Yup, it’s scan day again tomorrow…CD11…it’s getting to the business end of things now!
We’re hoping things have gone well and that tomorrow’s scan shows us a good clutch of follies, all getting up towards the 18-20mm mark, so that the decision can be made when to administer the trigger shot, and, consequently, when Egg Retrieval (ER) will take place.
We’re hoping those 6 reasonable sized follies we saw on the CD8 scan have recruited a couple more to ensure we get a good haul…the more the merrier (within reason).
Fingers crossed the stims have been doing their job. Your mom has been religiously shooting up at the same time every morning – even setting her alarm clock on the days she doesn’t have to get up early to go to work – she’s been a trouper…she’s been showing what a brave girl she is, no fuss, no drama. There have been some side effects – some bloating (which we think may have been the Cetrotide shot more than the Menopur), and since yesterday afternoon, she seems to be taking great pleasure in being able to point to exactly where her ovaries are, like some anatomy student in a practical exam…It seems she can now feel her ovaries working, which we’re taking as a good sign too.
One of my biggest worries about going into an IVF cycle was the thought of what your mom might become once we started pumping hormones into her…I was envisaging a tiger when it’s cub is threatened – all teeth and claws, hair standing up, swirling and gnashing and lashing out at anything within reach…but, so far (and I’m adding that proviso in specifically in case things take a turn for the worse), that hasn’t happened…your mom is still the chilled out little bunny she’s never been, until a few weeks ago – it is a marvel to behold!
In fact, the only real external evidence of the hormones coursing through her veins, is the faulty washer on the waterworks…no, I’m not saying she has to pee all the time, I’m talking about the sudden remarkable ability to be gushing a flood of tears at the drop of a hat…
Admittedly, there have been a good few reasons for emotional displays over the last few days, but it’s like someone’s cast a spell on her making her believe she’s the new source of the Nile or something – it’s quite incredible (and I’m sure has as much to do with the stress of what we’re going through, even though she’s seems to have relocated the outward display of this stress from her sleeve where it normally is, to wherever she’s hiding it now).
Like I said, there has been good reason…just a few days ago we were tearfully celebrating one of her friends BFP’s only to find out this week that it’s over and what a terribly heart-wrenching thing to go through for someone who’s already been through so much. Then our funny friend Chopper caused some tears early in the week because she’s been going through a difficult time, only to get some EFFING AWESOME news (which you can read here) that resulted in a lot more tears (this time with an ear-to-ear grin to accompany them).
So, there’s been good reasons for the crying…we’re strapped in this shitty roller-coaster called Infertility with so many other people, and it’s incredible how we all seem to live and breathe everyone else’s journey’s with them – we mourn and cry, wishing we could provide a shoulder or a hug in the hard times and we jump around in joy, laughing and crying in celebration with these people – and the incredible thing is how few of them we’ve even met! Sometimes I listen to your mom and I talking about these people as if they’re our oldest dearest friends – we’re discussing who’s testing tomorrow, who’s got an important FS appointment coming up, who’s just experienced terrible news and we’ve never clapped eyes on most of them…it is an incredible side of Infertility.
But anyway, other than the leaky tear-ducts, everything seems to be going well.
Other than the fact that all doctors are out to screw me with my pants on…
…I never told you, but at the CD8 scan the Prof suggested we freeze some swimmers in case the sample I need to provide on the day of ER isn’t up to scratch – like my testicles are going to have some kind of terrible stage-fright…you can picture me in the Wank Tank, pants around my ankles, bent over head between my knees, talking to my testicles “..it’s all right, you can come out now…there’s no-one here…don’t be shy…pretty please!”. Maybe he’s seen the effects of performance anxiety before and is hedging his bets…whatever the reason, it makes sense, but it’s just another way these doctors have screwed me royally…one day we’re under doctors orders to have copious amounts of passionate sex, the next day they’re telling me I need to abstain to provide them another sample, and you just know that the timing is going to mean that I’m going to have to continue being abstemious and monk-like, because, no doubt, they’ll screw me over again by scheduling ER (and thus another Wank Tank visit) for exactly 48 hours on from this latest visit, meaning no sex after providing the sample tomorrow…and then there’s the actual IVF and no sex during the two week wait…and then we’ll get a positive and it’ll be no sex till the end of the first trimester…and then they’ll come up with some other cock-eyed excuse why we can’t have sex till the birth (my money’s on eclampsia being the reason for depriving me indefinitely), then it’ll be recovery time after child-birth, and then these poxy doctors will discover something else meaning we can’t indulge till you kids are both 20 and have moved out the house….I can just picture me at the age of 60, sitting in my rocking chair, testicles the size of soccer balls, drool dripping out of the side of my mouth, a far off look in my eyes as I fondly reminisce about my many visits to the Wank Tank…
And do us guys get any sympathy…NOOOO. We get sniggering nurses and casual references to ‘biopsy’…like any guy is going to take a word that signifies hacking his family jewels apart with a scalpel as anything other than the most serious, cold-sweat-inducing, Hitchcock-horror-eclipsing terrifying word ever invented. And then they pump us full of hormones so we’re the equivalent of a high school boys changing room…and then withhold sex – surely there’s something in the Geneva Convention about just this sort of thing!!
Or maybe that’s just me…
Anyway, I digress……
CD11 scan tomorrow. It suddenly occurs to me that at around 07:15 tomorrow morning, I could be squinting at the little screen attached to the dildo-cam, looking at a (hopefully large) number of black splodges, and that one of those black splodges could become one of you guys…and that’s a thought that completely boggles my mind!
If I can get away with it, without the FS booking me into a mental asylum, I’ll give you a wave and say hello…it’s only polite.
