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.

Every tiny piece of good news in our slog towards IVF is followed by a load of caveats and negations.  Since that selfsame slog dominates all of our time, disappointment dominates our lives.  We’re usually struggling to talk about things other than work, but now work seems like the least fraught topic available.  I told Heather what I’d heard from Therapist Michele, and Heather was full of questions: Where was this place?  Why hadn’t we heard of them before? 

“If we find out there’s an IVF clinic in town and we’ve been wasting our time with Nashville, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Well, shit, Heather.  I am, too.  But now we’re knee-deep with Nashville, so I don’t see any point in getting revved up about it, just like there was no real point in getting revved up about all the trips to Nashville when it seemed unavoidable.  There’s nothing to struggle with in either situation, so why is it such a struggle?

Yesterday we decided that we were dealing with so much friction over this that maybe we needed to spend time apart.  Not a lot, but a couple evenings a week.  It’s just that the time we used to truly enjoy, watching TV or gossiping about co-workers or bitching about our families, is now so heavily populated with IVF news and anxiety that we can’t take pleasure in each other’s company anymore. 

This afternoon, Heather came to my desk, carrying her phone and a Post-It.  It used to be that I grinned as soon as she walked through the front door, but I just dreaded the sight of her phone.  I knew somebody had called her and now I needed to call someone else.  I kept my other conversation going as long as I could, but she and the Post-It were still there.

Of the tests on either end of the Clomid Challenge, 99% had been completed, but somehow Dr. King’s office (on a fucking roll) had managed to skip testing Heather’s FSH level and tested her progesterone instead.  The NFC folk said it was probably okay and would check that it didn’t need to be redone.  The call today, as you can imagine from that lead-up, was to say that, while the FSH level didn’t have to be redone, Heather would need an AMH test when her period started.  That’s the same period that’s supposed to kick off the IVF process. 

I didn’t quite understand Heather, and she said she’d been confused by the call, so I took her phone and started to call NFC back.  Then I thought maybe I was supposed to just go ahead and schedule it in Dr. King’s office.  I called them, asked to make an appointment, and was promptly connected to the nurses’ voicemail.  I left a somewhat snarky message to the effect that we needed to schedule a new test since they had fucked up the last round.  (No, I didn’t say fuck.)  Heather said, hey, you just need to call the NFC and leave a message with the fax number for Dr. King's office.  I groaned, but duly searched out the number and called the NFC back.  It was 4:31PM, and I couldn't even get an answering machine.  It's Memorial Day weekend, so I'll be waiting till Tuesday.  Not surprisingly, I started to cry and-- again, not surprisingly-- Heather was frustrated, saying she didn't understand what upset me.  It's hard.  I'm so, so sick of this.  And when everything is so difficult, it's so easy to play the blame game-- "Why didn't you pick up the phone?"  "Why didn't you get more details?"  "Why were you so mad at the receptionist?"  "Why did you pick that doctor?"

So tonight Heather and I are in separate ends of the house, hoping that not seeing each other for a few hours will allow us to not think about IVF for a while.  We get back together at 11 tonight, and I have my fingers crossed that I can distract her with a story about public masturbation long enough that she can't ask any questions about when I'm contacting my stock broker.  Which I guess I should do now, just so I don't have to keep promising that I will.