Super Troopers

And we are.  At least, I feel today like I am.

Heather had a phone call last week from the fertility clinic in Nashville, which she did not answer.  I was assigned to call them back, presumably to set up an appointment now that all our forms were completed.  Yesterday at lunch, I took her phone to do it, and she suggested I listen to the message they left.

"Okay, you didn't listen to the voicemail?"

What the hell? 
I know I'm the administrative end of this operation, but sometimes it seems like there are things she could take care of.  I guess that's not totally fair, since I can't offer any casual assistance in her duties.  Listening to her own voicemail, however...  And it turns out that the voicemail wasn't even about setting up an appointment, but about how there are two other forms to complete.  I didn't need to wait through the Thanksgiving weekend for that.  I actually didn't need to wait at all, since I'd filled out those forms a month ago; apparently, though, they don't hang on to those forever, and I needed to do it again.  So that's what I did this afternoon.

Next, I printed and filled out a medical-record release form so I can mail it to Dr. C.  I assume the Nashville people will want the HSG results.  Or something.  I'm taking a shotgun approach here: send every doctor in the tri-state area every record of Heather's junk available, then wait till one of them can do something useful with them, just as we once dreamed of shooting five vials of sperm into Heather's junk during ovulation and waiting for something to stick.

In the meanwhile, I'm still halfheartedly/heartbreakingly reading the Making Babies book.  Most of it, to my relief and frustration, has been inapplicable to us: a couple with bacterial infections from anal sex (inapplicable to us in a couple different ways, actually), a guy who compromises his sperm count with his laptop, and couples using scented lubricants.  This offers us no help.  Of course, what does apply is a bummer: "Don't smoke.  Lose weight.  Otherwise it'll take you sixteen gajillion times longer to get pregnant."  And those are things that cannot be mentioned to Heather.

It's funny how, with all the syringes and appointments and timing and testing, your relationship never fully disappears from the picture.  Maybe that's why IVF is so appealing: somebody else makes all the decisions.  They tell us when to come and go, what tests to get, what drugs and when, and there's gonna be some guy with letters behind his name who does the dirty work of telling Heather to quit smoking.  I'll grimace and sympathize and congratulate her while she weans herself.  Then we'll get a baby and fight over totally different stuff, like the beauty pageants I intend to begin at 15 months.