceed with life like nothing is happening, pretending that you’re not waiting and even when you’re able to distract yourself, you’re not ever able to forget what exactly it is that you’re waiting for.
Oh, how they get it, more than anyone else that might be aware of what I’m going through but don’t really KNOW.
But more than that, there is this.
I went back to my last post with this new perspective and reread it and recognized how incredibly angry and frustrated I was and I realized that a lot of what I wrote about was literally NOTHING compared to what some other women have gone through or are going through.
We’re still, for the all intents and purposes, in the beginning stages of treatment. What we’ve been through has definitely felt like a lot – the drugs and ultrasounds and the IUI that didn’t work and, of course, the laparoscopy. But, so far, at this point, there’s so much that we’ve been spared. I haven’t been asked to take hormones (progesterone?) or suppositories nor has there been any concern over the thickness of the lining in my uterus, that would lead to having an injection to bring on a period to shed that lining so as to start again. I’ve been spared that, thank god. I’ve dealt with my share of incompetent techs and doctors but none of them has caused me to miss ovulation, which is the case for some women. And unlike some clinics who give the HCG shot only Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I can get my HCG any day of the week, even Sundays. I haven’t had to drive all day to buy drugs at a pharmacy that honored my insurance, just to save $800. And any concern over whether or not my parts are all functional has been eased, and, in theory, there’s no real reason that it shouldn’t be happening for us. Not the case for some of the women who’s blogs I’ve read.
We haven’t gotten, at this point, to injections that make a person crazy, or IVF, which, from what I read makes every other aspect of treatment seem like a cake walk. The time committment with IVF has proven to be so huge that every woman that has blogged about it has said that they finally had to come clean with their employer about their treatment because their absence at work was no longer excuasable. There are women who have gone through IVF and it didn’t work. Women whose IVFs have ended in an ectopic pregnancy and then had to have surgery to remove all traces of their pregnancy.
We’ve been fortunate so far, I get that now, even though I still look at people that have conceived without any trouble, without any form of fertility intervention and think (not bitterly) how fortunate THEY have been (more so than us). So we haven’t been as fortunate as others, but we haven’t proven to be as unfortunate as others. And while it’s still much too early to determine where our treatment is going to take us, or how far down this particular road we’re going to have to travel, today, for some reason, I’m feeling fairly optimistic that our exit off this particular highway is going to come much sooner than it has for other people.
But for now, I’m waiting, but this time? This time I don’t feel quite as alone while I do it.
On Monday I went for my Day 10 ultrasound and bloodwork and waited to see the nurse and then doctor, after complaining furiously to the tech supervisor about the technician who did my ultrasound and obviously didn’t hear me say, “I had a laparoscopy and D&C recently, please be gentle.” It was the first time I flinched physically while having an ultrasound and the first time I left the room in tears. It was the first time I demanded to speak to the tech supervisor – and it probably won’t be the last time I complain if this rough-handling doesn’t stop. I’m tired of these technicians with their heavy hands and lack of insensitivity.
The nurse told me that I had no follicles developing but that the cyst that showed up on my ultrasound during my Day 3 had decreased in size and that was promising. I was told to skip my appts for Day 11 and 12 and to come back on Day 13. I could still produce follicles, they promised and I shouldn’t assume the worse.
I was back this morning at 7:20, endured an ultrasound during which one tech trained another and a 2 minute process took 10. That combined with the fact that they were 10 minutes late getting me into a room meant that I didn’t have time to wait and see the nurse if I was going to catch the last train (which I had too; driving wasn’t an option today). So I left, at 7:50, after asking the nurse to call me with my results.
At 10:00 I hadn’t received a call so I called the clinic and left a message.
At 11:15, my phone finally rang.
And the nurse? She was frantic.
She said: You haven’t surged.
She said: Your follicle is 2.3 we need to get you in ASAP for an HCG shot so that we can get the egg to release before it gets too mature.
She added: You should come on your lunch hour.
I said: HOW is it possible for me to have a follicle that size when on Monday there was nothing showing?
She paused for the longest of seconds.
Then she said: Oh, well that cyst we saw on Monday? Not a cyst, after all. It’s a follicle.
And I said: You got them confused?
And, of course, remembered the time they told me a cyst was a follicle.
And she said, defensively: The tech recorded it as a cyst.
Right.
So on MONDAY I had a follicle that measured 1.6. It only needs to be 1.7 on size to be viable. In fact, the ideal size for a follicle is between 1.7 and 2.1. Any thing after that then they’re too mature and there’s the risk that they will die. And that’s why they were desperate to get me in for a shot – so that the shot would trigger a release and the egg would still be viable.
I was at work, downtown, with no car. I had work obligations till 2 at the earliest, and another at 6. It was NOT a day where I could go rushing off to the clinic for a mistake that THEY made because they misread my results three days earlier.
I said: Impossible. I’m downtown without a car. I can’t get back out there.
She said: You really should have this shot though.
I said: I’M DOWNTOWN. I HAVE NO CAR.
I took a deep breath.
I continued: I don’t have the time today to come back to the clinic.
She said: So you’re not going to bother to come?
And this? This implication that I’m not committed to my treatment, to this process? This implication that I should be sitting around, waiting to rush off to the clinic at a moment’s notice? This is what pisses me off more than anything.
Does she really want to have that argument with me? Does she want me to tell her about the hundreds of dollars that we’ve already spent? The amount of HOURS that I’ve missed from my job because their clinic hours are accomodating but not really? What about the injections in my hip that aren’t supposed to hurt but that actually do, and throb for at least a day after? How many vials of blood? Or how about the surgery that I had last month, and the four incisions in my stomach that’s taken a full month to really heal and that still bother me if I move the wrong way?
But no, we’re not supposed to have that argument because I’m supposed to suck it up. I should be grateful that I’m getting the help I need.
But I tried anyway.
I reminded her that I was there on Monday and I was told I was not producing. That THEY gave me Tuesday and Wednesday off. That if they had read my goddamn chart properly, in the first place, I would have been back there on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. They would have been monitoring the growth of the follicle, they would have known that I needed a shot. I wouldn’t have left the fucking clinic Thursday morning if I had been told that I had a viable follicle and I needed a goddamn fucking shot to trigger it’s release. I wouldn’t have left.
And what did she say?
She didn’t say, yes, we fucked up, I’m sorry, you’re right to be so goddamned upset because we’ve proven (once again) our incompetence.
Instead, she said: This is why we want you to wait for the nurse. If you had WAITED, we could have given you the shot.
I explained to her as calmly as I could (because my regular doctor keeps saying, NO STRESS) what it would take for me to get out there on my lunch to get a shot. That my husband would have to leave in the middle HIS workday to drive downtown, pick me up from MY work, drive back to the clinic, then drive me back to work and then drive himself back to work.
She, of course, thought that was a GREAT idea.
No, I said. TERRIBLE idea. What’s the alternative?
The alternative was to get Tay to pick up the shot and administer it himself. It would be better to have it done as soon as possible, but they agreed that having it when I got home from work was better than not having it at all.
And of course, when Tay went to pick it up, the shot they gave him, already mixed and in it’s needle, wasn’t the HCG that they normally give, but a shot that he couldn’t administer to me until 10pm that night. You know what this means right? All this panic to give me a shot in the middle of the day when there was an alternative that could be administered 10 hours later. That didn’t require me to leave in the middle of a work day, or have my husband drive 200 km, back and forth.
When I used to think about having kids, I used to wonder if I would ever want more than one. If I would feel the need to have a big family, to have the support in place that siblings give each other. I listened to everyone I know that’s a single child, heard them say about how lonely it was for them growing up, how envious they were of all my siblings. I carefully weighed the pros and cons and had finally decided a while ago that one would be enough, that I didn’t want to do more than one. And now, now that I’ve gone through what I’m going through, that I understand finally that having kids is not going to come easily to me – I’ve come to accept the decision that I’ve made to have just one.
But more than that is this sudden, blinding realization that one is all I’m EVER going to have, because this fucking nightmare that I’m living? It’s not something that I’m going to repeat ever again.
