Am I Crazy Yet?

Everyone keeps asking me if the hormones are making me crazy. The answer? I have no idea. I've been on Clomid for 5 of the last 6 months, hot flashes and all. I've spent two weeks of every month for two years trying to stop myself from tearing open a little package so I can pee on a stick, then hovering over it to see if there is even the hint of a "+" sign. I've had everyone and his cousin up in my business. I've had so much blood drawn I feel like a prune. I've worried about saving money, whether I'll ever get pregnant, whether I'm actually going to die from being stabbed by a catheter so many times.

All that to say: I've been sort of an emotional wreck anyway. Add that to the fact that I'm already an emotional person to begin with. So my guess is--no, the hormones aren't making me crazy. I'm crazy on my own.

How's Everything Else Going?

The other day, I talked to a good friend who kindly listened to me drone on and on about the infertility stuff and IVF and how scary and horrible it is. After a long time, she asked me a very logical question. "How is everything else going?"


I was so embarrassed to realize, and admit, that right now--well, there isn't anything else. Other than the blog, I haven't been writing for fun: too stressed to find inspiration. Because of the hysteroscopy, no swimming, my favorite form of exercise.


I did take up beading, though. It sounds dorky, but it's sort of fun to make your own jewelery. Unlike babymaking, the benefit of jewlery making is that it's immediate. You can string something together in one night. And if you don't like it, you can just start over. And it's cheap. So basically, it's completely unlike babymaking in every way.

Stickin' it to Myself

I did it! Needle-phobic though I may be, last night was the first night I had to give myself a shot. It's a good thing I wasn't counting on DH, cause he started to get really nervous. And then I started to get nervous that since he was nervous, he was really going to pound that thing into the side of my leg. So I suggested I do it, and he readily agreed.

The thing is, once I made the decision I just wanted to get it over with. DH is so conscientious and wanted to read all the directions, even after having had training and reading them while eating his Weetabix that morning, and he looked really alarmed to watch me pinching my saddlebag with the needle two inches from my skin. "You're just going to go for it?" he asked incredulously. I mean, what else was there to do? I read over the instructions for how to fill the thing, it was ready to go, and all I had left to do was stick myself. Which I did, in one quick motion. And then I sat there looking at my leg thinking, "there's a needle in there like three inches." It was weird, but not painful.

It's like riding a bike. When you get down to it, when you've done it once, it's pretty darn intuitive. Plus, as long as you do it right, it doesn't hurt. I'm guessing I'll eventually find out what happens if you do it wrong, but at least that wasn't on the first go.

Don't Drop My Embryo!

So I figured out why they make you go to egg class. They make you go so they can show you all the things they are going to do to make sure they don't mix up your babies with someone else's. Unlike those cases on tv, this switch-a-roo would occur at the embryo, fit-on-the-head-of-a-pin stage, and you'd be none the wiser. Except in our case, we'd be surprised if the baby didn't come out:

• With a big ole nose. DH is constantly lamenting the small "mountain" (his words!) in the middle of his face, convinced there it is inevitable that the large size of his nose will not be sufficiently counteracted by the relatively small size of mine, and our child is destined for the bigger-than-average variety.
• Big-footed. I wear size 11, thanks in large part to pancake-flat feet. So we'll know something is wrong if the kid doesn't Ronald McDonald feet.
• Blind as a bat. Frankly, I almost hope the poor child comes out with some coke bottles. I mean, I know they can't really see at the beginning anyway, but by the time they can, the product of two people who can't see a burning building inches away without glasses is going to need some help.

So egg class was very informative. And it turns out the stuff the sperm lady does is sort of low level. It turns out there are sperm people much more advanced than she is, and they have to take our eggs and sperm and wash them and put them in special containers at the right temperature and use certain needles and all this series of complicated steps with many procedures.

Hearing it all, I wasn't so much worried that they'd give me the egg of the uptight lady sitting next to me, or the sperm of the guy who kept checking his Blackberry. No, I'm worried about the much more mundane: that an embryologist carrying my eggs is going to trip on a loose power cord and drop them on the lab floor. You can't exactly pick those suckers up. But when it came time for questions, there was really no way to say, "What if you spill my eggs? What then?"

Gotta have a little faith, I guess. That's what this is all about.

I Hope I Get an "A" in Egg Class

I'm excited because tomorrow we have egg class. What is egg class, you ask? Good question. I have no idea. Something to do with how they take out and fertilize these little buddies, I guess. I'm guessing the sperm lady teaches it, but I don't know.

It's almost like they want to provide some false sense of control over this process, like I have anything to do with the quality or transferability of my own eggs. I wish I did. I wish I could study hard and get an "A" in eggs.

I don't think we have to pay for egg class. It's funny when we don't have to pay for things, and they say stuff like, "Clearly, you won't have to pay for this consultation." Yeah, I guess it's clear. Clear to you, but not clear to me at all, since virtually every charge seems to be a random arrangement of numerals scattered on a page. I actually started to stress more when I read through the line item costs of IVF--killed me more than the $15,910 figure. $50 for a pregnancy test, and I have to have two?! I mean, I can buy a pee strip for $1! Either way, I'm pregnant or I'm not--why the extra $49? And it turns out anything the sperm lady touches costs at least a few hundred dollars. If only I'd known being a sperm lady was such a lucrative career, that everything I'd touch would turn to gold.

But hey, at least some things are free. And I can't wait to find out what egg class is all about.

Why Can't You Choose Gift Wrap?

Yesterday a big box came in the mail. It was full of a lot of fertility medicines and a boatload of needles. Like I said, I'm not wild about needles. When I looked at all of them and realized I was actually going to use every single one in less than one month's time, I was thinking what a shame it is that I can't have a glass of wine each night before shooting myself up.

At least the box had lots of stuff in it. I know this is probably a silly marketing gimmick, and certainly a waste of resources, but everything came in its own box in its own bag, so it felt exciting and important and like I got a lot of stuff for my $3,000. I sort of wish they gave you the option to gift wrap too. It's like when you have a wedding registry, and people send gifts directly to you. You know what the gift is; half the time it's written on the outside of the box, but it's still fun to rip that paper off, destroy those little Williams-Sonoma pineapples that cost people $4.95 a box.

They also enroll you in this special program to get $500 off your next order, kind of like the grocery store rewards card (although anything with a $500 discount is way too expensive in the first place). I mean, you actually get a card. And a great letter. They want you to think you're going to get pregnant, but they also want you to buy more medicine. So the gist of the letter is, "Isn't it exciting that you're going to have a baby after exactly two tries at IVF, using this wonderful medicine we will sell to you?" It's so perfect that we used our Bush bucks to buy this stuff, because it's just more sunshine being blown up my ass by someone who has no ability to control what actually happens.

Like I Said...The Jones Catheter

You know how they always tell you, at the doctor or dentist, that things are going to hurt worse than they actually will, so they can prepare you for the worst, and then the extreme discomfort will feel like they're doing you some kind of favor, going easy on you? That is not how it was with my hysteroscopy. That $hit hurt just as much as they said it would.

Which is amazing, cause they loaded me up with valium and vicodin, plus some shot of anti-inflammatory, plus a local anesthetic (I am so glad I could not see or feel needles in the nether region, mind you). But Dr. A did warn me that my "challenging" cervix might make things tougher. And she was right. Clamps and catheters and an ultrasound machine were whirled around in that room in a vain attempt to get a tiny camera into my uterus. At one point I looked up and could see, over the top of my draped knees, Dr. A looking like a mad scientist, with a bloody catheter in her hand. Ewwww.

Eventually she got the camera in--everything was normal, hurrah!--and then made sure the catheter would work too, cause getting in there is kind of a requirement if you want to implant any embryos. Again, despite her many attempts with different types, it was the Jones that saved the day. I don't know who you are, Jones, to have a catheter named after you, but thank you, thank you, thank you. If it wasn't for you I might still be on that table.

After it was over, Dr. A and the medical assistant started apologizing profusely, and telling me that I was really tough, and generally making me feel like I had fought my way out of a war zone carrying seven babies so my back, instead of lying inert on a table pumped with drugs. But hey, since it hurt, it was kind of nice to get the Purple Heart treatment.

And I figure this is preparing me for things to come, hopefully in the near future. By no means do I think this is comparable to being pregnant, or that being pregnant will be easy, but I do feel better equipped than the average bear to let many complete strangers look at and prod my most private regions, because there has been quite an army down there already. And what's coming doesn't seem quite as intimidating in the face of what's come so far. A few months ago a friend of mine was telling me about the experience of pregnancy treatment and evaluation, and she explained she had to have an uncomfortable procedure done, called a vaginal ultrasound.

I'm not saying a vaginal ultrasound is a whole lot of fun, but on the other hand, it's no hysteroscopy. So I guess I can wear my war wounds proudly, and hopefully be ready for what's next.

Workin' on My Fit-ness

So I am totally not the envious type (or at least I try not to be!), but I have loved the Honda Fit from the moment it came out. And a coworker of mine, totally deserving of some good car karma (her car was stolen one week, returned the next, and then side swiped by a hit and run driver, all in front of her house), just got that very car, and let me ride in it, and it is so cool. And in the best color too--the orange one. (I am apparently very influenced by orange--I almost bought a Bianchi 5 years ago because it was orange. I ended up getting the next year's model in blue, because they ran out of the orange model, and the bike shop had to give me a discount to convince me to take it.)

Anyway, as I was having my fit of envy, I got the call from my financial coordinator (the used car saleslady) telling me the number in the last post. Ironically, I'm guessing the final figure is somewhere in the neighborhood of a Honda Fit. So I guess the cool fold down seats, great gas mileage, sporty color, and cruise control will have to wait for me for a couple years down the road. Better get out the Bianchi.

$15,910

That's how much poorer we'll be tomorrow, when we pay for IVF. At least we increased the limit on our credit card--maybe I'll get a round trip airfare to Chicago to see Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!--the best thing on NPR--out of this whole IVF deal.

It's horrible but last night I went online to look at what the average IVF costs. Then I started getting all these crazy ideas. Should we go to Argentina to do it? The Philippines? But travel is like my favorite thing in the world. In fact, I've never enjoyed traveling for work because I feel like it takes away from the joy that is going to somewhere new. And how fun can it be to spend your vacation in a foreign place, having an unknown doctor extracting eggs and creating embryos? "Hey honey, let's go to Patagonia while our blastocysts are growing!" And that would mean the vacation time I spend there isn't spent on maternity leave, which is what I'm hoping for currently. So I scrapped the whole idea and decided to stick with my relatively expensive clinic, where I know the docs and feel confident about the treatment.

However, the price above is for the BOGO deal. So DH and I feel pretty good knowing we have at least two shots at this. In the meantime, I'm going to get my fill of wine and raw fish tonight, hoping I can't enjoy them soon enough.

Work Hard Enough and You'll Forget You're Infertile

So I haven't posted in a week because DH and I took a vacation. The deal was this: I had a beta pregnancy test on July 4th. If it was negative, backpacking. If it was positive, car camping. About 27 miles later, I am definitely not pregnant.

It was hard, when we got those results from the last IUI, to recognize that it's actually time to be ready for IVF. There are these lingering feelings of fear ("Nothing else has worked, why should this?"), shame ("Why am I jealous of people who I love, who I'm so glad have babies and deserve them and are great parents?"), dread ("I hate needles. They're for sick people."). But a good way to get over all that is to go backpacking. That's because it is such an intensely punishing process that you forget all this other stuff, albeit temporarily. Here are the things that helped me live in the present moment, not the future, IVF moment:

• Mosquitoes. Buttloads of these blood-sucking bastards. DH and I have at least 50 bites each. Seriously, we'd get into our tent to eat dinner to escape, then spend the first 5 minutes killing the ten mosquitoes that followed us in. There's blood smeared inside and I can't get that "buzzzzzz" out of my ear. I kept slapping my own face all night long, as a precautionary measure, ever time I heard it.
• Not being able to cross a creek. I've always been sort of a wimp about this. But this trip I tried to buck up and go for a rather difficult crossing. In the middle, I had to step on the roots of a tree that was growing there, however improbably. And slipped. And basically landed in a plane position, feeling like an idiot, water running over me, bruised and scraped, trying to stand on said slippery tree roots with a 40 pound pack tipping me back and forth.
• 11,000 foot passes. It is super hard to breathe up there, especially with a pack on. Even if DH is carrying the tent. And the water filter. And the stove. And more than 1/2 the food. It is still frickin' high.
• Pulled muscles. I felt my quad give a little tug when I was anxiously barreling down the side of the mountain the last day of the hike, toward a hot shower and a really gnarly chili cheeseburger. Then the next day, while staying at a "resort" (a glorified campground, really), I slipped on a rock and felt it tear. No one can think about IVF when they're walking like an 80 year old who just broke her hip.
• Nip. This is my favorite. It's the one thing that makes backpacking trips with my uber-fit DH bearable. We fill a Nalgene with vodka. We make the dog carry it. We get to camp after hiking many miles. We mix some vodka with Crystal Light lemonade. It may sound gross, but it's heaven at 11,000 feet, and only available to the non-pregnant.

Don't get me wrong--I'd much rather have been car camping. I would have preferred not to call my "nurse coordinator" from a remote resort on the John Muir Trail, where each minutes costs $2 (I left a very fast message), to tell her to schedule me for a hysteroscopy (a camera's going into my uterus on Tuesday) as soon as I get back. But at least the pain of backpacking made me feel real, normal. Now it's back to the reality that seems surreal.

All I Want for Christmas is Some Gonal-F

As IVF gets closer, I'm getting ready to order the medicines. And all I can say is thank the Lord for the evil corporate conglomerate that's screwing the local pharmacy. See what ugliness infertility brings out in me? It's sad that Amazon's low prices are driving bookstores out of business and making it difficult for publishers to keep churning out books, for example. But that same principle is at work in the fertility medications industry and I could not be happier about it.

See, I need 6 perscriptions of one medicine that costs $535 at the local pharmacy. It costs $358 at the online pharmacy that's negotiated a ridiculously sweet deal with the drug manufacturer. And unlike small publishers, who I want to keep afloat and who I feel badly for, I don't have a ton of sympathy for drug manufacturers who make less on my Gonal-F. Given that the difference is around $1,000 (not the extra $6 I pay to buy a book at my local bookstore instead of Target), I'm gonna have to go with the online pharmacy. Sorry, local business. I'm guessing most of that money was going to the evil drug manufacturer anyway.

I wish they had gift certificates, or an online registry, though. You know, like after you get pregnant, you can have people donate to your fertility fund instead of giving you a Diaper Genie. Or that I could put it on the Christmas lists my family sends around every year. "Dear Santa, please send me some Gonal-F. I need needles and alcohol pads too--the perfect stocking stuffer."