Thursday, May 31, 2012

YOU ARE GROWN-UPS

I have this thing about grown women with childhood fetishes.   I think it's because my middle school friends somehow aligned themselves with Winnie the Pooh characters-- one affiliated herself with Tigger and henceforth could only wear clothing that bore his image, while another surrounded herself with stuffed likenesses of Eeyore.  There was something about it that made me think of the porn trope of slutty schoolgirls.  I think my friends wanted to appeal to boys by hiding their power and personhood.  Claim it, yo.

So when I see a grown woman, unironically, refer...  Okay, what she wrote was, "All embies made it to blasts and frosties!"  I don't know how to provide adequate commentary.  EMBIES, for chrissake. 

That's why I don't like to read fertility forums. 

Optimism and sticky icky baby dust

Today has been mostly pretty awesome.  I was bummed yesterday that we might never get an appointment to qualify Heather for monitoring in town, yet, lo and behold, Heather arrived at my desk this morning bearing her phone and a missed call.  Cancellation.  Two o'clock appointment.  Go!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Cast off the shackles of yesterday

It’s Wednesday, my work week is in play after a beautiful long weekend, and my administrative duties have resumed.  I hate today.

Heather appeared at my desk just before lunchtime, brandishing her phone.  “It’s time!”  I hate today.

Yesterday, as I was swanning about in the pool, Heather came out of the house—she was delayed in joining me by the last few minutes of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”—and said, “Hey, who’s Kristi King?”  Goddamn it

Monday, May 28, 2012

Everything's closed on Memorial Day

I both love and hate that there's nothing I can do today.  It's terrific that we can swan around in the pool and be paid for it, and nice to eat the things you eat on grilling holidays-- Ruffles will always be my hot-dog chip, and hot dogs will always be one of my favorite foods.  It's terrific that my hands are tied on stressful phone calls, but it makes me crazy.  The federal government is getting in the way of my self-imposed misery.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Upper-body strength

I’ve only recently taken up drinking coffee, and it’s mainly because there was a day when I was out of Diet Mountain Dew and I really needed caffeine.  So I loaded it up with powdered creamer and sweeteners, then convinced myself it was drinkable.

I had a little travel mug next to me Saturday afternoon; it was half-full of coffee and I could not lift it.  A co-worker brought his baby by my desk to visit while he had some business in the store, so I sent him off and made googly eyes at her for fifteen minutes.  There was bouncing and tickling and snuggling, and by the end my arm muscles were shot.  Man, though, if you’ve got a three-month-old right on the edge of smiling, you’re going to do what it takes to push her over the edge, whether your biceps are faltering or not.  I was successful, but I needed a good nap afterwards.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Bullshit clarification:

Also, I found the original voicemail from Therapist Michele's student, reporting that she'd found a lab in Memphis who could handle the monitoring.  Turns out, it's the same place that wouldn't treat lesbians before.  I e-mailed Michele to ask if the student had mentioned that we were gay and whether that might be an issue, so I guess we'll see.  Not comforting.

Total and unending bullshit

Heather and I have been so frustrated and overwhelmed by the influx of IVF information/disappointments/surprises that we’re pretty fucking sick of each other.  It’s really hard to have a conversation with each other that doesn’t either start or end with IVF, whether it’s the money or the timing or the personnel, and consequently we’ve come to associate each other almost entirely with the misery of baby-making.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Girl, look at that body

Wednesday in Nashville was just about what you'd think: alternately mediocre and awful.  Even going to Starbucks before driving home was exhausting.  I'm not kidding when I say the best part of the trip was watching "United Stats of America" while falling asleep Tuesday.  They talked about potatoes.

Wednesday morning, I believe I kept my anxiety to a very reasonable level-- Heather would dispute that-- and enjoyed scanning the fertility center's waiting room to speculate which other couples were going to be experiencing the miracle of PowerPoint with us.  One couple looked pretty worn out and a little older, so they were easy; then there was another where the guy looked a good fifteen years older than the lady, so that was pretty simple, too.  The whole group of us were gently herded to a conference room with wonderfully comfortable chairs and a big-ass TV.  Everyone got goodie bags full of syringes as they walked in, and I made Heather sit near the front because I'm nerdy like that.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Shorty got low, low, low...

I'm in a surprisingly nice king-size bed in the Best Western, killing time while Heather reads and initials an 18-page document that maps out every element of IVF, from drugs to risks to chances of damaged sex chromosomes.  She's muttering, "We're gonna have fucking twins."

It took me about twenty minutes to read the thing, and I realized belatedly that I had given our consent to donate any unused or unusable eggs or embryos to the lab to improve their "quality control" procedures.  I like to believe they're going to use the eggs to practice with lasers and needles and whatnot, but shouldn't they already know how to do that?  Fuck, I hope they do.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Road trip!

It's Tuesday morning and I should be in bed, curled up in a valley of pillows.  Instead, I'm wandering the house, harvesting totally unnecessary items, and putting them in a cheap-ass duffle bag.

Heather and I are going to work for half the day, then heading to Nashville.  I keep trying to sell it to myself as a road trip, but, god, nobody really wants to be trapped in a car for four hours, dodging semis and SUVs, and it's not like we get to take adventurous side jaunts to see the Casey Jones museum.  I'm not altogether sure who Casey Jones was-- something to do with trains?-- and, unless it comes up in tomorrow's seminar (gold stars for the fertility clinic if it does), I'm not going to find out his week.

I told Heather, after careful thought, that I was going to wear makeup to the class.  I'll feel more confident, I said.  I want to fit in-- or maybe stick out least-- in the IVF class, and somehow I feel that putting on makeup will signal to everyone that I'm serious, knowledgeable, and adorably pink-cheeked.  Oh, god, do we have to practice giving shots?  I don't know how this works, but I'm pretty sure the injections are somewhere in there, and manual dexterity is just not my thing.

It's time to get ready for work-- yes, I'm wearing makeup for that, too-- so I'll leave you with this uplifting link about how there's no telling whether your cryobank is scamming you with diseased sperm:

His sperm, they would later discover, was decades old, originally donated at a laboratory halfway across the country and frozen ever since. Whether it was properly tested is a matter of dispute.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Reviews for Nashville Fertility Center

Just one sample:

"Try to avoid this facility, if you can. The reason I gave them a poor rating has nothing to do with skills, equipment or even the result of it. It has everything to do with the "pay us and I don't care" attitude. Everyone agrees that IVF is a stressful process: financially, physically, and psychologically. This center exemplifies the word of "pipelining" in medical domain - they want to maximize the efficiency (therefore) profitability, and minimize the time that a doctor/nurse spent on you. Once you get enrolled and money paid - the IVF nurse assigned to you give you schedule sheet - then everything is communicated through voice box, even the final results, success or failure - doesn't matter, no explanation whatsoever from NFC. You want to have a brief call with Doctor? sure, here is the consulting rate. You want to talk to the nurse? oh, you didn't get enrolled in the "flat rate", here is the bill. The chance is high that during a whole cycle (~3 month) you will only get to see the doctor you so carefully choosing just ONCE - the first time. So, the advice here is - it doesn't matter which one to pick. I honestly don't know how Dr. Hill get the words of "popular" or "caring" ... it sounds to me the utter ridicule: popular by being out of sight? Knowing sometimes, the choice is limited, all I can say is, good luck."

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The full IVF procedure timeline and fertility drug side effects

Now that we're pretty much prepared to kick off IVF, I'm taking a real look at the calendar we got from the fertility clinic.  The test-taking and result-faxing phase was irritating as hell, but this doesn't look too glamorous, either.  I think Heather will probably lock me in a closet and berate me from outside because of all the hormones-- before I have a chance to lock her in a closet to keep her hormone madness away from me.

I don't know if I can legally post the full calendar that we were given, but it goes like this:

This Calendar Is Approximate Only

Holy mother of god.  We are DONE.

That "done" is a selfish one.  It's big for me, though: all the tests are done, all the results have safely arrived in Nashville, and we are going to the IVF class on the 23rd.  Monday, there's nobody I have to call, nothing I have to fax, and I'm not waiting on anyone else to do anything, either.  It's DONE.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Lazy Sunday and Busy Monday

So obviously I'm the laziest person ever, having gone without a post for weeks.  Still, I always find the time after a negative pregnancy test to be pretty anticlimactic and needless of documentation.

What's been going on in the meanwhile is another round of what seems like never-ending phone calls and tests and faxes.  After the back-and-forth with the one lady in the records office who had a sick daughter and couldn't spell "Yahoo," we finally confirmed that the records had arrived in Nashville.  And, of course, that much information took probably three voicemail messages per doctor's office, both going and coming. 

The everlasting frustration over Heather as official contact and me as administrative faker continues with each phone call, and the Nashville people talked to Heather about how they got the packet and about what was missing from the packet.  They needed the HSG results and couldn't find any evidence of a Hep C test.  They also needed blood tests for me.  After she told me that, I started by calling Dr. C's office to ask about sending the HSG results to Nashville.  They said they'd already sent results, months ago.  Okay.