Questions abound

We have our initial IVF appointment tomorrow. It lasts about an hour. I'm not yet sure what it entails. They call it a "lecture." And so the IVF intimidation begins.

We usually talk to one of two nurses at our clinic. I've noticed we get consistently more complete information over the phone from one than from the other. This afternoon, I got a call from the mail-order pharmacy on my cell phone while I was at work. They were calling to confirm the list of medicines ... which I haven't yet seen (presumably it will be part of the lecture?) and which didn't match what I thought they had described at the consult last week.

I called the nurses' voicemail and left a message. For some reason, when they returned the call, my phone didn't ring. It was the less-complete nurse, and she left a message that didn't answer my questions ... but since the phone didn't actually ring, I couldn't ask them directly to her. She said the calendar of what medicine to take when should be in my mailbox when I got home, and it would explain everything.

It was. But it didn't. Not only does it also not match what I understood from last week, it also doesn't have all of the medicines the pharmacy listed on it. The procedure week was also four weeks earlier on the calendar than they said last week.

We'll get it all cleared up tomorrow, in plenty of time. Maybe they thought we didn't ask enough questions last week, so they spoonfed us some really obvious ones.

Beware o an Aberdonian

As of this evening, we've ordered enough Gonal-F to trigger the quantity discount. That's right -- 6 free pens and a free Ovidrel syringe, bringing the total for drugs for this cycle to a mere $1100. Woo! We still had to pay for four pens and the Ganirelix. Oh, and the Progesterone gel, but that's left over from my last failed pregnancy.

It's as close to clipping coupons as infertility treatment gets. If this results in a child, we'll have to give her a good Scottish name.

1/3 of the way through the wait

Back down a pound from yesterday -- still up 6 pounds since Monday with a great big belly. Not exactly where I want to be right before a class reunion, but whatever. At least it's college and not high school.

Yesterday was an early, busy day at work. I had to be there in time to visit four school grades before 11:00, which meant arriving at work two hours before I usually do. When I got home, we had dinner and SF decided to take a nap. I thought, I'm not really in the mood to sleep, but I'll go curl up and maybe read a little.

Didn't open the book. Also didn't wake up again, except blearily to take medicine, for 11 hours. SF blames the progesterone, especially since now (after 11 hours asleep and 1 hour awake) I could easily go back to bed. So weird ...

The Power

In college, my roommate and I marvelled at the power we had to control our periods using only the power of our minds. If we wanted them to come, they didn't. If we didn't want them to come, they did. The Power carried us through vacations, formal dances, exams, you name it.

In spite of all of the other madness surrounding infertility treatments, I have not lost The Power. I finished this month's round of birth control on Sunday night, and I really, really, really wanted my "visitor" to arrive as soon as possible so as not to make the ultrasounds conflict with Easter weekend. We're now at Maundy Thursday and she's only phoned to say she'll be here ... sometime soonish ... probably.

I am, of course, completely freaking out about getting the ultrasound scheduled at the proper time. If you ever think trying not to have a baby makes you an expert at period math, just wait until you're trying to have one. If regular period math is like arithmetic, this is like statistics and probability, and it never leaves your head:

"If it starts today, then the ultrasound must be Friday or Saturday, if they even do them the Saturday before Easter, but if it doesn't start until tomorrow, I need to call as soon as possible, because maybe they'd be able to fit me in before the holiday, but what if the blood lab isn't open, and if it starts Saturday I need to get ahold of them that morning because Monday will be the only day possible for an ultrasound, and what if it's one of those ones that starts with spotting and how do I figure out what's day one in that case because if we miss it everything will be messed up and wrong and we will never have a child and it will be even more all my fault than it already is."

Jeez ... maybe I shouldn't be surprised she hasn't shown up. I wouldn't want to visit me, either.

Naturally...

There was a power outage at the doctor's office, so we get the results tomorrow.

? ? ? ? ?

Well. Our first cycle of Follistim appears to have failed. 10 days after the trigger shot, I started to spot.

My first thoughts were positive. It was only a tiny amount Thursday night. Women report experiencing implantation spotting resembling what I saw, and it seemed that, at about 8 dpo, implantation was a prime possibility.

I spent Friday in an all-day meeting for work, sneaking out to the ladies' room every chance I got for a "status check." The picture grew more and more dismal. By now, Saturday morning, I have to think that even if there is still a growing group of cells in there, it's not going to have anything left to implant in anyway.

We knew the cycle might not work. I just wish I knew why it failed so ... early. 28 days is usually a minimum for my cycle, and I started to bleed a full week before that. Hormones messed up from the shots? Early early miscarriage? Just one of those things? Another question for which we didn't know we might need an answer.

And I was worried about not being able to come up with things to write about while we waited the final week before we could test.

Best-laid plans

Saturday the 24th was my original due date. For months after I lost the pregnancy, I wondered what it would be like to reach the date we'd once anticipated with such joy and have nothing but a normal day planned -- would I be a wreck, a recluse, or happy to be going out for dinner instead of needing an epidural?

The answer turned out to be that I was too busy to care. I had a full day at work Saturday; between that and the current round of fertility shots (not to mention the awesome pirate xBox game we rented), there wasn't time to think about what might have been. I'm too busy right now with what is and what might be, and with becoming a rogue and marrying the Governor's beautiful daughter.

Our doctor is on vacation this week. The nurse did the final ultrasound on Tuesday and explained how to give the trigger shot and when to time our other, erm, related activity. She asked how the shots were going, obviously expecting that I couldn't wait to be done with them. Truthfully, though, I'd take the shots over what's coming -- two weeks of nothing to do but wait for time to pass so we can learn the outcome of this round of treatment.

Then the bloodwork came back, and she called me on my cell phone in the rib joint we hit after the doctors to revise the instructions on when to do the deed. It was, I think, the funniest thing we've encountered in two years of fertility treatments -- nobody calls my cell, so we knew it was probably important, but both of us had barbecue sauce up to our wrists, and the phone was in a zipped compartment of my purse. Hijinks ensued. Ah, the laughs!