A-OK

Cysts are all gone. Around 20 antral follicles. So I'm cleared to start injections next week.

It was kind of funny - after she saw me, the doc spent about 5 minutes figuring out when I should stop the pill, when I should start the injections - and came up with exactly the same plan as I had. There's nothing to it ;-)

I'm looking forward to getting to try again. And to my VACATION!

Togged-n-stuff...

I like blog tags. Fun. Sassy togged me with a neat assignment:

THE RULES:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

My 23rd post was "good news (no, not *that* good)", and the fifth sentence was "The doc offered to do an ultrasound to check out how my ovaries were doing - I actually have a follicle at 14mm!!! ". Kinda boring. Oh well. I was discussing finding that I had managed to make a follicle all on my own, after going on vacation and meeting the crimson bitch for the first time since going off bcp. Turned out the follicle wasn't growing at all, so here we are with OI.

It couldn't have been something fun like the 3rd sentence from my 20th post, which was "I just spent the afternoon sunbathing on the balcony of our hotel room (yes, topless - very liberating!), sipping champagne and admiring our gorgeous view." Now that's a sentence worth repeating!

I'm gonna tag Molly, Elle, Em (yes, Em, Sassy and I are tag-teaming you), Megan, and Susan. Nothing bad will happen if you don't want to do it (I hate those chain mails that say 'if you don't do this the rest of your life will be ruined. Ruined, I tell you'). And if you haven't been tagged and want to play anyway, do join in!

In other news (thanks for asking, E&S), after playing lots of voice mail tag with the nurse, I have my u/s to check for cysts scheduled for Friday, according to my genius plan. I'm a little nervous about it because I have been feeling twinges around where I imagine my ovaries to be, but I'm telling myself that's the little buggers popping. Fingers crossed.

Help!

Elle could really use some advice, and all the good blog loving we can muster for her. Please send positive thoughts and comments her way.

Updated 9/19: Crisis averted. Yay!

I'm a genius!

Per Dr. Conveyor's orders, I'm on bcp for three weeks. The day after that ends, we head to the northwest for my cousin's wedding followed by a week checking out Portland, Vancouver and Seattle. (Any suggestions for cool things to do there welcomed!). I had mentioned this little trip to Conveyor, and she said for me just to take the bcp for an extra week, then come in afterwards to check for cysts to see if we can start the next cycle.

So I had been trying to figure out what day to stop taking the bcp so that I would be on CD3 the day after we got back. Then wondering if stopping the bcp while away would jinx me and I'd still be stuck with the little cyst bugger. Dilemma, dilemma.

Then I had an epiphany. Go in for the cyst check before I leave, if no cysts, I would know that I was okay to stop the pill and have CD3 the day I got back. Then another whack over the head with the clever stick - there's no reason I can't start the injections while I'm away - I just have to be back for CD7 when they do the first u/s.

will check with the clinic tomorrow, but I could be starting my next cycle a week earlier than I was expecting. Woo-hoo! (I know, I know, it's only a week, but I'd like to have the IUI done by the time my sis delivers - due on 10/18).

Self medication

I spent the evening in the company of my eight month pregnant on her first try sister, the two year old daughter of a friend who apparently had no idea how babies are made because she sure wasn't trying to get pregnant, celebrating the one year birthday of the daughter of another friend who got pregnant within a month of her wedding.

Then I came home and drowned myself in cake, chocolate, and Barren Mare's archives.

I am so glad I found y'all. I don't know what I would do without you.

Togged again...

A while back, I was blog tagged by Molly to write about what I'd be if I weren't myself. Fun assignment! I dutifully togged a couple of other folks, including Ova Girl. Ova Girl wrote a delightful response, and in the process, tagged me back. I have been completely and utterly remiss in answering, although I never forgot about it. Now that I'm just wasting away on bcp (actually, doing whatever the opposite of wasting is), and have nothing relevant to say, I figured I'd finally complete my assignment, which was to answer some questions about books:

1) Total number of books I’ve owned:

That’s a tough question. At the moment, I probably have around 100 in my house, coz it’s little and we don’t have that much space for bookshelves. Plus we’re eventually going to move into a bigger house, and books are heavy! Over my lifetime, I’d probably say around 500? I was such a nerd as a kid I actually used to spend my allowance to buy books, as well as taking them out of the library. As a youngster my favorite books were all the British series about kids at boarding school – Mallory Towers was one of them, I can’t remember the names of the others (if you know, please do remind me!). Also Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. What fun! After we moved to the US, my two fav series were the sweet valley high books, partly because they gave me a glimpse of the life of the cool kids I’d never be(en) privy to, and the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. Lots of magic and nifty stuff like that.

2)Last book I bought:

Harry Potter. But that’s boring. So I’ll tell you about the book previous to that – Don Quixote by Cervantes. Why, you ask? Well, I truly feel that my literary education was lacking. I went to an excellent high school which provided a much more college-like education than your typical secondary school, in the sense that there were only a few core classes one was required to take, then the remainder were electives. You had to take four years of English, three of math, three of science (or something like that), but there were a lot of different choices in each of those fields. So I chose classes like Shakespeare, Irish literature, Contemporary literature… where I read a lot of good books, but never the classics. No Charles Dickens, no Emily Bronte, none of the books that are referred to in so many different contexts. And I’ve regretted it ever since. A few months ago I came across the book “A Well Educated mind”. Exactly what I was looking for – a road map, teaching me first about the genesis of the contemporary novel and tracing its evolution, and second, how to really read a book to discover what the author is really trying to say, rather than just reading superficially for the story, which is my usual modus operandi. The first book recommended for this literary self-education was Don Quixote. I bought it on our trip to South Africa in Feb/Mar, finally finding it after looking in about ten different bookstores. Of course now I’m only on about pg. 50. But I do eventually intend to read it.

3)Last book I read:

Gunpowder Empire by Harry Turtledove. Quick read, amusing story, but not a work of art by any means.

4)5 books that mean a lot to me.

Mean a lot to me? I’m not quite sure how to take that. So I’ll just tell you about my all time favorites. Lord of the Rings. Tried to read it for the first time when I was twelve. Didn’t make it. Finally got through on my third try at fifteen, and have probably re-read the trilogy four or fives times since then. Ender’s Game (and the rest of the series, but EG is by far the best) by Orson Scott Card. Fantastic story. If you like sci-fi/fantasy and haven’t already read it, it’s a must. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. M had been after me to read it for a while, to try and explain some of his libertarian viewpoints to me, a bleeding heart liberal. Extremely thought provoking. That’s all I can come up with at the moment.

Despite my firm conviction from the time my e2 dropped precipitously through my negative HPTs, that there was no chance that I was pregnant after my IUI, it still hit me like a ton of bricks when that result was confirmed. Unfortunately, failure has been a common thread amongst IUIers over the past month, with similar ensuing devastation (okay, devastation may be going a bit too far). Even though we do our best not to get our hopes up, somehow it seems impossible not to. The everlasting resilence of the human spirit. Or something.

I realized mid last week that there were two reasons this failure hit me so hard. First, although I wasn't expecting to get pregnant right away, I had been imagining that at this point I'd have been trying for six months, which is the amount of time it takes regular folk fertile myrtyles your average crack whore to get pregnant, so it was pretty reasonable for me to expect to be at this point. Not counting on cysts or dim-witted doctors or mutant sperm or the natural cussedness of the universe, of course.

Second, I'd started giving up. Baby-making the regular way went out the window a long time ago, when my stupid body forgot how to ovulate. Step one down. No Clomid for me - stupid body doesn't know how to make estrogen. Step two out of the way. So now I'm on step three (gonadotropins), and after three failures here, people usually move on to IVF. So I'm at the end of that road. With three out of four steps down the tubes (yes, pun intended. Bad one, I know.) I was already giving up on success with IVF. And after IVF there was nothing, because M had said that he did not want to pursue any other options, such as surrogacy or adoption.

Once I realized that I was feeling so incredibly sad because I was envisioning a future without any child(ren) at all, I decided I should talk to M about it. He'd been really worried about me, and kept asking if there was anything he could do to make me feel better. So rather than continuing down the bleak road I was on, I told him what I was thinking. He still thinks I'm being way overly dramatic and that we still have a lot of options to try, but did say that he would be willing to consider other paths if ART doesn't work for us. Which gave me back the future I'd imagined.

So I'm still a bit sad from time to time, I hate that I'm back on bcp again (especially because I've gained three pounds in as many days although definitely not eating nearly enough food to do that), but overall I've regained a sense of hope for the future. We're going to try another IUI or two, then if those don't work, IVF in January when my insurance will cover it. (Notice I said if, not when the IUI's don't work... trying for a bit of optimism!)