Category: Social Life

I’ve been just terrible at updating – I’m sorry about that. However counting days has been a helpful reminder of how quickly time flies!

I took my last birth control pill on the 16th. I do believe the pills made me irritable, because on September 7th (day 12) I saw a sketch I had written performed. It had been edited, and I wanted to slap the person or people who had edited the sketch. It’s possible this dismay had nothing to do with the pills, because I’m still angry about it. Either way, I tried to limit my social interactions these past few weeks, lest my rage manifest itself through scathing, clever jabs that I could not take back.

On Day 22, the day after my last birth control pill, I had my check-in. They took blood and did an ultrasound to make sure everything looked good. On Day 24 I got my period, which is a good thing, because if I had started bleeding when they need to extract the eggs, that would have been a problem.

Day 25 was the first day we administered shots. We decided 11pm would be our recurring time. David was a champ: we watched the videos again, he mixed the Menapur, and he applied the shots. The first night the shots didn’t hurt, but the second night the shots did hurt. And last night the Menapur hurt.

Day 28, today, was the day to go in for bloodwork and ultrasound. Based on the results, they would let me know whether to change dosage and whether to take additional medicine. David woke up early to come with me to the appointment, but then I told him he didn’t have to come because he had already done so much. He accepted my empty offer to stay home – which is on me, I should have been more clear about my real needs – I drove to the facility in the rain, and I took the wrong exit, because I did not see the sign correctly and I generally have a terrible sense of direction.

When the nurse took blood, I winced. “I take it you don’t like needles,” she quipped, and I shared I was fine with them before, but given the general increase of needles over the past few days I’ve become more wary of them. Then in the ultrasound room I put the paper cover on the way I normally do, wrapping it all the way around me. Apparently this is incorrect. You are just supposed to use the paper to cover on top of you. You don’t sit on the paper. The ultrasound tech pointed the error out to me. Then I fixed it and asked how I should sit on the chair. The ultrasound tech asked if it was my first ultrasound and shared that she didn’t see a note in my chart about it being my first ultrasound, and had she known, she would have given me more guidance up front. This was closer to my 20th ultrasound, so I shared it wasn’t my first but that the chair was a little different. It was different. The back of the chair was flat, and normally the back of the chair is at an angle. In she went with the probe, and I have 16 follicles on the left ovary and 20 follicles on the right ovary. I asked her about the pain I felt around the medication, and she shared I would have to speak to a nurse and that she was only the technician and not qualified to dispense medical advice.

I shared the irritation in my stomach area with the nurse. “Do you have a lot of muscle in your abdominal area?” she asked.
“I…like to think so, yes,” I replied. (I don’t have the six-pack I aspired to a couple of weeks ago, but I’m not so shabby.)
“The more muscle you have there, the more it’s going to hurt,” she said. “Well that makes me feel better,” I replied.
“You can apply it to other parts of your body, like your thighs,” she advised.

I don’t mean to brag, dear blog, but there’s muscle there too!

Anyway, then I got back in the car, in the rain, and took the wrong exit coming home. But I made it home! I stopped on the way to go grocery shopping with my brother, and I might have bought some Nutella.

And then I might have eaten that Nutella.

Thursday we had our training session for how to administer the drugs for the IVF. David came with me, which I thought would be a good idea, because I want him to know every detail and be a real part of the process. This turned out to be a mixed blessing.

There were two other women in the training session, and their husbands didn’t come. This is only bad because I felt bad. One woman said in a sincerely jovial manner, “My husband’s going to hear about this!” Then she followed up with: “He got in late last night, and he’s already at work, so I’ll give him a pass.” I instantly liked her and honestly felt like she was someone I would be friends with. If I were younger and had more free time, I would have befriended this woman.

The same woman also gave us some pointers about purchasing medication if you are doing self-pay: she compared the two retailers to the pricing Aetna gave her for buying the drugs. Buying directly from the people who had the deals with Shady Grove (rather than the Aetna pricing) saved almost $10,000! She also said that depending on who she had spoken to, she heard different pricing for the drugs each time she called, because some people knew to look up discounts. The other woman was really nice too, and she had different drugs than the rest of us. I was curious about her treatment, but I don’t know what the etiquette around asking is yet.

We got started with the instructions, and the nurse had laid out practice needles and medicines for us to mix. David was so focused, however, I couldn’t get my hands on any of the medicine. He kept raising his hand to ask questions too. I practically had to pull one of the insertion pens away from him, so I could try practicing with it. But I had to do it subtly so that the other people did not think we were having marital issues or that we weren’t a good team. I don’t know why that felt important to me. I took notes and David paid close attention, so between the two of us we should be able to mix the drugs and provide the correct dosage. They also sent follow-up videos, which was a tremendous relief because that previous sentence I _just_ wrote about us being able to provide the correct dosage based on our notes was a straight up lie. I don’t know why I wrote it. I did not believe it. We will probably play the videos the first few times.

So here’s something else that has been going on:

On Day 2 of birth control (28th), when I last wrote, I had a serious thought. “This is my last chance to get rock hard abs.”
I vowed to get a six pack while I did not have to worry that there was a person growing inside me. I got on the Peloton and cycled hard for 30 minutes, then I took a 10 minute arms class. And at night when we got drinks with friends, I stood the entire time, I asked for water and drank it while sucking in my gut, to strengthen my abdominal muscles. I played tennis extra hard. I rode the bicycle aggressively. I cut back on chocolate.

Then we went to New York and I ate four donuts in twenty minutes, so I remain sans six pack.

Greetings! I have just had my first birth control tablet, which marks the official start of the foray into IVF.

I think the birth control is supposed to set internal things to neutral, so when the time is right, they can stimulate the ovaries to produce a bunch of eggs at the same time that they can eventually extract.

Now that I’m back on birth control, I’m thinking about going on a real bender. I’m talking unpasteurized cheeses, caffeinated tea, cured meats, sashimi, really just throwing caution to the wind.

We signed some forms. My sister gets our frozen embryos if we die. I haven’t told her. I’ll leave that as a fun surprise for her to learn about should such a tragedy occur.

Over the weekend I played tennis, and in the midst of the playing, my knee started to feel shaky. This was pretty upsetting, because you need your knees in tennis, and I run a lot when I play. Over the weekend I was also bitten by some treacherous mosquitos – the bites are so big. I scratch and I scratch.